Last Water on the Devil's Highway
304 pages, 8 1/2 x 11
5 color photos, 177 black and white photos, 6 tabl
Paperback
Release Date:06 Feb 2014
ISBN:9780816530830
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Last Water on the Devil's Highway

A Cultural and Natural History of Tinajas Altas

SERIES:
The University of Arizona Press
The Devil’s Highway—El Camino del Diablo—crosses hundreds of miles and thousands of years of Arizona and Southwest history. This heritage trail follows a torturous route along the U.S. Mexico border through a lonely landscape of cactus, desert flats, drifting sand dunes, ancient lava flows, and searing summer heat. The most famous waterhole along the way is Tinajas Altas, or High Tanks, a series of natural rock basins that are among the few reliable sources of water in this notoriously parched region.

Now an expert cast of authors describes, narrates, and explains the human and natural history of this special place in a thorough and readable account. Addressing the latest archaeological and historical findings, they reveal why Tinajas Altas was so important and how it related to other waterholes in the arid borderlands. Readers can feel like pioneers, following in the footsteps of early Native Americans, Spanish priests and soldiers, gold seekers and borderland explorers, tourists, and scholars.

Combining authoritative writing with a rich array of more than 180 illustrations and maps as well as detailed appendixes providing up-to-date information on the wildlife and plants that live in the area, Last Water on the Devil’s Highway allows readers to uncover the secrets of this fascinating place, revealing why it still attracts intrepid tourists and campers today.
Bill Broyles is the author of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument: Where Edges Meet and Our Sonoran Desert, and co-editor of Dry Borders: Great Natural Reserves of the Sonoran Desert. Thomas E. Sheridan holds a joint appointment as professor of Anthropology at the Southwest Center and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Arizona. A MacArthur Fellow and recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for Conservation Biology, Gary Paul Nabhan is Director of the Center for Sustainable Environments at Northern Arizona University. Mary Charlotte Thurtle was the field director for the Tinajas Altas Archaeological Survey in 1998.
List of Maps
List of Tables
Preface
Introduction: Crossroads
Thomas E. Sheridan
1 Desert Water
Bill Broyles, Gayle Harrison Hartmann, and Thomas E. Sheridan
2 Native Peoples of the Tinajas Altas Region: Prehistoric to Present
Gayle Harrison Hartmann, Mary Charlotte Thurtle, and Gary Paul Nabhan
3 First Europeans to Forty-Niners: 1540–1854
Thomas E. Sheridan and Bill Broyles
4 Surveyors to Campers: 1854 to the Present
Bill Broyles and Gayle Harrison Hartmann
5 Natural History
Bill Broyles
Conclusion: Reflections on an Exceptional Place
When You Go
Acknowledgments
Appendices
References
About the Authors
About the Appendix Contributors
Index
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