1977 Arizona Highways Article

Joan H. Baéza, “Baldy: The Mountain and the Myth,” Arizona Highways, June 1977, p. 15-16.

No one came to know the mountain better than George Crosby, who was born in 1900. His grandfather had been sent from Silver Reef, Utah, to engineer the three Greer reservoirs and the irrigation canal to Round Valley. Burning with patriotic zeal, but too young to enlist in the Army, George Crosby, the only Boy Scout in the White Mountains, applied for the job of Forest Service lookout in the spring of 1917. His mother protested that the work was too lonely and dangerous, but George convinced her it was the only way he could serve his country.

Since most Forest Service personnel were fighting in the trenches of France, George was hired. On May 28th, Forest Supervisor Frederic Winn rode his big black horse from Springerville to Greer to accept George's application, give him instructions, and tell him his salary would be $90 a month.

George had two days to get an outfit together and comfort his mother. He made a sleeping bag out of quilts and a heavy tarp. His Uncle Cleveland lent him a 30-30 Winchester. On the last day of May, he and his stepfather took two stout packhorses up to the trail to Baldy.

On the way, they found a dead buck and the enormous tracks of old “Double-Killer,” a grizzly bear with a habit of killing two beeves at a time. The huge bear had caused so much damage to livestock, the Cattlemen's Association was offering a reward of $200 for his demise.

That night, George was alone in his 10 x 12 foot log cabin. His furniture consisted of a rat-proof chest, a pole bunk, a wood stove, and a wall telephone. In those days, the Forest Service maintained a telephone line connecting Springerville with all the lookout towers and fire patrol stations. Each May, the Forest Service would send a pack train to pull the old wires out of the snow, rewire the line and install insulators. It was the lookout's only communication with the outside world for three months.

The lookout station on the summit was an eight-sided affair with a central chart stand, a small stove and a chair. When he spotted a fire, George would ring up the supervisor and tell him the degree and general location of the fire. From his perch, George could see north to the Hopi Mesas; east to Zuni Pueblo and the Mogollon Mountains; south a hundred miles to the Graham Mountains; and west all the way to the Sierra Anchas.

After work hours, he chinked the walls of his cabin with mud, because, he said, "You could sling a cat out through the logs." He cut and stacked firewood, cooked his simple meals, hauled water from a spring, and for amusement, listened in on the telephone conversations between Forest Service men and their mountain sweethearts. During his lunch breaks, he would hunt for arrowheads and beads.

His sister Hannah rode up from Greer to bring supplies and to keep him company for a while. They were surprised one night by a knock at the cabin door. A young Hopi, a graduate of Carlisle University, introduced himself and explained that he had come with four old men of the Flute Clan to pray for rain. They asked the young people to keep their presence a secret. Camped by the spring, with no articles of the white man on them, they performed their rituals and sang. The young Crosbys attended their final rain ceremony, and later watched northern Arizona drown in a general downpour.

As the year wound down, George and his Hopi friend shot old “Double-Killer,” who was prowling around their camp one night. The boys scraped and dried the hide, collected the $200 reward and sold the skin at Grand Canyon for $450.

At 17, George Crosby's adventures were only beginning. The next summer he worked as a fireguard on Green's Peak, while his sister Hannah took on the station at Baldy, becoming America s first girl lookout. The following year, George drove 21 saddle horses to Phoenix on his way to Thatcher to attend Gila Academy. But his real education came from the mountains.

Over the years, George Crosby was to become well known as a hunter and guide, at one point leading the U.S. Geologic Survey parties and setting up their camps.

During World War II, George hiked through a blizzard to locate a missing plane on Baldy. Drifts were 20 feet high, but he made it to Coulter's Cabin, where he spent the night. The following day, the main party met him. They found the plane with nine bodies aboard, and carried them down the mountain, along with a suitcase containing $20,000.

In later years, while running an elk camp on Baldy, George and his sons fed the deer grain and hay along with their own stock during hard winters and watched for poachers and other game violators.

Today, George Crosby's son Harris operates a general store in Greer, which remains a small mountain settlement drowsing under the wing of Baldy. Fat horses and cattle graze in fields of hay. The scent of pine, spruce and fir over-lies the valley and the pure cold smell of water tumbling out of snowfields rises to meet it. A few resorts, a few modest summer cabins, neighbor the old log cabins of the settlers. The road to Greer goes nowhere. There are only trails, leading to the mountain.