While the guys were in the Grand Canyon, our niece, Mar, and I did a few things too. Since B had the camera, Mar did the picture taking.
The first place that we went to is in Flagstaff. Originally, it was out of town. Now it is surrounded by the college.
Three Irish brothers by the name of Riordan came to this area. The first brother came with his wife and family and was employed by the owner of the mill. He encouraged his two brothers to come. One brother later ended up going further west, but the other two stayed. The sister-in-law came to visit and ended up married to his brother. They raised their families here. After the rail line came through, the man who owned the saw mail wanted to sale, so they bought him out. Originally, Flagstaff was a railroad town, but they turned it into a mill town.
They first lived in homes in town that still stand. One is now a Pizza place and I can't remember what the other is. They had this place built in 1904. It has over 13,000 sq. feet of living space and 40 rooms. It is actually two complete homes with a common area connecting them, known as the billiard room. In this room, the windows facing the back of the house have pictures that were developed onto the glass. You only see them from inside. Some are of the Grand Canyon and some are of Indians.
The brothers also did much to develop the town. They built a hospital, a community hotel, three Catholic churches, brought electricity to the area, etc. One of the brothers was also responsible for the building of a reservoir so that the town could have water year round. It is still used today.
This is looking at the back of one of the houses and part of the common room.
This is the front of one of the houses. They also had full basements under them, electricity and running hot and cold water.
The next place that we went to was Walnut Canyon, east of Flagstaff. More than 800 years ago people, who we now call Sinagua - Spanish for "without water" - lived here. At first, you don't see any cliff dwellings, but then the more you look the more you see. There is an "island" that extends out into the canyon that you can walk around and go past some of the ruins. There has been restorative work done to some. You can see others on both sides of the canyon.
This is looking towards the "island" that we went around. You can see modern stairs in the middle of the picture.
This is the visitors center from the island. You have to zoom in on these pictures. Below the visitors center you can see dwellings at two different levels.
This isn't like the pictures where you see several stories in their dwellings. These are quite small and most are just one room. These were across the canyon.
Notice the hole above the door. That was to let the smoke out. You can still see the soot on the ceilings of the rooms. They say that after the walls were built, they finished both inside and outside walls with limestone making them white.
We went past an area that had two rooms with a connecting door. I over heard a person saying that they thought the Sinaguas were less than five feet tall. This is me standing in the other room in front of the connecting door. And I am just under five feet. I sure felt tall.
This shows a couple homes.
They believe that the Sinaguas leveled the floors with dirt. I did notice what looks like a low shelf along the back wall in most of them. Also notice how narrow the space is in front of the homes until it drops off. Some areas it was a bit more but not much.
This was taken across the canyon, on the side of the visitors center. If you look, you can find four different areas of homes.
Another interesting thing was that the stream in the bottom of the canyon was dry. The rim is around 7000 feet and the canyon floor is 6340 feet. The dwellings are about one third of the way down from the rim. They believe that the Sinaguas collected runoff in the spring and during rainy seasons. They grew some things on the walls of the canyon such as melons, grew corn on top using a ditch system and small dams. They have also found remains of one room pit houses and Pueblos on top. There is also eatable berries and nuts at different levels in the canyon.
This was an interesting area. If all or most of these homes were occupied at the same time, this would have been a very busy area. It is hard to imagine it today.
After we left this area Mar drove on east to a Meteor Crater. About 50,000 years ago an iron-nickle meteorite, estimated at about 150 feet across and weighing several hundred thousand tons, struck the rocky and barren plain with a force greater than 20 million tons of TNT. The original crater was 700 feet deep, now about 550 because of erosion of the walls. It is about a mile across the rim.
Since there is nothing on top to compare it too, it is hard to tell just how big it is. At one time they thought that they could drill and find the meteor in the bottom. They have since learned that it melted and blew outward from the hole. There are two fenced in drill areas in the bottom. It wasn't until we looked through telescopes on the platform below the rim, see the next picture, that we saw the six foot astronaut and flag, as large as the one they put on the moon, attached to the fence.
They learned much from this area that has also helped them identify other meteor craters.
The guys may have had fun hiking down into the canyon, but we had a great time too. And we even did some hiking. Me in the bottom of the crater.
Not really me in the bottom, just a place to take a picture making it look like you were in the bottom.
The walls of the canyon are real close at the point of the dam. This is looking up stream. You can see that it is not completely full.
They were letting as much water as they could out at the dam because of the runoff coming into the lake. The dam itself is two hundred feet high, although it doesn't look like it form the lookout. There was a lot of spray. It was also windy at the lookout.
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