Draft:Cucamonga Junction, Arizona

For as much as forty years, Cucamonga Junction, also locally known as Rock Quarry, was a settlement of hundreds of laborers and families at the southwest edge of the high desert in the northwestern Arizona. Workers were drawn to the area to work the outcrop of the Coconino Sandstone that became popular throughout the U.S. and around the world as an unusually fine and thin architectural flagstone. Occupying a slope rising from the upper branches of the ephemeral Ash Fork creek within the public land of the Kaibab National Forest, the community earned a reputation as a loose collection of rowdy, uneducated single men, large families, and older couples, generally providing a refuge for persons unable to afford, or simply wishing to avoid, the particular costs of "living in town".

Such residential occupation within the public lands, legal and illegal, became problematic for the Forest Service's jurisdictions in the 1970s. The community was generally evicted and all homes were eventually demolished while the original quarries were reclaimed. Few foundations remain in the present recreational campground on Forest Service 124 north of and about halfway between Williams and Ash Fork. Later geographical maps pin the abandoned community's name where the community's church stood.

Naming
The records of the name "Cucamonga" in its various spellings are almost exclusively related to county, state, and Federal functions, both in public maps and in the names of private claims and mines registered with the state of Arizona. No less so than the origin of the conjectured namesake hundreds of miles to the west, Cucamonga, California, the origin and meaning of the name is not clearly recorded.

The addition of "Junction" can simply mean a diminutive reference to some original place name and does not always refer to a railway junction. In this case, the name Cucamonga Junction does not signify that the location was a railway junction because the name was used before the ATSF Railway built a new line just north of the settlement. Maps of the rail line do not indicate a railroad junction or siding there although a siding a bit to the west is designated for the now abandoned Double A Ranch.

The name Cucamonga for this settlement is attested to in 1956 by a Williams flagstone wholesaler identifying Cucamonga Junction as one of his two sources of the stone. While the original quarry at the location was public, later private claims in and around the location evoked the community's name. In the earlier 1950s, Emma Mae Cox made an expedient mineral claim north of the settlement, naming it "Cucamunga X". The Jack Horner family (with eight children) lived in the community in the 1950s and the Horner Stone company operated the "Cucamonga Quarries" claims until 2007.

Especially when capitalized as a proper name, "Rock Quarry" was used by citizens of Williams when referring to the concentration of residences at the west end of the one "good" county road that the Williams residents previously used to collect flagstone. Baptists in Williams raised a church for the community, naming it "Rock Quarry Church" The 1950s also saw the beginning a great expansion of the number of quarries miles to the west. While "the quarries" might refer to this larger distribution of mines, USGS maps record that most of the homes were within a mile of the church. This usage of "Rock Quarries" then influenced how the community was referred to in the state capital, Phoenix.[cite the Phoenix newspapers].

Ash Fork, which had less direct communication with the community in the National Forest and was more connected with the other quarries surrounding the town, used the general term "rock quarries", and referred to workers living in any of the quarries as "rock doodlers".

Geography
See User:IveGoneAway/sandbox/Cucamonga Junction, Arizona draft notes.

[ geology, geography, pre-Columbian settlement ]


 * Creation of the Kaibab National Forest in 1906 resulted in a sort of community commons where, subject to some generous regulations, private people could enter for nothing more than labor and gas money.
 * Families and community organizations drove into the now public Coconino outcrop, recovering flagstone for construction back in Williams or Ash Fork.
 * Anyone wanting to enforce exclusive access to any outcrop had file an approved mineral claim filed and approved.
 * Quarry workers were often illiterate.
 * Corporate exploitation of the flagstone on the Federal land requires both mineral claim, leasing, and active operation.
 * 1915 act encourages recreational residences
 * Under the 1915 Occupancy Permits Act, the USFS had permitted Recreational Residences (summer homes).
 * Reversal of this policy beginand 1950s and some communities established under this program were demolished.
 * Of the Coconino quarries, all of the early quarries and most of the later quarries are within the Kaibab National Forest.


 * Initial Coconino flagstone exploitation required no capital investment other than the ability to cross the miles of high desert to pick up and haul back loose rock.
 * Any actual quarrying required additionally only sledge hammers and simple wedges. Loose overburden was removed with simple labor to uncover more flagstone to split.
 * Full production quarrying required only drilling and blasting of the overlying Kaibab Limestone, with removal of the loosened overburden, splitting and loading of flagstone continuing with the same methods as before

Development
[ 1930s original rock doodlers ]

Quarries were known at the location from the early 20th Century.

The independent quarry workers, known in nearby towns as rock doodlers, built places to live among the quarries, sold flagstone to wholesalers from Williams and Ash Fork, and called the place Cucamonga Junction.

Even as private business opened more quarries to the west, hundreds of people continued living at the site without electricity, water, or sewer until the 1970s when the Forest Service evicted the settlement from the Federal land and demolished the structures.

In 1957, members of the community began construction of a church at the fork in the road below the homes within the quarries. Measuring 20 by 30 feet (7 by 10 meters), the church was a mission of the then Cavalry Baptist Churches of Williams and Ash Fork with services beginning around 1959. The first minister was Ray Taylor who would deliver Sunday sermons in his church in Williams in the morning, but in the afternoon he and his wife would minister to dozens of rock quarry residents in the mission in the afternoon. Rev. Taylor installed a donated generator and the church could then hold evening activities. Mrs Taylor taught night classes, including Red Cross education. At the church's dedication, some expressed hope that the community would become an incorporated town. In 1964, the Santa Fe Railway recognized the community with a donation of a bell for the church.

Eviction and demolition
[ seeking RS for date of the 1970s demolition ]

Environmental impact and remediation
removal of building debris(?) and remediation of latrines (owing to the aridity, human waste did not decompose and contaminated the run-off within the Ash Fork draw). Establishment of dispersed camping

Transportation
The first quarries were located here because this place was the shortest and easiest distance people could easily drive from Williams to collect flagstone on public land. Over the first years of people using the quarries, road improvements were extended from Williams as far as the east edge of Ash Fork Draw in the 1930s. By 1949, the road from Williams was designated Forest Service "highway" 124 and extended down into the draw, up the quarried slope, and then to the Double A Ranch; so, FS-124 is also designated as Cucamonga Road and Double A Ranch Road past the settlement. Thus, one good, graded road served the community. The very poor roads elsewhere into the range were considered a hindrance to the industry, especially from Ash Fork where most of the commercial stone was handled for shipping out of state. Rather than traversing the shorter but much rougher distance down the Ash Fork Draw or down the 1000 ft bluff of Fitzgerald Hill, loaded trucks would run the 17 miles of graded road to Williams and then turn around and coast down "Ash Fork Hill" on US 66 to the stone yards.[ citations coming from here ][ and here ]

In 1959, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway constructed the Crookton New Line from Williams to Crookton. The new route passed just on the northern edge of the homes and active rock claims here. However, this 90 mph "Santa Fe Racetrack" provided no service to the place. There was never a railway junction or even a siding here, and trucks continued to haul stone to the train yard in Ash Fork. [ and more here ]

Education
Owing to the one good road and the location within southern Coconino County, the school children of this community were assigned to the Williams Unified School District. From the 1950s to the evictions, the children were bussed from here to the Williams schools as were other students from Parks and from elsewhere within the national forests. Attendance was actively enforced by truancy officers.[3 citations coming]

After an electrical generator was installed in the Rock Quarry Church, night classes were held there, mostly related to health and first aid.[ citations coming from here ]