Peter Wolf Toth arrived in Winslow in 1979, intent on adding one of his art works to the city’s landscape. When he left about four months later, he had turned a single ponderosa pine log into a 30-foot tall Indian head, and he left it there for posterity. The work was one in Toth’s series of giant heads that he carved in every state and four Canadian provinces. He called the effort “The Trail of the Whispering Giants,” and dedicated it to what he considered the mistreatment of Native Americans by early settlers and the federal government.
Although the history of Montezuma Castle is pretty well documented, considering that nobody wrote down much of anything when it was a hot spot of ancestral civilization, there’s this one thing that sticks out as a case of mistaken identity. Or make that, mistaken transplantation.
Dog parks are not unusual in Arizona, but there’s one in Winslow that takes the concept up to a higher level. It’s called Bulldog Park because it’s home to what may be the world’s largest bulldog. The site is on a strip of land that covers no more than 150 square feet and was formerly a weed-filled boulevard. But a local committee cleaned it up and installed what appears to be a giant guardian to make sure nobody messes around with the park. Or in it.
Every now and then, as I search across Arizona for things of an unusual nature, something pops up as a complete surprise, something I’d never heard about even though I thought I’d seen ‘em all. Several of them did that to me recently as I wandered across the northern part of the state, and they involve elephants. Or things that evoke mental images of elephants.
They’re actually rock formations, but they look like elephant feet. Great big elephant feet.
Two of them stand along Highway 160, at Tonalea some 20 miles east of Tuba City on the Navajo Reservation. They’re giant sandstone pillars and they look so much like elephant feet that you don’t even have to squint your eyes to get the picture. The fact that the pillars are grayish white and brownish red instead of gray does not affect the illusion. Nor does the fact that they’re about 20 feet tall make any difference. Who knows how big them desert-stompers were billions of years ago?
