Camp Verde and Cottonwood

Hi Blog! We're a little behind on our posts so I am doing a combined entry for Wednesday and Thursday, November 4 and 5, 2015. It took us the better part of Wednesday to recover from moving Tuesday night to avoid 8 inches of snow on the high mountain passes outside of Flagstaff. After a good sleep in and campground walk, we decided to go into Camp Verde for lunch and have a look around.

First stop - Verde Brewing Company! Located in the old Boler's Tavern Building built in 1933, Verde Brewing is know for its craft brew and farm-to-table burgers. Kathy went for a beer sampler while Dave enjoyed a pint of the Honey Pot Stout. After sampling the other beers, Kathy agreed - Honey Pot Stout was the best of the bunch. The folks on Yelp raved about their burgers, so we had to share one - Rio Claro Red Wine Burger. It was delicious! Now that we sated our thirst and our appetites, it was time to get down to some exploring.

Camp Verde is not a big town, so we just left Great White in the parking lot of Verde Brewing and walked a block to the entrance to Fort Verde State Historic Park.

Fort Verde State Historic Park is a small park that attempts to preserve parts of the Apache Wars-era fort as it appeared in the 1880s. The park was established in 1970 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places a year later. Inside the Visitor Center, are a number of exhibits on life in the fort. Here Kathy is modeling the latest in Federal-wear.

The fort was a base for General Crook’s U.S. Army scouts and soldiers in the 1870s and 1880s. From 1865 – 1891 Camp Lincoln, Camp Verde and Fort Verde were home to officers, doctors, families, enlisted men, and scouts. The park is a great example of an Indian Wars period fort in Arizona. Several of the original buildings still stand. Here is the view across the parade grounds to the officers quarters.

The buildings are open and you can walk through them. They did their best to outfit the rooms as they would have looked during the height of activity. Here, the surgeon is studying up on the latest medical techniques.

After touring the Fort, we walked another block and found the Camp Verde Historical Society. After the Indian Wars, settlers arrived in 1865 and began farming along the Verde River and its tributaries, beginning with a 200-acre settlement at the confluence of the Verde River and West Clear Creek. Although many of the settlers came to the Valley to farm and ranch, a rich mineral strike in the Black Hills in the late 1870s attracted a wave of newcomers and resulted in the establishment of the towns of Cottonwood, Jerome and Clarkdale, perched high in the hills to the west of Camp Verde. The Historical Society covered the entrance to their building with some great murals depicting early life in the Verde Valley.

We learned that the Verde Salt Mine played a key role in the life of the Verde Valley’s early inhabitants. Formed by sediments from an inland freshwater lake that existed between 10 and 2 million years ago, the Verde Salt Mine deposit has been mined since at least the first century. Both the Hohokam and Sinagua cultures used the salt as a trade item with cultures as far a way as Baja California, New Mexico and Mexico. The the deposit was mined commercially as late as the 1920s and 1930s. The U.S forest service is currently developing the mine as an interpretive site. We got to take a look at one of the old shovels used to mine the salt.

We finished up our walking tour of Camp Verde and headed back to our campground. We had some errands to run on Thursday and decided to combine them with a trip to Cottonwood, just up the Verde Valley from Camp Verde.

On the way to the Post Office, we discovered The Bank of Clemenceau. Clemenceau is now a neighborhood of the city of Cottonwood. It was built as a company town in 1917 to serve the new smelter for James Douglas, Jr.'s United Verde Extension Mine (UVX) in Jerome. The town was originally named Verde after the mine, but it was changed to Clemenceau in 1920 in honor of the French premier in World War I, Georges Clemenceau, a personal friend of Douglas. 

The Clemenceau smelter closed in 1937. Most residents then left the area. When Cottonwood was incorporated in 1960, Clemenceau and the Clemenceau Airport were included in its boundaries.
With the exception of the school, the bank/post office and the smelter slag pile, little remains of the original town of Clemenceau. After the Post Office run, we walked back down to the Historic Center of Cottonwood. On the way, we passed a classic 1950's style dinner.

We didn't have any problem finding Old Town.

Located between Prescott and Sedona, Cottonwood is surrounded by jagged mountains on the south, east and west; to the north by mesas and buttes. Named for the beautiful Cottonwood trees that grow along the Verde River, the town has grown from a small farming community to the Verde Valley's population center. Historic Old Town is filled with lots of interesting shops and restaurants.

Just at the end of Main Street, is the Gateway to the Verde River. Debarking from the site of a rustic old jail building on the left, now home to a quaint tea house, the easy trail follows the river bank through River Front Park to Dead Horse Ranch State Park.

The trailhead sign beacons us forth.

Parts of the old irrigation canal system still carry water.

With all of the rain and snow that Arizona has received in the past few weeks, the Verde River was running high.

After a rather leisurely walk through the woods, we retired to The Tavern Grille to share a grilled veggie wrap and a couple pints of College Street Brewhouse Sweet Devil Stout!  We thought that, all in all, this was a pretty stylish way to get to know the area.