Downtown, 1864

Here's a fun project for you. March into Porky's, the BBQ place on Gurley, buy yourself a sandwich and a beverage and seat yourself in front of the huge map of old, old Prescott. Pick your favorite street corner and compare what's there today with roughly 150 years ago.

Gurley and Cortez appear to have been the major business streets at that time. For some reason the map maker chose to play down Montezuma; was it Whiskey Row back then or not?

Granite Creek, from Gurley to the big bend. Farms and orchards lining the creek. One bridge. No pines showing except at the periphery. Below, the Square, already the focal point for Prescott.

In case the thought had not already occurred to you, I am a certified map freak. Old maps, new maps. Topographic quads. Google Earth. National Geographic maps. Whatever. They convey just a tremendous amount of information in such a compact and accessible format. My LH used to be amused at how I would stare at, say, the Mt. Union topo for long minutes, but I was learning about historic sites, old mines, where the roads went (and their likely condition), the course of the upper Hassayampa River, trails. A wonderful way to get to know the territory.

Geography lesson

Ever since the LH and I moved to Arizona, I have obsessed over maps, especially topos. A good map is one of the coolest ways known to man to convey huge amounts of information on a single page. And so I have been wearing out the dotter/SIL's topo book of Alaska.

In the process of poring over the maps, I discovered many un-maplike names for features such as mountain tops and glaciers. As Exhibit 1, above, I present the Five Bs: peaks named, in order,
Bold, Bashful, Baleful, Benign, and Bellicose, with Peril Peak close by.

Maybe you'd like a quick visit to Scandanavia -- here's an easy way to see every place from Denmark to Finland, if you are equipped for glacier climbing. Nearby, also in the Chugach mountains you could continue your Nordic adventure by climbing Thor, Valhalla, Siegfried -- or even Fafnir (below). These mountains are near the science cluster, which includes Fermi Peak, Mount Edison and Mount Halley plus the namesake, Science Glacier.

If you looked carefully at the picture atop this photo, you may have noted Columbia Glacier. While it's a really major one that doesn't empty into College Fjord, you will find most of the Ivy League and the Seven Sisters moving ice to the sea though this outlet. Take your pick of the larger Harvard and Yale ice streams or smaller Dartmouth, Amherst or Williams. As for the Seven Sisters (minus one), they are all short steep glaciers across the fjord: Bryn Mawr, Wellesley, Vassar, Barnard, Radcliffe and Smith. Why such oddball names (and there are more)? My guess would be that Alaska is so immense (20% of the land area of the Lower 48) that settlers really had to stretch to name just some of the many geographic features.

And, by the way, you may have been noting all the glaciers -- these are quite near Anchorage, which has a maritime climate. All the ice fields are near the Gulf of Alaska, starting only as far north as the Alaska Range and hugging the seacoast further south. The country inland above Denali is in the rain shadow and comparatively dry, with no glaciers -- much to my surprise. Apparently this included the Bering Strait land bridge across which the first American settlers arrived during the Ice Age, according to the SIL

Those Pesky Rights-of-Way

All right, already. Call me picky, picky. However, today marked the second time that our daily newspaper has printed the same incorrect map. On page 1. Story about Lincoln School's property problem. How do I know? Well, I happen to walk the area frequently, as you may have noted. Examine the map above. Picture yourself in your car, heading straight up Beach street from the back side of the Sharlot Hall Museum to get to Lincoln school.

Oh oh! What have we here? Look what's ahead of you. Even in your SUV, you aren't going to get up this little cliff! Pretty, though. Quite walkable -- there's a well worn neighborhood path. Yes, this is on some maps as part of Beach Street.

Now here's the map with my corrections. See the little stub of Beach? See the "new" street going past the other side of the United Methodist Church over to Gurley? MapQuest online has corrected its map to this configuration. On the other hand, my 2003 edition of the Yavapai/Coconino Counties Street & Road Atlas still shows the map just as the Courier printed it.

By the way, that isn't the only Prescott street found on some maps that in the real world goes over a cliff. Likely, the problem is that city rights-of-way do exist and the map makers mistake them for actual thoroughfares. No way. They should get out on the land more often!

As for the Lincoln School property problem -- I'd say that the city should quietly deed its "strip of land" over to the school and be done with it. After all, it did pass the whited-out portion of Beach Street to the adjacent land-owner, I'm told. And, after all, city had apparently lost the piece of land which the school has used for all these years. Isn't there a term for land ownership that passes as a result of long-term use? Oh, yes -- squatters' rights.

Local Link of the Day

My son-in-law has a buddy who's into Route 66 in a big way. SIL, who's a map freak, is looking for an old road map of Arizona from the days before I-40 made driving across the state just like driving across any other state. His idea is to overlay old 66 on aerial map panels downloaded from Google Earth. Cool idea. First I searched my own map stash (I guess I also qualify as a map freak), but no old AZ road maps. Then I went on line and turned up this fine site which takes you on a reasonably good historic tour of the Mother Road and the cities and towns for which it was the lifeline. BTW, contrary to what the site author says, the cafe at the Monte Carlo turnoff didn't go under until a shooting occurred sometime in the early 90s. The truck stop there was in business the last time I went to Flag via Ashfork.