Welcome to Mysteries of Superstition Mountain I'm Larry Hedrick where we bring the past into
the present for our future viewers today we have another great story by Hank Sheffer
in the 1960s Apache Junction the fledgling town of Apache Junction I should say
was no longer just a stage stop along the way from this place going to someplace else
and we've seen in some of the previous episodes she was on the move she'd gotten herself
the Apacheland movie ranch was put in so she was she was trying to grab some of that business from
California she had a five-star hotel in the superstition hotel that was in Apache Junction
and she was really on the rise she was becoming a destination place for people to come and see
different things and of course the superstition mountain was always at the forefront with Jacob
Waltz the Lost Dutchman mine but there were visionaries that were still looking for things
to draw people to Apache Junction and one of those things that came to mind believe it or not
was to put in a tramway that would run from the hotel all the way up to the Flatiron in
the Superstition Mountains five and a half miles away that was what they wanted to do
and it was a major undertaking the Palm Springs had put one in but it was half as long
and it was quite successful although it went through some real pains trying to be built the
tramway itself would have been a major undertaking also proposed with that whole thing was that they
wanted to put a restaurant a rotating restaurant on the top of the Flat Iron that would serve
high-dollar food up there and they'd have lights and all that sort of thing going on
and they wanted to put a walkway so that you could walk around and observe the wonderful views around
the top of the flatiron of course not everybody believed that that was something that the
town of Apache Junction could actually support um there was no way it was anything like the
the tramway over in palm springs californium and even for that one the one over in California
that was not real free sailing for them either they had a tough time getting it put through
they'd put an enabling bill through twice and it was vetoed by their
Governor Culbert Olson over there he didn't want to do it and then with the outbreak of
World War II even the plans that were put through to work on were canceled because of the war itself
the tramway vision didn't die though it stayed alive in 1945 a new bill was
passed and this one was signed by Earl Warren when he became governor the point is that the
the bill had passed after earl warren had signed it technicians got busy and they put
things together solving problems a quarter of a million dollars was spent um and they needed
monies to actually build a thing now bear in mind this is over in Palm Springs California
um they needed eight and a half million dollars to get uh this thing going with revenue bonds
so they passed that but then the Korean War popped up and that costed the way
the ambitious program though came back into being in 1961. to their credit
the Palm Springs tramway was built it's been successful and they paid off all of their bonds
by 1996. well apparently Apache Junction people thought maybe they could do the same thing
the ones that were all for not the ones that were against it obviously
and so they were trying to do the same thing
the ones who were opposed to it were also the same people who were opposed to
incorporating the city which didn't happen in Apache Junction until 1978. there was an
awful lot of hullabaloo going on back and forth people wanting to tram people not wanting a tram
until finally the secretary of the interior Stuart Udall and his brother Morris finally had to voice
their opinion about the whole thing now neither one of them really wanted the tramway at all
now for any of this to really make sense we need to know who the Udalls were
because they did have a tremendous influence on what was going to happen here
Stewart Udall was an American politician and later a Federal Government official he served
three terms as a congressman for Arizona and then he was appointed to the office of Secretary of
the Interior from 1961 to 1969. this was under Presidents Kennedy and then of course Johnson
now his brother Morris was known as Mo Udall was also an American Attorney and Democrat
politician who served as a U.S Representative for Arizona in 1961 Mo Udall won a special
election to fill the seat that had been vacated by his brethren as a congressman
for Arizona's second congressional district he was quite popular because he was a conference
conservationist and he loved protecting anything that was environmental he was protecting it well
now getting back to the tramway itself MO Udall, Mo Udall he's involved he's looking in to see what
they can and what is feasible what they cannot do what they can do and what he found was that
the majorities of the lands going from the hotel up to the Flat Iron the majority of that land
was designated R2 and they could build their towers of what they were going to need 10
to get up to the top of the Flat Iron a lot of towers had to be built to carry that cable now
the only problem with the whole thing was that the Flat Iron itself was not R2 designated it was part
of superstition wilderness and there's no way that the forest service was going to let anybody
build anything of that nature on their lands it just wasn't going to happen
now both of the brothers the Udall brothers were against this whole thing to start with
and so what they decided to do was find an alternative to see if they could get people
happy with something different and what they came up with was um somebody somehow donated 320 acres
for a national recreation park in 1967. so you can see this has been going on for a while
the BLM later turned that property over to the State of Arizona who in turn became responsible
for maintaining a park well that's what happened they turned out a park turned out to be a State
Park and finally in 1970 this park became the Lost Dutchman State Park which means the
State of Arizona cannot sell or transfer the title of these lands in any way shape or form
now I can tell you I've been up to that part I was up there just recently
because I hadn't been for a while and I was impressed it is really something to see the
RV camping the regular dry camping is wonderful uh day use is wonderful and the access to so many
of the many trails into the superstition things that people are really interested in seeing the
Palmer mine area the Lost Dutchman trail the all sorts of trails the Siphon Draw trail will
start right there at that park in the final analysis this was congressman Udall's
compromise involving the tram and making that kind of slide away and then we had a State Park
many people opposed the idea of the Superstition wilderness area becoming a national park
and still others opposed the entire concept of a wilderness area east of Apache Junction if there
had not been for a few visionaries back then we would have literally had bright lights and
us we'd had a circus on top of the Flat Iron and fortunately we don't have that we do have
a wonderful park I love that part I'm certain there are a lot of people around who remember
when this was coming about miss saga if you will of AJ history but from the time
that time until now not so ironically the facts the renderings the letters
anything concerning that unpopular proposal still lies somewhere hidden from the eyes of
historians and the general public can't find anything I couldn't find anything on it at all
other than the general information I've just given you
call it politics if you want to or better still you can just call it one more mystery of the
Superstition Mountains thank you for watching this episode of Mysteries of the Superstition Mountains