The Coconino sun., 1922-08-18

| reach--show their ever changing col- ors in panorama too vast to be fully sensed, too great for you even to be- gin to comprehend until you have looked at it for some time. Loom- ing off hundred and twenty-five miles is Navajo mountain, in Utah. Southerly from that you see moun- tains in New Mexico Great gorges and mighty buttes in between you can't distinguish, yet if you know only little about that vast desert wilder ness to the northeast you know they are there, merged into and contribut- ing to the kaliedoscopic colors.
 On a couple of miles, now over a good road with an almost impercept- ible grade, two or three feet to your right sheer drop of thousand feet or more, every square yard of the cliff sending up tall white aspen trees; two or three feet on the other side another cliff, going upward to the summit, this cliff also thick with aspen, then with pine and spruce and fir, then near the summit, with bare rock and cinder. At the springs there are several of them, connected with pipe lines, the first spring being only few hundred yards from the farthest--there is parking space for cars, little streams of ice cold water now going to waste, though ultimate ly they probably will be conserved for our city water supply. Here you find ferns, wild strawberries, rasp- berries, many other kinds of plants growing in profusion, while in the dense tree growth that has come up in the fifteen years since fire denuded that entire section, are dozens of var ieties of evergreen trees, among them silver spruce with their rough white bark and one beautiful tree that the experts at Washington are unable to name, asserting that none like it grows anywhere else as far as they can learn.
 It is not long climb, as we rate mountain climbing here, to the top of any one of the several peaks, of which from this vantage point of view among them you find there are more than you thought there were. Just ahead in line with the springs is vast field of pure white snow, perhaps even now twenty-five or thirty feet deep. It is part of the great snow blanket that falls each winter and in the late spring, slowly melting, works down through the Altering cinders to the great subterranean currents or res ervoirs from which it flows to the surface again through the springs, pure, ice cold, bountiful, abundant, the most delicious water any city is bless ed with.
 Away up one of the peaks is an area of a hundred acres or so on which dead pine trees lie prone, their bare trunks at that distance looking like thousands of match stems. These giants of the mountain forest were overturned by a great snowslide a few years ago.
 These things were seen and wonder ed at and exclaimed over on Sunday by nearly 50 Flagstaff people who pie nicked at Jack Smith springs. It was the largest number that had ever been there before at one time. Some of them were Rotarians, some members of the city council. Others were guests of either Rotarians or councilmen. They went there on the recommends tion of Rotarian Ed Miller, forest su- pervisor, who urged that they get ac- quainted with our source of water supply. Another big bunch, Rotarians, councilmen and guests will go there next Tuesday. As result of these two excursions, Flagstaff will know more of the value of what it possesses in the GAO acres of land the city owns up there. Also Jack Smith springs will hereafter be favorite spot with many Flagstaff people who want to get out and absorb some of the beauty of the great surrounding country.
 A short distance from the first spring, directly in the road, is big box From it is thrown out on the side of the cliff, to go waste, more than a million gallons of ice-cold, pure water every twenty-four hours. Our mains leading to the city cannot ham dle it. It will go to waste until we get mains that can. Farther on is an even greater amount pouring down the mountain side, lost.
 Water Superintendent Marshall says there's 1,800,000 gallons of wa ter going to waste up there every "A hours.
 Some day, perhaps before long, some money will be spent on the steepest part of the road to the springs, softening the grades. When that is done, cars will make the trip every good day during the summer. Among those who went Sunday were: Mayor T. E. Pulliam, City Wa ter Superintendent John Marshall, Councilman B. A. Cameron and Mrs. Cameron, Councilman E. c. Slipher and Mrs. Slipher, Councilman Charles w. Isham, T. A. Riordan, Mir. and M~~ Es~~J r T,,cI~ ouI Ha~o1sun ond