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TODAY Friday 3 October 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site.

 

TODAY IN THE WORLD: Cochise County, Arizona

In New England, the county does not matter much as a unit of government, and there are periodic attempts to abolish it. That Boston is in Suffolk, Cambridge in Middlesex, and Brookline in Norfolk is irrelevant except in terms of court jurisdiction and the public-employment opportunities that ensue.

Out here in the West, though, counties do matter. Counties are often the entities that control the key public functions in most citizen's lives: education, police, roads, parks. And there is county consciousness to match. Towns, the soul of New England, are often weak things west of the Hundredth Meridian. People are spread out and accustomed to driving long distances: the county provides an appropriate sized civic focus (the spiritual focus is more narrowly contained within the district represented by the local high school football team).

I am now in Tucson, Pima County, Arizona this week for a meeting. (It's the annual conference of the Grand Lodge of the Exalted Order of the Society of Environmental Journalists. We wear fezzes and exchange handclasps.) For the three days previous, a Liberty Tree colleague and I were all over one of the finest of American counties, Cochise County, which occupies the southeastern-most corner of the Arizona rectangle, bounded by Mexico to the south and New Mexico to the east. It is hot (in the 90s every day we were there) dry (average of 10-12 inches of rain per year) and high (rarely under 3000 feet, sometimes over 8000). Since local environmentalists shut down the copper smelter in Douglas in 1987, it has clean air. And it is incomparably beautiful: vividly-shaped mountains rising abruptly from the plains, veins of canyons dividing and dramatizing the high ridges. Skies of the deepest blue highlight the grays and greens and red-browns of the mountains.

This visual paradise was one the last areas on the continent settled by English-speakers. There were two reasons for this.

The first reason is that the land was too dry for easy cattle grazing. Only when richer rangelands were taken did Anglo wranglers come into what is now Cochise County, and they never had an easy time of it. Very few of those 19th Century cattle ranches are still in operation. Yesterday the Phoenix newspapers gave place of prominence to the news that the federal Bureau of Land Management was withdrawing all grazing permits from most of Southeast Arizona. Grazing practices had violated the Endangered Species Act, the BLM said, and the interests of the cattle leases had to bow to the interests of the jaguar, pygmy owl, and willow flycatcher. The news was no big deal in most of Cochise County, for there are hardly any ranches left to be affected.

The second reason for the delayed arrival of the Anglos is that the people who lived there already didn't want any newcomers around. These were the Chiricahua Apaches, among the world's finest fighters: a mounted Apache with a repeating rifle and a bellicose temperament was a formidable enemy to the armies on both sides of the international border that had been drawn through the heart of their homeland. Under the direction of their chief, Cochise, the Chiricahua Apaches raided settlements, ambushed patrols, and frustrated their US Cavalry pursuers, among whom were the famous African-American Buffalo Soldiers.

Cochise and his men often made good their escape by repairing to their most hallowed place, the great Chiricahua Mountains. There, amidst the head-spinning complexities of high peaks and twisting deep canyons, few federal soldiers could hope to keep up.

In the end, of course, Cochise gave up. The general to whom he surrendered was more honorable and sympathetic than the others of his time, and Cochise was actually well regarded by the Anglos, who bestowed his name (posthumously) on the county, placed his profile on the official seal, and sculpted his face onto the arch of the biggest bridge around. This did not imply a sweet-tempered approach to the Apaches in general, of course. When, after Cochise's death, the Chiricahuas arose again under a new leader named Geronimo, the response of the army and a new and odious general was brutal in the extreme. Geronimo, himself less humane than the great Cochise, paid cruelty with cruelty. He too hid successfully among the Chiricahua Mountains, and he too was finally brought to bay and compelled to surrender. The Apaches were removed, and the land left to a scattering of those hard-pressed Anglo ranchers. Until, of course, minerals were discovered and the silver- boom of Tombstone (Wyatt Earp, the OK Corral) introduced the era of big mines and dense populations. But that is another story.

Today Cochise County is once again sparsely settled. In many of its places, Spanish remains the predominant language. But Anglo tourism and retirement communities have a foothold, and there are ambitious plans to attract computer-related small businesses to the county seat, the picturesque old mine town of Bisbee.

So, dear reader, we fell head over heels for Cochise County. In few places is human history so palpable and natural history so powerfully and gorgeously on display. It is land both remorseless and beautiful. Nowhere are both qualities so evident as in the sacred Chiricahua Mountains where Cochise and Geronimo gave the slip to their hunters. To this old slogger, at least, a ten-mile walk among the great rock columns of the Chiricahua Wilderness constituted the best hike ever. That you walk through a federally-protected nature enclave that was once the scene of resistance to federal arms is at once sad and marvelous.

 

TODAY ON THE SITE:

For Internet resources on environmental issues pertinent to US/Mexican Borderlands, check into the High Five feature of Mary Kelly. Mary runs the estimable Texas Policy Center in Austin. Mexico herself is authoritatively covered by Ruben Kraiem, one of the best environmental analysts on either side of any border.

 

Recent "Today" columns:

10/02: The Copper Queen
10/01: Pesticides in California
9/30: Climate Policy: No Pain, No Gain
9/29: Climate Policy: No Pain, Much Gain
9/26: Darwin and Bug Spray
9/25: The Cooling of Los Angeles
9/24: The Boy Who Stalks California
9/23: Fire!
9/22: More Logging and Fishing
9/19: "Here, Sir, the People Rule"
9/18: Dr. Pangloss and the Land Mine Treaty

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