A Visual and Verbal Narrative of Arizona's Salt River
November 11, 2024 – The Phoenix-area canals are literally artificial rivers that carry the Salt’s vital water to valley communities. It should be no surprise, then, the canals are much more than a water delivery system. They are an integral part of the communities they water. In addition to water, they provide transportation corridors, recreational …
September 19, 2024 — I cast the orange-and-black fly under the grassy bank and immediately a fish darted out and grabbed it. The fight was on in the small stream, but I soon reeled the fish into my net. It was an Apache trout. Finally! I had fished hard for several days on the West …
December 15, 2023 – It has been almost a year since I started my exploration of the Salt River. And one task I wanted to accomplish before the year ended was to catch a Sonora sucker, something I had failed to do when this journey started in January. I nicknamed the Sonora sucker the “Bronze …
November 12, 2023 – As I kept exploring and researching the Salt River, new places to visit continued to reveal themselves, sometimes in surprising ways. One of these sites, the Tres Rio Wetlands, popped up on my computer one day, and I made a trip to visit it along with a few other places on …
November 7, 2023 – Although I had previously visited the beginning of the Salt River where the Black and White Rivers meet on the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation, I wanted to see the very highest headwaters, too. With that in mind, Leslie and I headed up to Springerville, Arizona, to visit the Black River …
October 5, 2023 – I broke camp at Apache Lake and made a spontaneous decision to visit the upper reaches of Roosevelt Lake. I was curious to see the last of the free-flowing Salt River before it emptied into Roosevelt. I retraced my path over the Apache Trail and then headed east on Arizona State …
October 4, 2023 – There was still one lake I needed to visit, Apache Lake, so I carved out a few days to explore it and cross it off my list of places on the Salt River. Apache Lake is located between Canyon Lake and Roosevelt Lake. It is formed by Horse Mesa Dam and …
August 20, 2023 – In 1868 Phillip Duppa predicted that from an obscure settlement in the Salt River Valley “a new city will spring phoenix-like upon the ruins of a former civilization.” Duppa was, of course, referring to what is now known as Phoenix, Arizona, and he is credited with giving it its name. No …
August 10, 2023 – For the past eight months I have been exploring up and down the length of the Salt River in southcentral Arizona. I have seen firsthand the wondrous natural beauty of the entire river as well as the impressive human-made structures that have been constructed along its length. Without question, these human-made …
July 26, 2023 – With temperatures soaring past 110 °F in the Salt River Valley the past month, it has been too hot to do any exploring. I felt it was wiser to work indoors on the stack of research materials that are piling up in my office and wait for cooler weather. And then …