Sedona in the Spring

I (Jamie) took my family (minus my daughter but plus my son's friend Eric) on Spring Break from the wet and muddy environs of Central Ohio to Sedona, Arizona, where we yearned to see the Sun and avoid raindrops for at least most of the week.  We arrived on Saturday, April 23 after flying to Phoenix and driving the two hours to central Arizona.  We were greeted by the amazing spire of Bell Mountain and its surrounding Red Rock brethren.  The sun peeked in and out of some high clouds as we set next to the hotel pool and waited to be checked in.  We then took a drive around the area, stopping at the stunning Chapel in the Rocks on this Holy Saturday and taking in its simple beauty. We were a little disconcerted by the loud, boorish tourism exhibited by a few people at the site, yelling for their kids to move or look a different direction for their pictures, while other people kneeled in prayer in the tiny chapel.  We were also surprised that the vista from the Chapel was marred by an incredibly overbuilt house sitting at the foot of the cliff that holds the chapel.  This monstrosity looks like an Italian country home built by a Las Vegas show girl, complete with a rooftop observatory pointed at the Chapel, a fountain worthy of a Roman piazza, and other architectural flourishes completely out of place in the Sedona landscape.

We ate dinner at a Mexican restaurant in Oak Creek and then called it a night as we tried to adjust to Pacific Coast time.  On Easter Sunday, we started the day late, allowing my son and his friend Eric to sleep in, and then attended Easter Mass at St. John Vianney Church in Sedona.  This is a beautiful church, expertly built into the rugged landscape, with spectacular views of soaring red rock cliffs through the windows behind its altar.  We arrived very early for Mass, not knowing the exact location of the church, but that gave us plenty of time to tour the numerous interesting sculptures and gardens surrounding the church.  The priest led a terrific Easter service, and we all left feeling happy and full of life in the sunny, windy red rock hills.




Bell Mountain in Sedona 

We ate lunch at Mooney's Irish Pub near Sedona, and then headed back to our hotel where we changed clothes and prepared to get our first stamps of the vacation.  Of course, I was the only Stamp Guy on the trip, but my wife enjoys national parks and forests for their flowers and fauna, and my 17 year old son was excited to be outside in the nice weather.  We headed south of Sedona to a trio of stamp sites: Montezuma's Well, Montezuma's Castle and Tuzigoot.

We followed the signs of I-17 to the Well, and parked in a small dirt parking lot that was full to capacity. There was a small Visitor's Center (really, just a little shed) but it had a sign at the window saying that the Ranger was leading a hike.  We walked up a hillside path with much informational signage about the plants and trees we were walking by, and then we topped the rise and found a very surprising view.  I guess I was expecting some sort of spring releasing water into a small stream, which would have been amazing enough in this parched landscape. Instead, we were greeted with a fair sized lake in what looked like an abandoned rock quarry.  Ancient cliff dwellings perched precariously in the cliffs above the water.  We followed a path down to the lake level and explored more cliff dwellings at the surface level. The lake is fed by an underground aquifer, and it has carved an outlet through the limestone so that it empties in a spring that the Sinaqua Indians of the 1300's used to irrigate their fields.   This water source had to be an incredible boon to their civilization in this dry area.




The lake at Montezuma's Well; note the cliff dwellings.

When we returned to the Visitor's Center, the Ranger had just returned from his hike. Happily, I was able to get my stamp, and the Ranger told us some interesting facts about a large insect we had seen (apparently, we had seen the Tarantula Hawk, which paralyzes the spider and then lays its eggs in the poor arachnid's body, which serves as a living food source for the young insects).  The Ranger also informed us that the Well supports a couple of leeches and other small organisms that do not exist anywhere else on Earth because of the unique chemical nature of the water (which contains too much lime to allow fish to survive).  My wife really enjoyed this site, and the boys had fun running around and walking as close to the edge of the cliff as they could.
We then headed one more exit south on I-17 to the Castle.  This famous site has a much larger parking area, but it was also full to capacity.  As we approached the Visitor's Center (a classic built in 1960 with the low, rambling ranch-style architecture, outdoor pergola and rounded lettering on signs of that period), we discovered the reason for the Parks' popularity on this Easter Sunday:  the entrance fee had been waived by the NPS for these three sites.  I hustled over to the large stamp station, and was delighted (or should I say dee-lighted) to find  a stamp honoring Teddy Roosevelt, along with stamps for the site, the 25th anniversary of the passport program and for the 50th anniversary of the classic Visitor's Center.  The museum had a nice tribute to Roosevelt's preservation record that I shared with the boys (230 million acres preserved is impressive even to a 17 year old).  I bought hat pins for the Castle and Tuzigoot (because a Ranger told me that the gift store was closed at Tuzigoot), but they did not have a pin for the Well.

We then walked out of the VC and down a paved path to view the Castle.  This large (4 story) dwelling is one of the best preserved cliff dwellings in the American Southwest, but you cannot tour it, which is a little disappointing. The NPS allows tours of similar (albeit smaller) structures at Mesa Verde and many other sites.  We then walked down to see the remains of a dwelling built at the foot of the cliff, and then down to Wet Beaver Creek, which is a substantial watercourse at this site. We then returned to the VC and headed to our car for the trip to Tuzigoot (pronounced Two-Z-gute).

We headed north from the Castle toward Cottonwood, Arizona, through a beautiful valley framed by the Mingus Mountains towering off to the west.  We were surprised to find that Cottonwood and its surrounding cities such as Clarkdale were virtual copies of suburban sprawl communities throughout the US.  However, as we went past them and entered the valley where Tuzigoot is located, we entered a pristine area.   Tuzigoot is a ruin of an Indian village built on a small mesa. It is not a cliff dwelling.  At the VC (which was open despite what we had been told), we learned that the area to the west of the village had been a field of copper tailings from a 19th century mining operation, and that the village itself was excavated as part of a Works Progress Administration project in 1935 that was designed for "shovel ready" projects that could be implemented within 90 days.  In fact, the site had a stamp honoring the WPA involvement (see above), along with the anniversary of the stamp program and the site's own stamp cancellation.



View of the Tuzigoot Ruin from the foot of the structure at the end of the mesa

We explored the village, and the boys made fools of themselves, teetering on the edge of the rebuilt walls and hiding behind corners.  The whole site felt a little antiseptic, as if the NPS had cleaned it all up with a broom.  It really didn't feel much like an ancient site.  The mesa itself was cool, and the size of the interconnecting structure is impressive, but it didn't have the same sense of time that sites like Mesa Verde have.  The Museum in the VC was (in fact) closed, so I did not get a sense of what the site looked like when the WPA arrived, but I'm guessing that the WPA folks were not the most careful archeologists when they were working on the site.




View of Tuzigoot Ruin from the top of the Ruin

As we were preparing to leave the site, we received a text from my daughter in Ohio, who relayed the statement "Don't miss Jerome" from her boyfriend's father.  Jerome is the mining village built on the side of the Mingus Mountains that tower over Tuzigoot.  Since we had plenty of time before our 7:30 pm Easter dinner reservation at Shugruse's in Sedona, we decided to head up to the town we could see perched on the mountainside.

Jerome turned out to be a delight.  It was a rough-n-tumble mining town of 15,000 souls that turned into a virtual ghost town of less than 200 people after the mine closed.  During the 1960's, hippies, bikers and other society drop outs began to arrive in the town, which has now grown into a thriving artist's community that exists off tourism.  We drove up the switchback roads into the town, grabbed a parking space and spent the late afternoon going in and out of shops and enjoying the spectacular views.  We then drove east to Sedona as the sun set behind us, painting the red rock hills in fiery late afternoon hues that dazzled our Midwestern eyes.  We enjoyed our seafood dinners, and then wobbled back to Oak Creek for the night.

We spent Monday hanging out at the pool of the Hilton Sedona resort and then headed into town for some shopping.  However, on Tuesday, we had a Big Day:  the Grand Canyon.  We got the boys up early and hit the road at 7:00 am, driving up Route 89A through the spectaular Oak Creek valley from Sedona to Flagstaff. What a great drive!!

At Flagstaff, we took I-40 west to Arizona 64, which headed north to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon at the main Visitor's Center near Mather Point.  The temperature was in the mid-forties, about 20 degrees cooler than Sedona. We toured the Visitor's Center and the gift shop, and then headed to Mather Point to see what all the fuss is about.  It was a windy day, and there was some haze in the air, but the view was awe-inspiring, especially to my wife, son and Eric. 



My Tusyan Ruin cancellation on the bottom left, squeezed in among some neat red stamps from the Dixie National Forest in Utah from a Stamp Guys trip in 2009 and a nice Sedona stamp from the Coconino National Forest that I got on this trip.





Cancellations for Desert View, Verkamps and Kolb Studio at the Grand Canyon, along with Sunset Crater, Wupatki and Walnut Canyon (which I will describe a little later)





My wife, son and Eric gaze at Cedar Mountain rising from the Painted Desert from the Desert View site



After spending about 20 minutes in the area around the Visitor's Center, we headed east to Desert View, on the edge of the park with views of both the Canyon and the Painted Desert.  We passed numerous viewing points on the way to Desert View, and decided to hit them on the way back.  The most famous part of Desert View is the Watchtower built in 1934 by Mary Colter.  This structure is designed to resemble Native American dwellings from the area (and I would find out later in the week how much it actually does resemble them). We got to Desert View, parked the car, got the stamp and the pin, and headed out to the Watchtower.  The area around the Watchtower is under construction, but the Tower itself is still open.  We took in the great view of Cedar Mountain and the Painted Desert, and then headed into the Tower. 

The first floor of the Tower is a gift shop, but as you ascend a flight of stairs you have a choice: go out onto an open-air porch designed to resemble a kiva, or proceed into a circular room.  We took in the views from the kiva, and then entered the room . . . and Wow!  The interior of the Tower is designed and painted to resemble Native American dwellings.  It was like a mini-Sistine Chapel, with paintings on the ceiling three flights up, and paintings on the walls. It was terrifically cool! We ascended to the top floor, but we could not go onto the roof (even though there was a ladder there, it was closed off with a sign prohibiting any further climb). The day was very windy, and I can understand the reluctance of the NPS to allow people to get blown off the top of the Tower. 

The view that greets you when you go up the steps from the Watchtower gift store.



The ceiling of the Watchtower



We eventually made our way down from the Tower, and then headed over to a cafeteria for a nice, inexpensive lunch prepared by NPS employees.  We then left Desert View and stopped at Tusyan Ruins, our first stop on the way back to the main south rim sites that we had not yet seen.  We were greeted in the Tusyan Museum by a 26 year old female ranger from Wisconsin who (in her regulation NPS green uniform and sporting the flat-brimmed Smokey Bear hat with her jet black hair sneaking out from the sides and the back) was about the cutest human being you can possibly imagine. She told us that she would be leading a guided tour out to the ruins in about 15 minutes, and that we could tour the Museum in the meantime while we waited. She then ooh-ed and ah-ed over my Passport as I got my stamp, further ingraining herself in my good graces.  The Museum was small but very cool:  the walls were covered with various descriptions of the 21st century lives of the Indian tribes of Northern Arizona, while the interior of the museum contained artifacts left by their Indian ancestors who had lived at this site (including a flint spear point that is 12,000 years old).

Our Ranger friend then led a small group of folks on a tour of the ruins. Our tour group included people from Canada, Australia, the Czech Republic (and of course Ohio and Wisconsin).  Our guide did a nice job asking questions to get people to think about the ruins in a 13th Century mindset, and explained the abreviated life spans of the inhabitants (married at 13, dead by their mid-30's). She showed us the remains of houses and kivas.  She explained farming methods and water storage techniques. She also focused on the spirtual aspects of being near the Grand Canyon (where the Indians' creation myth had the ancient ancestors emerging from their underground paradise onto the surface--kind of a similar diaspora from the Garden of Eden in Western theology) and within viewing of the spectacular San Francisco Peaks, hovering directly to the south, 90 miles distant with their snow-capped crowns gleaming in the rapidly clearing air of the day.

We left Tusyan and proceeded to various spectacular South Rim viewing spots such as Navajo Point (with a great view of the nearby Watchtower, rendered tiny by the immensity of the landscape) and Lipan Point, which afforded a view to the west of the mile-long Hance Rapids of the Colorado River. These spots were rapidly filling up as the mist cleared from the air, and we struggled to find parking as we moved farther west.  Finally, we decided to head to the historic Kolb Studio area, where a 2:00 pm Condor Talk was being sponsered by the Park Service.  We parked near the Verkamp Visitor's Center (well, as near as the public can park) and then double-timed our way to the Kolb Studio in order to make the talk on time.



A view of the Desert View Watchtower from Navajo Point.



The Condor Talk featured a 27 year old female Ranger, who (at 5'2") was about two inches shorter than our Tusyan Ranger, but did not fall short of our Cheesehead friend on either knowledge or the cute-as-a-button scale (she wore her long black hair in a ponytail out the back gap of an NPS ball cap).  This Ranger led a spirited 45 minute discussion on the California Condor, and told us how to distinguish the 73 Condors in the park (out of 369 in the world) from ravens and vultures.  She told us that Condors were such magnificent gliders that they could cross the entire ten mile breadth of the Grand Canyon without flapping their wings once. She explained the captive breeding program insituted in the 1990's that brought the condors (reduced to a mere handfull of 20 birds in the world) back from the edge of extinction, and explained how hunting in Northern Arizona was actually a benefit to the Condors (who are scavengers) but only if the hunters can be convinced to switch from lead ammunition to copper-jacketed slugs, lead poisoning being terrifically bad for the eggs of baby condors.

After the presentation, we ducked into the Kolb Studio (where I got yet another stamp and pin!) and enjoyed the exhibits on the amazing Kolb brothers,  who not only produced many of the earliest iconic photographs of the canyon, but also started rafting tours down the Colorado River and established many of the south rim trails.  They also were darn good businessmen, keeping their studio afloat from the early decades of the 20th Century until the Park Service bought the last brother out in the 1970's.

As we emerged from the Kolb Studio, my wife paused to take some pictures of the private gate the Kolbs used to enter the Bright Angel trail. As she adjusted her lense, I gazed at the sky over the Canyon--and spotted a California Condor!!!  I quickly pointed out the gliding bird, who rapidly grew larger as he swept toward the South Rim. The bird turned east just before he flew over our heads, and we had a clear view of his bald head and white underfeathers on his 8 foot wingspan.  We excitedly followed the condor to the east, where he perched on a rock ledge just below the Tonti Hotel site.  The folks from the Condor talk were still milling about, and they had also caught a view of the condor as he wheeled past them.  A fairly large crowd of folks descended on the railings along the rim, gazing in awe at this magnificent creature. Our avian friend basked in the attention of the multitudes, preening and showing off his feathers as he presented them to the westing Sun for warmth on the windy day.

We made our way east toward the Verkamp's Visitors Center, which is in the heart of the historic South Rim tourist district, lodged in a former general store run by a guy called Verkamp. I got my last stamp of the day, along with a Verkamps pin and a Condor pin.  The boys were starting to get a little bored, so we decided to pack it in and drive back to Sedona while we still had light.  We really enjoyed the views of the San Francisco Peaks outside Flagstaff and then the wonderous drive down into the Oak Creek valley on I-17 as the setting sun cast its ruby palette over the Red Rock country.

On Wednesday, we took a jeep tour from Sedona up the dirt Schnebly Hill Road to the top of the Mogollon Rim, ascending 3000 feet as our jeep creeped along the rim of the valley. Our guide was Mario Henry Black Bear, a surly Apache (he prefers to be called a Michi-ta, the Apache word for "the people" because the word "apache" is actually an insult in their language!) with a treasure trove of knowledge about the history, geology, flora & fauna, and animals of the Sedona area.  We enjoyed Mario immensely, but we did cross some of his peculiar social barriers from time to time and had to be scolded (which prompted my determiend wife to scold back, because you shouldn't be scolded for crossing barriers you don't know exist). Talk about the immovable object meeting the irresistable force.

On Thursday, my wife and I awoke early and got ready to go to the Flagstaff area to visit the three national monuments near that alpine town.  However, the boys rolled around in their teenage-boy sleeping stupor and said they would rather sleep than see the sites. My wife decided that she would stay with them and grade some of her fourth graders papers, so I was accorded a day on my own to visit the sites and get some stamps. 

My first stop was Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument, about 25 miles northeast of Flagstaff.  I got to the VC about ten minutes before it opened at 9:00 am, so I visited some nearby waysides and learned that the San Francisco Peaks, which loom over the park, are really the remains of one huge mountain that was a volcano, and are part of the same volcanic field that produced a series of eruptions at Sunset Crater between 1050 and 1200 A.D.  I then went to the VC, which had a full house of tourists.  I was greeted by a middle-aged Native American female Ranger, who watched me stamp my Passport and then whipped out the park brochure and told me where I needed to go.  She instructed me to take various trails and hikes ("I can tell that you'll like them"). She then asked if I planned on visiting Wupatki National Monument, which is actually on the same road that winds thru Sunset Crater. When I told her I was all in, she then instructed me what to visit on the way from Sunset Crater to Wupatki.  I obediantly listened to her instructions and followed them to a "T" and boy, am I glad I did.



From the Cinder Hills Overlook



I drove a short distance from the VC and stopped at the Lenox Crater Trail.  The roadside parking lot for the Trail provided a view of a lava field, where twisted black rocks dominated the landscape, looking like they had been left there yesterday. The Trail was only a quarter mile long, but it basically went straight up a 300 foot incline, and it was made up of spongy gravel similar to sand. If you are a fat flatlander, hiking up a 300 foot incline through soft gravel at 7000 feet of altitude robs you of your breath rather quickly.  However, with a couple of stops to gasp and regain some wind, I eventually made it to the top of the trail, and looked into the Lenox Crater, which is one of the craters created by a lesser explosion of the volcano.  It was enormous, and the entire bowl looked like a paved parking lot, but it was actually smoothed out lava, melted from its originally craggy form by the heat of subsequent eruptions. As I looked around, I spied a beautiful view into the actual main crater of Sunset Crater Volcano, bereft of all foliage, gleaming red in the morning light. 

I returned down the steep path, greeting fellow hikers who were making their way slowly up to the summit, and then drove to the next stop: the Lava Flow Trail. This trail allows you to walk through the Bonita Lava Flow field, which is formed just below the main crater.  It is a simple one mile loop trail, but it leads you through some of the most fantastic landscape I have ever seen.  Twisted formations of dark black lava are everywhere you look. The red, bare hillside of Sunset Crater looms before you, while the snow-capped San Francisco Peaks peer over your shoulder. Some Ponderosa Pine and other hardy desert plants grow, but it is an area dominated by black rock. At the end of the trail, there is an incongrous hillock of red dirt and stone sitting amid the tumbled black lava.  A sign explains that this is the former top of the mountain (the magma cap), blown sky high by the explosion and landed here. Another sign explains that you are walking near the area (the crater itself) that the native Americans of the southwest tribes believe their Kachinas return to the underworld. Wow!

I then climbed back into my car, thrilled by the sites I was seeing.  I drove to the Cinder Hills Overlook, which gives you a great view of the main crater (see picture above).  I then drove out of the Monument and toward Wupatki, admiring the greenery of the alpine country that makes up Sunset Crater before stopping at the Painted Desert Vista, as instructed by the Ranger at the VC.  This stop gives you a view of another lava flow, and beyond it, the greenery abrubtly stops as the Painted Desert begins, and stretches off to the north and east, with large mesas visible in the distance. Did I say Wow and thrilled?  I literally thanked God for letting me see such a gorgeous site.

I then continued on the loop road for about 20 miles, always dropping in altitude and gradually entering the Painted Desert.  I took a right turn at a road marked for the Wahooki Ruins, as instructed by my Ranger, even though I could see the Wupatki Visitor's Center looming about a half mile away down the main road.  I had learned to trust the Sunset Crater Ranger, and she didn't steer me wrong here either.



The Wahooki ruins, from the bottom of the dry wash along its northern side.

The two mile road ended in a small parking lot. As I stepped out of my car, I saw the Ruins: a couple of stacked stone strucutres built on a natural rock outcropping overlooking a broad, deep dry wash.  I walked up to, in and around the ruins with several other tourists. Nothing was off limits.  What a great place!

I then headed back up the road to the Wupatki VC, got my stamps (see above) and a pin, and took in a nice display in the VC museum about the founding of the Monument.  It seems that a Navajo family was occupying the ruins at the time the first NPS Ranger was sent to Wupatki, so he simply moved in with them and became their close friend. He proposed (by letter) to a fellow Ranger, and she moved out from Chicago, and set up housekeeping in the ruin, where their son was born. The son and the youngest male Navajo became friends, and the Navajo eventually became an NPS Ranger at the site. All this text was accompanied by great photos illustrating these 1930's stories.

I then walked out of the modern VC (which is built next to the houses built for the Rangers when they moved out of their accommodations in the Ruins), and beheld the majestic site of a large, excavated village of homes, storage places and kivas, built in stack-stone fashion on a large natural rock outcropping.  Next to the excavation, there was an unexcavated portion of another large home, and then, down in the valley next to the outcropping, a stone-ringed circular area, and farther down the hill a stone-ringed box-shaped area next to a small stone-covered area that looked like a forlorn patio in the middle of nowhere.



The main portion of the Wupatki Ruin.

I followed the trail, using a guidebook I had purchased for $1.00 in the VC.  I learned that the village had been built and expanded over a period of about 30 years, that the circular area farther down the hill was a plaza used for the trading of goods with other tribes and that the box-shaped area was actually a ball field used to play a game similar to street hockey.  Most interestingly, the forlorn patio was the cover for a blowhole, a geologic feature through which the inner reaches of the Earth's crust inhales and exhales, dependent upon the external air pressure and temperature.  These blowholes are fairly rare, and the site of this one may have been determinative in the placement of the Wupatki Village, especially for people who believed that their ancestors originated in life under the Earth's surface.

I then drove to the four remaining ruins in the Monument: Citadel, Box Canyon, Nalakihu and Lomaki, which are farther down the loop road as you near the end of the intersection with Route 89A.  Citadel is a rounded, fort-like strucure, but the rest are similar stack-stone, squarish dwellings.  The neat thing about them is their setting. Lomaki has grasslands surrounding it, and the Painted Desert in the distance beyond; Box Canyon Ruins are two different strucutres, one on each arm of a narrow but deep box canyon that is about two stories tall, with the San Francisco Peaks gleaming in the background.





Box Canyon Ruins





With this gorgeous memory of Wupatki National Monument lingering in my mind, I wheeled the Expedition out onto Route 89A and headed south for Walnut Canyon National Monument, which sits just east of Flagstaff.  I arrived there at approximately 1:30 pm, and the wind was howling as I approached the VC. I got my stamp (see above) and pin.  Yet another female Native American Ranger greeted me (this Ranger being a bit more willowy than the round-faced lady who guided me so well at Sunset Crater) and told me about the tour:  285 steps down to the ruins in the midpoint of the 600 foot deep canyon, 285 steps back up; take a full 45 minutes; don't rush; drink water; and please don't have a heart attack. And, oh yeah; have fun!



Please see the "windows" that help locate the structures in the yellow limestone layer of rock about half-way down the steep wall of Walnut Canyon



I then walked out of the VC, into the wind, and began my descent.  The wind quickly abated as I went farther down the stairs; the Canyon is very steep and very narrow. Unfortuantely, the creek that formed the Canyon no longer flows through it; the City of Flagstaff dammed it in 1906 to create a reservior. Because of this action, the Canyon is drier today than it was in the 12th and 13th centuries, and when it was named "Walnut Canyon" for the black walnut trees that proliferated there in the 19th century.  Without the riverine environment, there are very few black walnut trees left in Walnut Canyon.  Happily, however, there are many majestic old growth Douglas Firs that were not harvested because of the difficult topography of the Canyon. 

I eventually made it to the bottom of the steps, which is about halfway down the cliff into the Canyon.  There, I was greeted by a NPS volunteer Ranger, a woman from New York in her sixties who had recently retired to the Flagstaff area. She was very nice and informative (witness my knowledge of the lack of black walnut trees).  She escorted me as I walked along the ruins, which were built in the areas below the hard stone layers where the soft limestone eroded, leaving a nice hard roof overhang and a naturally dug out cave-like structure that runs horizontially along the cliff. 

There was very little space between the dwellings and the edge of the cliff, so the Indians built some retaining walls to help keep people and animals from tumbling 300 feet down a sheer rock cliff into a raging stream.  The volunteer Ranger explained that the Indians grew their crops on the flat tableland surrounding the Canyon, and fished in the creek below.  All I have to say is that they led a very tough life.  They did not have a nice set of concrete stairs with a metal railing to guide their access and egress to their homes.  I cannot imagine raising children on the lip of a 300 foor cliff.  They must have faced some fearsome predators on the surface above to be willing to endure these dangers in the Canyon.

I then returned to Sedona, where we had a nice dinner at the M Diamond Ranch (after a horseback ride), where we watched a beautiful desert sunset. We climbed Bell Mountain on Friday and then returned to Ohio on Saturday.

Bucket List/ Little Rock

For me, it's all about the "bucket list." Lots of battlefields to scratch off  before I'm face-to-face with Warren, Duryea, Collis & Hawkins. I gotta have my questions ready. If an American soldier spilled blood there, I want to visit. It may be a parking lot, as it was at Franklin. It may be an undisturbed and pristine piece of property, as was the case at Monroe's Cross Roads. Then there are the places I want to revisit such as Sanders Field, the "Vortex of Hell" and Fredericksburg's "Slaughter Pen." The reasons here are obvious.

Pete Zuhars, Stamp Guys' unofficial travel agent, has put together a package which will shorten my list greatly. The itinerary is amazing! He has procliamed it the "Civil Wargasm Tour"  and I understand why. WOW! I have never visited a Trans-MS battlefield and the heavyweights -- Pea Ridge, Wilson's Creek & Prairie Grove -- headline a card worthy of pay-per-view prices. If we only visited the Big 3, the trip would be spectacular. But Pete has also included the Arkansas portion of the Red River Campaign, known to history as the Camden Expedition. I'm guessing not many people, outside of Arkansas, visit Jenkins' Ferry, Marks' Mill, Poison Spring, Prairie De'Ann or Okolona/Elkins' Ferry. Time allowing, we will visit them all, except Prairie De'Ann which is entirely in private hands. Then there is also Fort Smith, Arkansas Post, Corydon (the only battlefield of Morgan's Indiana/Ohio Raid which I haven't walked) and Vincennes. Did I already say WOW!?

All this said, the highlight of the tour for me will be Little Rock's Central High School, now part of the National Park System. After reading this, my friends are tilting their heads like the RCA dog. Where is Mike and what have you done with him pal? When it comes to history, I'm all about campaign studies, regimentals & bios. I have very little use for the political, socio-economic side of things. Now I'm OK with that being your bag. It's just not mine. But this is different.

Most of you know the story of the "Little Rock 9," who intergrated Central High School on 24 Septemer 1957. This was 3 years after the U. S. Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education case, which ruled segregated schools unconstituional.  Nine students, 3 boys and 6 girls, were registered to attend Little Rock Central High. On 4 September 1957, Governor Orval Faubus ordered the Arkansas National Guard to block the entrances. Do not allow the 9 to enter! Woodrow Mann, the mayor of Little Rock asked President Eisenhoher to intervene. Let's see the bet was the Arkansas National Guard. Ike raised, ordered the 101st Airborne to Little Rock and federalized the Arkansas National Guard. Faubus folded and the "Little Rock 9" started school 25 Sepember 1957.

Attached to the 101st Airborne, for this mission, was a group of US Air Force Air Policemen, now called Security Police, the equivalent to the Army MPs and the Navy SPs. My father was one of the APs at Little Rock.

Melba Pattillo Beals, one of the 9, wrote the following in "Warriors Don't Cry:"

"Principal Jess Mathews greeted us with a forced smile on his face and directed us to our classrooms. It was then that I saw the other group of soldiers. They were wearing a different uniform from the combat soldiers outside, but they carried the same hardware and had the same placid expressions. As the nine of us turned to go our separate ways, one by one a soldier followed each of us."

My father, like most soldiers, talked very little about his work, sometimes only a post-traumatic outburst. Re: Little Rock he told my mother about a young girl and how he didn't understand the insults hurled her way. "All she wanted was an education," was all he said.

Was he talking about Melba? Or was it Elizabeth, Gloria, Carlotta, Minnijean or Thelma? I may never know. But I gotta walk those grounds ....

Chickamauga Study Group Trip 2011: Chattanooga, North Georgia and Knoxville

Five of the Stamp Guys got together for one of our traditional Civil War battlefield trips: the Chickamauga Study Group.  Various permutations of our group have been going on this trip for the past five years.  It involves an intensive two day study on specific aspects of the battle and campaign of Chickamauga (September 18-20, 1863), with the first day involving a bus trip to sites outside the Chickamauga Battlefield Park and the second day involving a walking tour in the Park.  The tours are led by Chief Historian Jim Ogden and author Dave Powell. 

This year's trip was special because Stamp Guy Dave was able to make his first trip with the group since we started writing the blog.  Tim, Pete, Mike and I (Jamie) finished out the quintet; only Brian had to miss out (he had an exam in one of his college classes on the following Monday, March 14).  We met at Brian's house in Grove City, Ohio on Thursday afternoon, left a couple of cars in his driveway to remind him on what he was missing, and then piled into my 2008 Lincoln MKX for the trip.  Dave has wicked motion sickness, so he prefers to drive, which works fine with the rest of us (especially because Dave gets us from Point A to Point B faster than the average bear-aided by his latest radar detection device). 

We drove south from Columbus and into Kentucky on Route 71, and then the rain started, and we faced a small hurdle.  I had left the MKX at Thrifty Airport Parking on a business trip earlier in the week and had Thrifty wash the exterior and clean the interior of the car for our trip. Unfortuantely, the wash job must have removed a cap that went over the driver's side windshield wiper, and the wiper began to slowly work its way out of the bracket.  We stopped once to get gas and push it back down, but as the rain intensified and the wipers worked harder, the problem returned quickly.  We exited the freeway and went to a Meijers (the same store where I had purchased the Rain-X blade in Columbus), and purchased a replacement. Then, five college-educated males struggled to figure out the cryptic directions for about 10 minutes before Tim and Dave finally got things sorted out and the new wiper attached.  Oh Brian, we miss you already (he once changed a tire on a rental car in the gravel parking lot of an abandoned church near the WarBonnet Creek Battlefield in Nebraska in about the same time it tooks the five of us to replace a windshield wiper).  Wipergate (as Dave christened it) had cost us some time, but at least we finally conquered the Beast!!

We then drove into the mountains of southern Kentucky and northern Tennessee, with the rain turning to sleet and then the sleet turning into snow.  The temperature gauge kept dropping from 41 to 39 and then finally to 33, where it hovered precariously above freezing until we began to descend as we approached Knoxville.  Dave battled some intense truck traffic around Knoxville, and then we made a smooth run down to Chattanooga as darkness descended, debating Ohio Senate Bill 5 and its effect on firefighters like Tim. We exited the freeway just after we crossed into Georgia, stopped for some gas and beer at a Kangaroo gas station, and then checked into the familiar Best Western hotel on Rossville Road in Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, just north of the Chickamauga Battlefield Park.  After emptying the car and digesting a pop or two, we headed out to the Bi-Lo grocery to buy sandwich materials for the morrow (the bus tour would not be stopping at a place where lunch was available to be purchased).  At both the Bi-Lo and then a later stop at Walgreens to get Dave some motion sickness medicine for the bus ride, Pete showed his Rain Man colors.  We checked out and paid at the cashier, walked into the parking lot and discovered that Pete somehow was not with us.  Peter was absorbed in studying various local beers both times, and then had to break his autistic trance and catch up with us before we left.

We wanted to go to one of our old Fort Oglethorpe favorites for dinner, but Tony's Italian Restaurant had turned into a title bureau, so we opted for El Matador next door.  The establishment had Dos Equis on tap, and we ordered a couple of pitchers. The walls were covered with murals (some quaint village scenes and one sexy flamenco dancer who sparked comments about the unlikelihood of anyone having a bare mid-driff that thin from our still-in-character Rain Man). Four of us ordered standard Mexican fare: chimichangas, pollo loco etc.  Dave (from a desire to have some vegtables) ordered stir fry.  Four of us ate with mucho gusto, and Dave picked at his Mexi-nese concoction with utter disgust.

We then headed back across Rossville Road to our hotel, where we awakened our friend Ken Ramsey from Columbus (we really only wanted to find out if he had made it to town, but the linquistically-challenged young Indian boy at the desk interpreted our inquiry as a reason to call and wake Ken up), and then retired to Pete & Mike's room for an evening cocktail.  And then, Tim dropped the Bomb that started the weekend's festivities.

Pete had brought a couple of dvd's to watch, including a documentary on America's role in the Great War. Tim, feeling his Wheaties from the beer and the whiskey (Russell's Reserve 6 year old rye bourbon)  & soda that Dave had shoved into his paw, commented that he wanted to see the documentary because he was interested to know what, if anything, America had actually done in WWI. If this statement wasn't provocative enough, the inebriated paramedic (undoubtedly feeling a little beat up from Dave and my earlier comments to him about Senate Bill 5), cranked out the explosive declaration that "America didn't even fight in WWI or WWII."  Game on.

After about 15 minutes of 4 on 1 pummelling, we received a call from the front desk. The young Indian boy told me that there were complaints about the loud shouting emanating from our room. Dave, Tim and I returned to our room and continued the debate, in a more sotto voce context without the enraged Rain Man. Tim eventually backed down (but not off) his point, and we hit the covers to get some sleep.

On Friday morning, Dave, Mike, Tim and I headed to the I-Hop for breakfast while Pete stayed at the Best Western to check the stitching on his truss.  Mike was the butt of jokes for ordering dessert for breakfast (chocolate pancakes festooned with whip cream), and Tim continued to receive his well-deserved share of abuse.  After breakfast, we whisked back to the hotel, picked up Pete and headed to the Park Visitor's Center, where the bus was waiting in the lower parking lot, along with a group of about 40 people.  We greeted Jim Ogden and Dave Powell, and said hello to some of the other regulars of the Study Group, threw our cooler with our lunch materials (and several cans of Yuengling)  into the boot of the bus and climbed aboard.  I sat with Tim; while Dave, Pete and Mike sat around each other farther back in the bus.

The bus headed south out of the Park and followed the historic route of the Lafayette Road to Lafayette, Georgia, while Jim Ogden narrated the background to the McLemore's Cove operation that preceded the Battle of Chickamauga in his strong voice with a stacatto-inflected delivery.  Jim used to be very straight & narrow in his tour descriptions, but he has loosened up over the years and has added quite a bit of humor (mostly of the wry, ironic sort).  As Dave pointed out, Jim has begun to channel his inner Ed Bearss.  If you have a chance to take a tour with Mr. Ogden, don't miss it.



From Lafayette (Braxton Bragg's headquarters), we followed the route of Confederate troops as they approached McLemore's Cove from the east.  Jim showed us Werthen's Gap (where Thomas Hindman's Division crossed Pigeon Mountain into the Cove) from a parking lot at the beginning of the road leading into the Gap, and explained that there is a Georgia State Prison on the road and that the prison guards will not let a car stop there to view the Gap.  We then headed to the south end of Pigeon Mountain.  The "mountains" in this part of the world are actually long ridges. Lookout Mountain runs in a NE-SW direction for 86 miles from the Tennessee River overlooking Chattanooga.  Pigeon Mountain parallels Lookout Mountain to the east, and forms a pocket when it merges into Lookout Mountain (kind of like the thumb and forefinger of your left hand); the pocket is McLemore's Cove.  To add confusion, yet another low range runs down the middle of the Cove, bisecting it into an eastern Cove and western Cove.  This range is actually the continuation of another famous Chattanooga landmark: Missionary Ridge. As we reached the southern end of Pigeon Mountain, Jim directed the bus west, where we were confronted by the daunting size of the Mountain that confronted DH Hill's troops as they tried to cross at Blue Bell Gap (where Pat Cleburne's division crossed in a single-file line thru the high, obstructed defile); and then we headed north to a more friendly gap with a road where the rest of Hill's troops (and our bus) crossed.





We then proceeded west past Davis Crossroads, over Missionary Ridge and into the western Cove.  We hit a road near a nature preserve and turned south, and then stopped the bus and got out.  We emerged into a tranquil valley, with Missionary Ridge looming behind us and the high, towering face of Lookout Mountain before us.  The face of the mountain showed no break, but Jim assured us that we were staring at Steven's Gap, where Thomas Negley's Division of the 14th Army Corps crossed the Mountain and descended into the western Cove.  Jim expertly described the difficulty of ascending and descending mountains for Civil War armies; described the technigues used (double teaming the guns, lining men along the entire route to help man-handle the guns up & down, etc.), time alloted (8 hours to ascend or descend per division) and the logistics required to get the federal Army of the Cumberland across a barrier such as Lookout Mountain.  But honestly, as interesting and insightful as Jim was, I kept fading out and simply absorbing the majesty  of the site: a beautiful rural valley, with a large farm (with cattle lowing) stood below our feet; the looming Mountain protruded upward before us, covered with desiduous trees bereft of their foliage; the sun crossing the light blue sky, warming us in our light jackets as we have not been warmed for over four months; big birds gliding on the air currents rising from the warming valley floor. I whispered to Dave about the setting, and found that he was in the same place as me. I have seen some amazing sights in the American West, and I hope to see many more (especially this summer in the Sierra Nevadas in July), but I have to say that the Appalachian Range in the Eastern United States has charms of its own, like a 40 year old woman who dresses perfectly, speaks intelligently and oozes knowing warmth.



The western face of Lookout Mountain at Steven's Gap (really!) from McLemore's Cove





We eventually trundled back into the bus and headed back to the Davis homestead at Davis Crossroads in the eastern Cove and the sight of Negley's advance when he moved out from the foot of Steven's Gap. Jim described the "battle action" at this site.  It is important to note that virtually n 

Stamp Guy Mike, drooling over an original edition of a Civil War Atlas

o fighting actually ever occurred in McLemore's Cove.  It is really one of those great "what ifs" that arose under the Lost Cause school of history.  The CSA forces undoubtedly had a chance to attack a couple of Union divisions who were stranded and on their own.  Of course, this has been re-interpreted through Southern History to be one of those events that just could have turned the tide of the Civil War back in favor of the South.  After Jim's talk, we cranked out the lunches and had the pleasure of touring the unique and interesting Davis Homestead, which has been turned into a public park at the bequest of its recently-deceased owner.  The owner was a voracious collector of many different things, including Coca-Cola memorabilia (including an advertisement featuring Stonewall Jackson and the "pause that refreshes" recounting Jackson's marching orders that allowed 10 minutes of rest each hour), rare & original pressings of books, outhouses, and vintage cars.  He also restored the Davis house in a grand style.  The stop was very surprising and memorable.

Who knew Stonewall Jackson was a shill for Co-cola?

Unfortunately, the afternoon tour was pretty much a dud.  Nothing really happened in McLemore's Cove because Hindman and D.H Hill lapsed into fits of lethargy & fear, and Braxton Bragg refused to intercede to get them moving.  We pottered around to a couple of more sites, but there really wasn't much to talk about. Finally, I got bored and started bringing out my provactive nature, and I challenged Jim and Dave Powell about this whole belief that some great chance was missed in McLemore's Cove. Sure, two Union divisions were isolated and could have been beaten up, but they would have put up a good fight and would have wrecked at least an equal number of CSA formations, and they would not have been wiped out or captured in toto because that simply never actually happened in the Civil War. At first, Dave disagreed with me, but as I pressed my point, Jim and then Dave both picked up on the thread of my thought and gave a more balanced picture of what might have REALLY happened if the CSA forces actually attacked. Frankly, I think they would have probably been fought to standstill. 

We headed back to the Park in the bus, snoozing in the warm sun with a beer in the belly, and then headed back to our hotel. After getting refreshed, we headed to two liquor stores in Chattanooga that we have visited on previous Study Group trips to check out any new bourbon or Canadian vintages.  I bought an interesting rye bourbon called Hudson Manhatten Rye Whiskey and Old Weller, and Dave bought a Canadian called "Texas Crown" which is undoubtedly a trademark lawsuit waiting to happen.  We then headed east across Chattanooga to a large mall that had a Sticky Fingers rib restuarant that Pete had spied from the freeway on the way down. We enjoyed some Yuengling on tap at the bar as we waited for our table, and then sat in a booth. Most of us ordered various versions of the spare ribs, and we enjoyed the food and the companionship immensely. At one point, Tim spouted off another doozy about how open & honest he was being, and then said (looking directly across the table at Mike) "I have opened my raincoat to you"  accompanied by hand gestures worthy of a creepy flasher.  Mike laughed so hard that he was crying, and begged Tim to stop so he could catch his breath. We all howled with mirth.  As you can probably guess, "open the raincoat" became another watch-word for the rest of the trip.

We returned to Fort Oglethorpe and our hotel and tried to watch Pete's WWI dvd, but the monotone narration from David Carradine (an odd choice for a narrator, don't you think?) soon had Dave and then me snoring.  The rest of the boys packed up shop and hit the hay for the night soon thereafter.

On Saturday morning, the same quartet headed back to the I-Hop for breakfast while Pete oiled up his truss.  We returned and picked up Pete, and headed back to the Park.  This time, we had a briefing in the VC with Jim Ogden and Dave Powell that laid the basis for the morning's tour: the Viniard Field fight on September 19.  Pete and I discovered that the Park had a whole basket full of stamps, and we eagerly brought in our Passports in the afternoon and got the cancellations (see below). I particularly like the 25 year Anniversary of the Stamp Program cancellation. We have been to all of these locations at one time or another on our many trips to the park, so we felt it was legitimate to get the stamps.



Jim Ogden (left) and Dave Powell, deployed and firing

 We then headed out to Viniard Field. This was the part of the tour that I had been most excited to attend. The Viniard Field fight is one of those rollicking fights by the 1863 vintage armies where one brigade charges into a field, knocks out the enemy brigade that had just won the field, and then promptly gets pasted by the  new brigade that rolls in.  Think of the Wheatfield at Gettysburg, and you'll have a fair doppelganger for the Viniard Field fight. I think these fights only happened in 1863 because the armies were still mainly filled out by idealistic volunteers, but those volunteers had been honed into fine soldiers by the trials of 1861 and 1862.  After 1863, the armies became more dependent on conscripts, garrsion troops, former artillery regiments from fixed fortifications etc. and lost both the elan and the skill of the 1863 armies.  The 1864 & 1865 armies could fight, but more like lumbering heavy weights than spry welterweights (Larry Holmes instead of Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini; Lennox Lewis versus Tommy "Hit Man" Hearns).



Jim and Dave brought a nice collection of maps as handouts (from Dave's excellent Maps of Chickamauga study) and large map boards that Jim uses when he gives tours to Army officers. We started along the south side of West Viniard Field (the portion of the field west of the Lafayette Road) and our guides explained the placement of John Wilder's Union Lightning Brigade in the Viniard Field on the night of September 19, and Wilder's clever positioning of the brigade on the morning of the 20th to take advantage of the enormous fire power of his Brigade's seven shot repeating rifles. We then crossed the road to East Viniard Field and found the initial position of the regiments of the two brigades of Jefferson Davis' Union Division, with plenty of detail about the peculiar circumstances of a couple of the regiments that led General Davis to deprive one of his brigades (Carlin's) of two of its regiments.  Jim also pointed out that East Viniard Field is smaller today than it was in 1863, when it continued east beyond the present eastern woodline up and over the high ground on the other side of a stream that defines the eastern edge of the field today. After describing the deployment of Hans Heg's USA Brigade in the woods north of the field, we then walked south along the Lafayette Road to the monument for the 3rd Wisconsin Battery, which (accompanied by four Napoleons) stands awkwardly in the middle of a woods. Jim showed us how this area had been another open portion of the Viniard Field in 1863, and then walked us to a piece of high ground that marked the Battery's forward position.  Jim pointed out a further rise farther north and east of this spot, which was the high ground in this field in 1863, but is now just a vague rise because of the growth of trees and undergrowth.

A cornucopia of cancellations

This portion of the tour highlights one of the peculiar problems actually caused by the National Park Service running the Military and Battlefield Parks.  The instinct of NPS administrators is to protect the natural flora and fauna of their Parks, which certainly works great in the nature Parks like Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Great Smokies.  However, Civil War Battlefield Parks can become meaningless pieces of gibberish if fields that were open on the Day of Battle are allowed to become wilderness.  The NPS has started to make reforms in this area, and the clearing of the fields west and south of Little Round Top and Cemetary Ridge at Gettysburg are dramatic examples of the effect of tree-clearing practices.  The Deep Cut Field at Second Manassas has been cleared, and now perhaps the brilliant and enormous attack crafted there by Fitz-John Porter can regain some of the luster it held during and shortly after the war. Until the recent clearing,  no visitor to the Manassas Battlefield Park could possibly get a sense of the size and breadth of the attack (three brigades wide, seven lines deep-Emory Upton's May 11 attack at Spotsylvania increased by a factor of six) . Even Chickamauga has done a good job in the Kelly Field area to rip out the invasive Chinese Privit and clear the trees so we can begin to see some portions of the battlefield the way the soldiers saw the field in 1863.  However, the Park MUST clear this southern portion of the Viniard Field. I have taken seven tours of Chickamauga over the last 25 years, and until this moment I had no idea that this wooded tract was actually an open field in 1863. It completely changes the interpretation of the attack & defense of Viniard Field; Buckner's paranoia at advancing becomes more cognizable when you understand he had an open field dominated by a Union battery on a hilltop off his southern flank.  The failure of Trigg to advance into east Viniard Field, but instead to detour north into the woods to support Robertson and Benning in their fight with Hans Heg, begins to make some sense. 


 Jim and Dave then brought us back to East Viniard Field where they described the overlapping and interminable attacks & counterattacks, including the ill-fated advance of Sidney Barnes' Union brigade that was smashed by Trigg's CSA forces when a Union staff officer redirected troops away from Barnes flank (without telling Barnes). We then moved back over to West Viniard Field and crossed the ditch on a footbridge (which was a good thing because the water was deep from the recent rains) and heard about the CSA attacks that drove the federal forces back into this Field, where Wilder's defensive power stopped the CSA forces cold.  Jim than entertained us with a long and detailed story about the "Make Way for Sheridan" story that is a familiar part of the tale of this portion of the fight, and updated us on some great post-War stories of how the guys from Wilder's Brigade would rib their fellow Hossier and Illini brethern who had served in Bradley's Brigade of Sheridan's Division in the famous advance (and infamous retreat).  I am being a little vague because I don't want to steal Jim's thunder; it's a great story that he tells with verve and gusto, and you neeed to hear it from him.




Stamp Guy Mike (left), "working the crowd"


Unfortunately, that brought us to lunch and a return to the VC.  We lamented the fact that we had dawdled away time on the previous afternoon, and now we didn't have enough time to finish the Viniard Field fight (we never even made it to Wilder's defensive line or Eli Lilly's battery position). Alas, if Civil War tour guides had the time management skills of corporate lawyers, what a beautiful world it would be!

We grabbed lunch at a Subway in Fort O and then returned to the VC for the afternoon's tour: Major John Mendenhall's patchwork artillery line that briefly confronted the CSA infantry after the Breakthrough.  I was interested in this topic, because you always see those batteries and monuments up on the Dyer Field hill but you usually don't visit them on a standard tour. I wanted to know how Mendenhall worked his magic to gather these batteries from many different commands in so short a period of time.  And I wanted to see how the CSA infantry ever managed to roll up the line of 24 cannons staring down at them from a commanding ridge.

I learned the answers to all my questions, but frankly I could have gotten the information in one hour rather than four hours. We started the afternoon by traveling to a parking area behind Dyer Field, and then walking over to a hill that overlooked the Park maintenance complex. Jim explained that this was the site Absalom Baird's Union Division held in the morning of September 20 before deploying forward to the main line of resisitence along the Lafayette Road, which started the domino-like cascade of moves that eventually ended in Thomas Wood moving his division out of the line and leaving a huge gap for James Longstreet to exploit with his well-timed & directed attack. But nothing actually happened on this hilltop where we were standing.  We then walked back toward where we had left our cars and ascended the hill where the marker for Rosecrans' headquarters sits, and then proceeded to receive a VERY basic explanation of the breakthrough. Perhaps Jim and Dave felt that they needed to dumb-down the presentation because there were a number of Community College students along on the tour (but this had never seemed to phase Jim and Dave before). Or, more likely, they felt the need to expound at length on such topics because Mendenhall's Line would not fill the full four hours.

After a very long time, we left the Rosecrans HQ site and walked across the Dyer Field to an area between Mendenhall's gun line and the Breakthrough point.  Once again, Jim got deeply involved in some very basic stuff as he transformed most of the group into reenanctors and made them do evolutions from marching columns into battle lines (all to explain how Charles Harker's Brigade marched north on the Glenn-Kelly Road and out of the way of the fight on this part of the field!). Finally, we walked up the hillside and stood among Mendenhall's line and got a first class description of how the line was formed, the effect if had on the battle, and how Suggs' Alabamians approached the south end of the gun line under the cover of dust and smoke to get close enough to knock off the horses of the battery on the end of the line, and then rolled up the whole line. As with everything Jim and Dave do together, it was a powerful description of tactics, poignant human interst stories (including a great story about Thaddeus Stevens' 21 year old nephew who died on this ridge) and analysis of command decsions. 



Looking north along the crest of Orchard Knob



As we headed back to the car after the tour, we decided to take advantage of the beautiful sunny day and try to take in some Chattanooga sights. Tim had never been to Orchard Knob or the National Cemetary before, so we headed into town to see what we could before the sun set.  We managed to make it to Orchard Knob, which is simply one of the most stunning Civil War sites I have ever seen.  The hilltop sits in the middle of a modest inner city residential neighborhood, but it is quite literally covered with a multitude of incredible monuments and artillery pieces.  When you climb  to its summit,  you survey all of the plain of Chattanooga, from Lookout Mountain to Missionary Ridge, and get a good feel for the series of attacks on the Ridge that emanated from this point. The sun was beginning to set, but we still managed to get some great pictures, review most of the monuments and enjoy the view of Missionary Ridge.  Many Civil War buffs are afraid to visit Orchard Knob because they have heard that it's in a bad and dangerous neighborhood.  Don't be afraid.  The neighborhood is not Beverly Hills, but it's not Mogadishu either.  This is a gorgeous "can't miss" site when you go to Chattanooga.



Sunset over Lookout Mountain from Orchard Knob





Five happy Stamp Guys enjoy a good laugh on Tim (can you figure out why?)


  The national cemetary was closed by the time we drove past, so we'll have to show Tim the monument to the soldiers who died in the Great Train Robbery next time we're in town.  It's a classic.  We headed back to the hotel, and then out for dinner at Logan's Roadhouse in Fort O.  We discussed what to do on future trips (a consensus was reached to skip the Study Group in 2012 and go to Shiloh), and then headed back to the room for a nice night's sleep.

On Sunday, we awoke early and headed out. Well, not quite so early becuase Dave, Tim and I slept through the alarm we forgot to set and didn't wake up until Pete banged on the door at 7. We grabbed a quick continental breakfast and then got on the road, with the intention to visit Knoxville's Civil War sites on the way home.  We made good time and got to Knoxville around Noon, and followed the signs to the National Cemetary.  The Cemetary had good signage on the freeway, and you can actually see the headstones from the freeway; however, after you exit, the signage disappears and we basically had to feel our way around a warehouse district until we found the site.  The Cemetary has a great monument to the Union volunteers from Tennessee (over 31,000 men), and many burials from the 1860's to the present,  including headstones for entire air crews lost during the Second World War (which none of us had ever seen before).  We found a whole section of burials of soldiers fromt he 79th New York Highlanders, most of whom died in Longstreet's failed attack at Fort Sanders in late November 1864.



79th NY Monument





What the heck? Stamp Guy confusion at Fort Sanders.

 We then decided to try to find the Fort Sanders site.  We had access to a driving tour created by the Knoxville Civil War Roundtable, and we used it to drive into the business district, past the impressive football stadium for the University of Tennessee, and then up a slight rise to a hilltop dominated by the Fort Sanders Hospital complex.  There was a United Daughter of the Confederacy monument and several roadside tablets, but the tablets and monument contained contradictory information about where the fort actually stood. Clearly, one or all of them have been moved to accomodate modern development.  We then swung around to the other side of the hospital complex and found a mounment to the 79th New York Highlanders in a plaza in front of a Scottish Rite Masonic Lodge. The monument is one of those "re-unification" monuments showing a Union and Rebel soldier shaking hands, and containing flowery language on the need to bind up the wounds of the nation etc.  It was very difficult for us to decipher where the fort actually stood, and where the NorthWest bastion (where Lafayette McLaws attack came to a bloody disaster) would have been.  The Highlanders apparently defended the bastion, but their monument was a couple of full city blocks away from the UDC monument that said it stands on the site of the NW bastion.

Dave suggested that we try to find the City Visitor's Center, and maybe get a better sense of the size, shape and actual location of Fort Sanders from the sources there.  So we headed back into the business district, and then tried to follow the signs to the Visitor's Bureau, but the signage was pathetically bad and we eventually just found it by wandering around.  Dave parked illegally and we headed in, where we were greeted by a young woman with quiet Southern Charm. She didn't know much about Fort Sanders as a fort, but she actually lived on the hilltop. She accessed some computer sources and helped us to determine where the fort actually stood during the War.  Then, I made the mistake of asking her if she could direct us to Fort Dickerson, which is a preserved Civil War earthen fort mentioned in our driving tour. She actually rolled her eyes as she dove back into her computer, but I then explained that we had a map and only needed help to navigate a detour around a bridge that was closed for construction.  I guess Southern Charm has its limits when it's confronted with Stamp Guy inquiries.




Stamp Guy Dave, the Original Iconoclast


Dave drove us south out of the business district and across the river, and then we saw several large, conical hills.  Dave remembered the site, and picked a road winding up the side of one of the hlls, and we found (upon reaching the top) a large parking area surrounded by signage about Fort Dickerson.  The Fort was  the scene of some light skirmishing when Joe Wheeler's Cavalry tried to slip into Knoxville from the south as Longstreet advanced, and we found out why as we explored the site.  The fort is absolutely impregnable on its hilltop site; the slope of the hill has to be close to forty degrees.  And it's a tall hill.   The fort was designed by that intrepid engineer, Orlando Poe.

The fort itself is your typical earthen Civil War fort, slowly being eroded by wind and rain. Embrasures have been worn down into soft crescents, and the powder magazine is now just a depession in the ground. However, the site has signage marking each of the spots, and many waysides explaining how the fort was designed, built, staffed and used, and how the limited battle action at the fort was carried out.  It is a worthwhile stop for any history-minded person traveling through Knoxville, and it has beautiful views of town and the surrounding countryside.

Our last stop in Knoxville was Bleak House, a ante-bellum mansion that served as Longstreet's headquarters for the assualt on Fort Sanders.  The house was not open for interior tours on a Sunday, but it had several cool exhibits outside (including a grave to a CSA spy and anold anchor that entranced Tim), and some nice signage describing the sparring between CSA sharpshooters armed with Whitworth rifles in a tower of Bleak House and the federal cannoneers on the Union line.  After an incredible shot from a cannon hit the tower of Bleak House and killed seven of the sharpshooters, the Rebs exacted their revenge by killing General Sanders, the only general officer casualty of the Battle (and the person for whom the Fort was renamed).

We then headed out of town, stopped for a quick lunch, and made tracks back to Brian's house in Grove City as the Ohio State Buckeyes beat Penn State in the Big Ten Basketball Tournament final. It was great having a trip with five of the Stamp Guys together again; maybe we can get the elusive six-man troop assembled again soon.



A recoverd anchor at the Bleak House



The Stamp Guys enjoy a cold one at the bar of Logan's Roadhouse in Fort O