It’s Christmas, the season for bad TV, and so here’s another post detailing another new reality TV show on US telly.
Remember when the Sheriff would get a posse together to round up the bad guys? Well things have moved on since the Old West days and now Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa Count, Arizona has called on TV producers to join his deputies in catching criminals in “Smile … You’re Under Arrest!”
A cross between “Punk’d” and “Cops,” the program sets up elaborate sting operations to snare people wanted on outstanding warrants. Actors and undercover deputies play along in faux scenarios where scofflaws are enticed to have a good time; the drama comes when cast members reveal the prank and waiting deputies slap on handcuffs.
Sounds like good clean honest crime-busting fun to me.
is the La Posada Hotel. At the intersection of Route 66 (now called 2nd Street) and State Route 87 in historic downtown Winslow to be precise.
That lyric is more commonly associated with the 1972 hit by The Eagles “Take it Easy”, the song that put Winslow back on the map again after it was bypassed by the new I-40 Interstate that replaced the historic Route 66:
Well, I’m a standin’ on a corner in Winslow, Arizona,
and such a fine sight to see
It’s a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford,
slowin’ down to take a look at me
Whilst I like The Eagles that’s not what interests me about Winslow. When I pass through in January I’m looking forward to seeing one of the most outstanding buildings associated with the Fred Harvey empire:
La Posada embodies the visions of both Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter, the hotel’s renowned architect, and Allan Affeldt, its current owner. But the story really begins with Fred Harvey, who “civilized the west” by introducing linen, silverware, china, crystal, and impeccable service to railroad travel. (He was so legendary that MGM made a movie called The Harvey Girls starring Judy Garland.) Harvey developed and ran all the hotels and restaurants of the Santa Fe Railway, eventually controlling a hospitality empire that spanned the continent.
Harvey brought good food and lodgings to the American railroad network in the 19th century in the shape of ‘Harvey Houses’ - his legacy is so interwoven with travel in the American west that there’s now a wiki set up for interested parties to share documents and information about the Fred Harvey Company.
When Harvey died in 1901 there were 47 Harvey House restaurants, 15 hotels, and 30 dining cars operating on the Santa Fe Railway.
The La Posada was built by architect Mary Colter in Winslow, site of the the Arizona headquarters for the Santa Fe Railway. For more on the history of the build and for a review of the restored hotel read Ron Dungan’s travel piece on the Arizona Republic website.
For more on Winslow - the town ‘frozen in time’ - read the Legends of America site.
I always knew jogging was bad for you….
An Arizona jogger had an unwelcome companion on a recent run - a fox, hanging on to her arm by its teeth.
Attacked jogger takes fox for run
I caught Jurassic Park on some obscure cable TV channel last night and then stumbled across this great story about the discovery of a ‘Dinosaur Dance Floor’ in the far north of Arizona.
“During the Jurassic period, large stretches of the American west were a desert, so the presence of more than 1,000 tracks of a variety of creatures has led geologists to conclude the site was an oasis.”
Apparently it was only erosion caused by strong winds in the area that uncovered this three-quarter acre site in the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument and eventually the dinosaur footprints will be blown away.
Vermilion Cliffs became a national monument on 9 November 9 2000 and covers a whopping 294,000 acres. The remote area, in extreme northern Coconino County on the border with the state of Utah, has been described as ‘The Land Before Time‘.
It’s amazing to think that in such a desolate region, human settlement actually dates back 12,000 years and that there are hundreds of Native American pueblos spread across the land plus the largest number of petroglyph ‘rock art’ sites in any protected area in the US.
As it’s maintained by the BLM - not the more glitzy guidebook and gift shop led National Park Service - it’s suggested that this is a place for people to explore by themselves. The 3 main sites are Buckskin Gulch, Lees Ferry and Coyote Buttes, home of ‘The Wave’, a small ravine between eroded sandstone domes only recently made famous.
As only 20 people a day are allowed to visit many of these sights I’d suggest you take a virtual tour instead.
Stanley Stewart in the Times must have rolled into Tombstone on Sunday for the 127th anniversary shoot-out but is so tired of election fever he compares the Earp vs. Clanton gunfight with a Republican vs. Democrat brawl!
A good read for those wanting to try a little dude ranching as he moseys on down to the Price Canyon Ranch for some riding in the canyons:
After three days of riding across God’s own country, and an evening of Jesse’s fiddle, I had deserted. I didn’t care who was up and who was down. The poll figures meant nothing to me. I was a free man again.
Another story in the same paper though made me think it might be worth setting up a dude ranch of sorts in the UK, especially now it seems many horse owners in the UK are struggling to keep their own fed and stabled:
Horses, seen as luxury accessories of the wealthy, are the latest victims of the credit crunch, with a growing number being abandoned because their owners cannot afford feed and livery bills
26 October is an important day for Arizona anniversaries - with the US presidential election looming large it’s 41 years ago today that some say Senator John McCain started running for office after being shot down over North Vietnam and crash landing in Truc Bach Lake.
For fans of the Old West though, there’s a more significant anniversary:127 years ago today Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Virgil and Morgan Earp fought the Clantons and McLaurys in a vacant lot behind the corral in Tombstone, Arizona Territory. Read the rest of this entry »
