GALLUP, NM TO HOLBROOK, AZ

I-40

Interstate 40 follows along the drainage of the Rio Puerco and Little Colorado River in rocks deposited during the Mesozoic. You begin this trip in rocks of the Cretaceous and Jurassic. The Jurassic rocks end abruptly at Lupton on the Arizona border, then you drive through Triassic Chinle Formation to Holbrook, where the Moenkopi Formation is at the surface. West of Winslow even the Moenkopi is mostly gone, and the road is on Permian Kaibab Limestone.

Road Log

Drive west on I-40 out of Gallup. The rocks you see around you are the Menefee and Crevasse Canyon Formations, both dating to the Cretaceous Period. The highway follows the course of the Rio Puerco as it flows westward to join the Little Colorado River east of Holbrook. There are three Rios Puercos in New Mexico. This is the Rio Puerco of the West. "Puerco" means "pig" in Spanish, but the name is usually translated as Dirty, Muddy, or Stinking River. Maybe that's why the Spanish name is preferred.

As you pass the exit for West Gallup at milepost 17, the lumpy hill to the south is, or rather was, Twin Buttes. It is a volcanic neck, one of several in the Navajo Volcanic Field, mostly located toward the north. During the construction of I-40 basalt was mined for road aggregate. Mining continues so that Twin Buttes is being whittled away to a stump.

The road crosses the Gallup Sag, a gentle syncline between the Zuni and the Defiance uplifts about 70 miles long and up to 28 miles wide. It is interpreted as an embayment of the San Juan Basin. Much of the coal mined in the Gallup region came from this syncline. The Sag contains three anticlines; Gallup is built atop one, but the most visible is the Torrivio Anticline, just a little way ahead.

The Torrivio Anticline is best viewed from the west just past the settlement of Defiance, but if you are traveling west you should watch for it at about milepost 14. The best view is to the north of the Interstate, where Rio Puerco has cut through the structure exposing Mancos Shale at the base below the crest, topped by Gallup Sandstone and rocks of the Morrison Formation. Road cuts just before you pass Defiance display steeply tilted strata in the western limb of the structure.

Defiance along the road on the north is located at the site of Defiance Siding, where supplies were unloaded from trains for transport to Ft. Defiance.

Manuelito. Land on both sides of the highway along here is a checkerboard of Navajo and private holdings. Manuelito Canyon empties into the Rio Puerco on the south of the highway. There is a Chacoan outlier somewhere up the canyon. The former Navajo name for the settlement in this area referred to the Chacoan ruins and translates as "Ugly House," but the current name is "Kin Nizhoni," or "beautiful house." The Navajo who told me this laughed and said, "They must have done some remodeling." It's uncertain whether the new name refers to the Chacoan ruin, of which the local residents are fiercely protective. It was once considered for national monument status. There are several Chacoan outliers ahead along the Puerco River; I'll mention those I'm aware of, but none is open to the public.

As you cross Rio Puerco on the several bridges, notice how it has cut down between steep banks. This is the result of decades of overgrazing during the previous century. When Lt. Beale and his camel corps passed by here in 1857, the Puerco was a small stream, easily crossed, easily approached to water livestock. Now south of Lupton, the banks are more than twenty feet high, and because the deepening channel has lowered the water table, vegetation is sparse and brushy.

Approaching Lupton, alcoves behind the rest area on the south are in the Zuni [Cow Springs] Sandstone. Other Jurassic rocks form the impressive cliffs ahead.

Cross the Arizona state line at Lupton. This is also the Navajo Nation boundary. Mileposts begin counting down from 359. I-40 leaves the Big Rez near Sanders, then crosses another corner just east of the Petrified Forest National Park.

Lupton was named for G. W. Lupton, trainmaster at Winslow in the early 1900s. This is near the southern terminus of the Defiance Monocline, which runs about ninety miles between Lupton and the San Juan River to the north. The beautiful cliffs display rocks of the Zuni [Cow Springs] Sandstone and Morrison Formation of Jurassic age. Cretaceous Dakota Sandstone caps many of the mesas on the east. The Defiance Uplift is about 35 miles wide. Anasazi occupation of the Lupton area is evidenced by a Pueblo III ruin sitting atop one of the ridges and several rock art panels.

At milepost 358 is the exit to St. Michaels and Window Rock. Navajo 12 goes north here, offering a pleasant drive, much of it through a canyon between hogbacks eroded into the eastern limb of the monocline.

West of Lupton the road breaks out of the Rio Puerco corridor onto the Mogollon Slope, a geologic feature along the south side of the Colorado Plateau. Drainage here flows west and north rather than toward the precipitous Mogollon Rim on the south.

Near milepost 353 the butte on the north is the lower part of the Petrified Forest Member of the Chinle Formation. It is capped by Sonsela Sandstone a unit within the Petrified Forest Member. So much for the Jurassic! Welcome to the Triassic.

Most of the tourist curio stores advertised on prominent signs along the road ahead belong to Armand Ortega. They all stock about the same things, so if you want to shop, there is no need to stop at each one. Ortega also owns the El Rancho Hotel in Gallup. He purchased it in 1987 when it was slated for destruction and restored it.

Allentown Road Exit at Milepost 351. There are prehistoric ruins near here. The first is a pithouse village that dates to the middle 800s A. D. Another is a small pueblo occupied from 1002 until 1016 A. D. Frank H. H. Roberts excavated these sites in the early 1930s. Another unexcavated site is about a mile from the first one. The ruins are not open to the public.

Houck at milepost 348 is the present home of the "Fort Courage" tourist attraction. This "fort" is unlike any historical military installations constructed in the Southwest. Forts in this region consisted of detached buildings around a parade ground. The community was named for James Houck, a trader, politician, and deputy sheriff with a reputation for violence. He built his trading post without the permission of the Navajos. Unwelcome at first, he learned to avoid direct confrontation with the Indians. For example, when some of his horses went missing, he closed the post. After a few days some Indian leaders came to ask why. He told them he would reopen the store when his horses were returned. The next day his stock was in the corral. Eventually he moved south to become "The sheep king of Cave Creek." A Chacoan ruin is located near the Catholic school on the hill south of the road.

Querino Road at milepost 343 gives access to Big Arrows Road, a stretch of old 66 parallel to I-40 on the south. Big Arrows Road was named for the Big Arrows Trading Post on U.S. 66, which is no longer in evidence. The Big Arrows post may have been the first to plant telephone poles in the ground at an angle and deck them up to look like arrows. Where the west bound on-ramp joins the interstate, yellowish-tan Shinarump Conglomerate, lowest member of the Chinle Formation, caps exposures of the Moencopi Formation on the north side of the road.

Signs advertising "Indian Ruins" appear for several miles before you reach Exit 341, at Cedar Point. I have been told that there are some authentic Anasazi ruins here, but at the trading post if you ask where they are, you will be told, "That's just the name of this place."

Arizona Port of Entry. Watch out for trucks pulling back on the Interstate.

Sanders was named by the Santa Fe Railroad for one of its engineers, but the name was changed to Cheto because of another Sanders station elsewhere. However, the new name didn't stick, because locals continued using the old one. Also, a trading post here was run by a man named Art Sanders, or Saunders, whom some believe is the source of the name. The owner of the Burnham Trading Post in Sanders has been instrumental in fostering at least two new styles of Navajo rug weaving. The latest utilizes "Germantown" dyed yarn in bright colors, which are catching on among both weavers and buyers.

The Cheto Mine south of Sanders produces bentonite, a clay used in drilling oil wells, sealing ponds, and so on. Bentonite is formed by the breakdown of volcanic ash. In this case the ash came from the Hopi Buttes Volcanic Field. It is found in the Bidahochi Formation of Miocene-Pliocene age. These strata were laid down in a basin that covered the Little Colorado drainage from Ganado to the Zuni Mountains and may have extended westward to the Colorado River north of Flagstaff. Some geologists think the ancestral Colorado River may have fed lakes in the basin before it broke through the Kaibab Upwarp to dredge the Grand Canyon. The Bidahochi caps many of the buttes and mesas along I-40. As you pass through Sanders you might see open railroad cars loaded with white bentonite on the siding.

A Chacoan outlier and segment of a prehistoric roadway is located near Sanders. The Chaco culture apparently built a great-house about every thirty miles along this route. Few have been excavated, and none is open to the public.

Mileposts 336-337. Bidahochi sediments are visible in a hill to the north. Pinkish-tan, they look like a dirt pile.

Chambers [Exit 331]. A rail stop was established at the Chambers trading post, and a post office was opened in 1907. Near Chambers the Sonsela Sandstone, a unit within the Petrified Forest Member of the Chinle Formation, is prominent on the north of the road for a couple of miles. Puerco Ridge shows along the southern horizon. The name of Chambers was changed to Halloysite for a number of years because of a clay mine extracting that mineral nearby, but it reverted to the original name in 1930. Halloysite is similar to kaolinite and is used in porcelain china. From 1960-76 wells extracted helium from beneath the surface near Chambers.

North of Chambers, US 191 passes Wide Ruins, former site of an impressive Chacoan-style ruin named Kin Teel [or Kin Tiel]. The pueblo covered thirty acres and is claimed as the home of one of the Zuni clans. The walls of Kin Teel, some of which were twelve feet tall, were pulled down to extract building stones for the construction of a trading post about 1895. Although several books have been written about life at Wide Ruins, when the trading post went out of business in the 1980s it was torn down in turn. So there is nothing left for tourists to see at the small settlement there.

Exit 325. Navajo was originally named Navajo Springs because of seeps in a meadow that provided a good grazing spot for travelers' horses. The act creating Arizona Territory was passed in February 1863. In August, Governor John Goodwin of Maine, and other appointed officials started for the new territory, but it was not until December 8th that they left Albuquerque. On the 29th they arrived at Navajo Springs and camped in the middle of a blizzard. They held a ceremony to organize the new government, taking oaths of office, raising the flag and cheering, and dining on fresh antelope steaks as well as champagne they had brought for the occasion. Thus was the territory of Arizona established.

This may have been the western frontier of the Chaco culture. Portions of their ancient roadways have been found nearby, and the ruin of a great-house lies south of the present town.

Beale's Wagon Road crossed the Rio Puerco at about this point and continued roughly on the route to Flagstaff now followed by I-40. The road originated at Fort Smith, Arkansas and traveled to Los Angeles. In New Mexico it went westward via Albuquerque and Zuni. There were no other settlements between Zuni and California at that time. With his Camel Corps, Beale surveyed the 35th parallel route across the Southwest in 1857, more successfully than had Sitgreaves in 1851 or Whipple in 1853-54. With a congressional appropriation of $175,000 he returned to Albuquerque in 1859 to begin improving the route and building some bridges where needed. He was surprised to learn that three wagon trains had already tried his new road and met with disaster. The first, the Rose-Baley train, reached the ford of the Colorado River with few difficulties other than a lack of watering holes, but there they were attacked by Mojave Indians. Several of the emigrants were killed or wounded, and most of their livestock, including the oxen to pull their wagons, were slain or run off. With few remaining supplies they turned back toward Albuquerque, on the way intercepting two following wagon trains who joined them in the retreat. The military soon established Fort Mojave at Beale's Crossing of the Colorado to protect travelers on the road, but the experience of the first party gave this route a bad reputation, so it was little used until the railroad was built along it in the 1880s.

Pinta Road at Exit 320. Steam locomotives had to take on water every 20-30 miles, so there were lots of watering stops. Pinta was one such. But not every whistle-stop became a town. Although for a while there was a trading post at Pinta and a post office, it never amounted to much. Looking around here you will be able to understand what attracted cattlemen to this part of Arizona. The rolling prairie is good grazing country. When Beale explored this region in 1857, he encountered "abundant and excellent gramma and bunch grass" nearly everywhere. Now, although grazing continues, the carrying capacity of the land is much reduced. The grazing land may be a little boring to drive across, but here and there are glimpses of the colorful Chinle Formation to break the monotony.

A dry wash near milepost 316 is signed as "Dead River." The name seems to relate to "Old Man Lynn" who settled near here. His daughter went to Adamana seeking help for him, not realizing that her father had been dead for several days.

Exit 311. Painted Desert and Petrified Forest National Park.

Petrified Forest National Park One of the wonders of the West, the Chinle formation was laid down in a broad basin by streams during the late Triassic when plate tectonics had not yet shifted North America out of the tropics; what would become the Four Corners was near the equator. Primarily mudstone and siltstone with stringers of limestone and sandstone, the Formation in places may be as much as 1500 feet thick and is divided into several members, not all of which are found in the same places. The basal member is the Shinarump Conglomerate. John Wesley Powell applied the name "Shinarump" to some cliffs near Kanab, Utah about 1873. I always supposed that Shinarump was cowboy lingo for high chaparral country, but I've learned that "Shinar" is the Paiute word for wolf; the rest of the name is English. You figure it out.

Petrified wood is found sporadically in the Chinle formation. It may not have grown where it now lies, but washed down from somewhere else. Since the Chinle Formation contains much volcanic ash [altered to clay] it has been suggested that the logs might be debris from a Mt. St. Helen's type eruption. On the other hand, a catastrophic flood might have felled them. Wood in the Chinle, particularly the Shinarump Member, was sometimes petrified by carnotite [uranium oxide], and these logs were mined during the uranium boom in the Four Corners.

The U. S. Geological Survey predicted in 1899 that so much petrified wood was being removed from the area for commercial purposes that the petrified forest would soon be "extinct." One company was crushing the wood for grit! President Teddy Roosevelt designated a national monument in 1906 to protect this scenic resource. In 1962 President Kennedy made it a National Park. Still the forest is being depleted. Park rangers estimate that 12 tons of pretty petrified wood are taken each year by tourists. Don't be guilty of this if you visit the park!

There have been several exciting discoveries in the Park recently, including Triassic dinosaur nests, the earliest ever found.

The Park Service hopes to expand the National Park by 98,000 acres to protect more of the geological and archaeological resources in the area, and, although most of the private landowners are willing to sell, at the time of writing Congress has not allocated funds to purchase the land. The proposed expansion includes Ancestral Puebloan sites, as well as major rock art panels and dinosaur quarries.

Milepost 307. Cross the boundary between Apache and Navajo Counties. To the north are some dull colored portions of the Chinle Formation. This is also part of the Painted Desert, which extends in an arc northwestward to near Grand Canyon.

Exit 303. Adamana is a contraction of Adam Hanna, the name of a rancher whose home near the railroad served as a post office about fifteen miles south of here beginning in 1896. The Adamana station was where rail passengers got off to visit the petrified forest.

Woodruff Butte is visible at 9:00 from milepost 298. From this angle it appears as a dark, lonely butte on the far horizon. A volcanic neck, like Twin Buttes in Gallup, it also was being mined for basalt to be used in road construction. The Hopi and Zuni both claim it as a sacred site and maintain shrines there that may be 1000 years old, but when it was put up for sale recently, neither tribe was able to raise the money to bid on it. It sold for $100,000. However, the state of Arizona has not renewed a permit for the mining of gravel from the butte, thus protecting the Native American shrines.

The small community of Woodruff was one of the early Mormon settlements in Arizona. The settlers were all "second milers" who had crossed the plains, many of them on foot, pulling their possessions in handcarts, to start a new life in Utah, but had barely settled in when the church sent them to found a new colony elsewhere. When the Old Woodruff cemetery was cleaned up in 1997, it provided mute testimony to the rigors of frontier life: 42 persons died in the first sixteen years at Woodruff, and 25 of those were children less than three years old.

Between mileposts 300 and 301, you can see some rock art close on the north side of the highway, high up on the "corner" of the east facing rocks above Little Lithodendron Wash. [Litho = rock; dendron = tree.]

Milepost 303. Cross Big Lithodendron Wash. In 1878 General William Tecumseh Sherman, at that time a regent of the Smithsonian Institution, requested that soldiers at Fort Wingate collect some petrified logs for the growing museum in Washington, D. C. A group was dispatched in the spring of 1879 with two mule drawn wagons to Arizona, where they proceeded up Lithodendron Wash. They found two logs of roughly the same size, about seven feet long, as Sherman had requested, and loaded them on the wagons. The return trip was difficult with the logs weighing about a ton each, but eventually the logs were shipped to the Smithsonian, where they are still on display.

Milepost 297: The Hopi buttes, volcanic plugs, should be visible on the northwest; you will play peek-a-boo with them between here and Winslow.

When Lt. Beale came this way in 1857 he wrote in his diary that the "valley of (the Puerco) is three miles across, and grass plentiful in the bottom, as well as on the hills, which are quite low. There is an abundance of large cotton-wood trees in the bottom, which resembles very nearly the bottom of the Rio Grande." [He was probably referring to the bosque along the river at Albuquerque.] Overgrazing has degraded the landscape, in places leaving "desert pavement" – a scattering of pebbles on the surface left behind as the top soil washed or blew away. Cottonwood trees now are scarce. Cottonwoods require periodic flooding to regenerate from seed. Because flooding rarely happens these days, as the old trees die they are not replaced by seedlings.

Exit 292. Arizona 77 goes north through the eastern portion of the Hopi Buttes.

Holbrook's historians always mention that the town was home to the infamous Bucket of Blood Saloon, but this name was not unique. It was a popular name, or nickname, for rowdy bars in the late 1800s. A saloon in Gallup was nicknamed "Bucket of Blood", and there were other B-o-Bs in Chicago and across the west. It would be interesting to know the origin of the name.

Holbrook became the county seat of Navajo County in 1895, the only county seat in the country that lacked a church. In 1899, Sheriff Wattron of Holbrook sent out invitations to the hanging of George Smiley, Murderer. Part of the text read: "His soul will be swung into eternity on December 8, at 2 o'clock, p. m., sharp. Latest improved methods in the art of scientific strangulation will be employed and everything possible will be done to make the proceedings cheerful and the execution a success." President McKinley was not amused by the invitation and so informed the Governor of Arizona, who reprimanded the Sheriff and delayed Mr. Smiley's execution for one month. The next invitation that Sheriff Wattron mailed read, in part, "Conduct, on anyone's part, bordering on ribaldry and tending to mar the solemnity of the occasion will not be tolerated." Wattron's sense of humor aside, he was well regarded and later became Navajo County's Superintendent of Schools.

Major References

Baars, Donald.

The Colorado Plateau; a geologic history. University of New Mexico Press, 1983. Navajo Country. University of New Mexico Press, 1995

Baley, Charles W. Disaster at the Colorado; Beale's wagon road and the first emigrant party. Utah State University Press, 2002.

Hanchett, Leland J. The crooked trail to Holbrook. Arrowhead Press, 1993.

Locke, Raymond. The Book of the Navajo. Mankind Publishing, 4th ed., 1989.

Lockett, H. C. Along the Beale Trail; a photographic account of wasted range land. U. S. Office of Indian Affairs, 2nd ed., 1940.

New Mexico Geological Society.

Black Mesa Basin. 1958.  
Monument Valley and Vicinity. 1973.
Southeastern Colorado Plateau. 1989.

Trimble, Marshall. Roadside history of Arizona. Mountain Press, 1986.

Utley, Robert M. A life wild and perilous; mountain men and the paths to the Pacific. Henry Holt & Co., 1997.