Oral history interview with Henry Giclas [includes transcript and photograph], December 2, 1975.

              FLAGSTAFF PUBLIC LIBRARY ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
Henry Giclas
Interview number NAU.OH.28.20
Henry Giclas, astronomer at Lowell Observatory. Interview conducted by Susan L. Rogers on December 4, 1975. Transcribed on October 21, 1996. Transcriber: Nancy Warden.
Outline of Subjects Covered in Taped Interview
Tape 1, Side 1
    Born in Flagstaff, 1910 
    Father, Eli Giclas 
    Engineer, first water superintendent for City of Flagstaff 
    Mother, Hedwig Leissling 
    Mill Town (Milton) described 
    Schooling in Flagstaff 
    Normal School for elementary years, high school 
    More on Milton and company store 
    Saturday night promenade in downtown Flagstaff 
    Wooden sidewalks floated during storms 
    Kids would raft on them during summer rain storms 
    Activities at Milton sawmill 
    Mayorgas, de Miguels, Burnhelm, mentioned 
    Logging camp, seasonal 
    Emerson School, summers 
    Trips to outside areas 
    Uncle, John Love, Dolph Willard Ranch 
    Brought fruit to town 
    Trip to Page Springs 
    Loy Ranch 
    Grasshopper Flat, Sherman Ranch 
    More on lumber mill 
    Livery 
    Operations 
    Buggies 
    Buck Taylor, Dr. Shermann, Dr. Raymond 
    Inner basin cabin for water system 
    Father worked from cabin 
    First memories of Lowell Observatory 
    Father helped place 1942 reflector
Tape 1, Side 2
    First memories, continued 
    Dr. Slipher, observing Mars 
    High school contact with observatory 
    College 
    NAU, USC engineering 
    Lectures at Cal Tech 
    Einstein, and other speakers 
    Summer job with Dr. Slipher 
    Transferred to U of A 
    Married Bernice Kent 
    Berkley for graduate school 
    Personalities at Lowell Observatory 
    Slipher brothers 
    C.O. Lampland 
    Award for photographing Mars 
    Sykes Brothers (Stanley and Godfrey) 
    Built dome of observatory 
    Dome taken to Mexico in 1896 along with telescope 
    Colorado River Adventure 
    Hualapai Wash adventure with Henry Giclas 
    In sailboat 
    Mrs. Lowell 
    Old house at observatory 
    Lowell’s 1909 Sterens-Daryea auto
Tape 2, Side 1
    Dr. Raymond 
    Aunt was a dietician at hospital 
    Dr. Raymond brought many Basques into area to herd sheep 
    Raymond Education Foundation 
    Drs. Offices described 
    Grave near I-17, near Kachina Village 
    George Hochderffer, mentioned 
    Summer work at logging mill 
    John Yost, his boss 
    Played baseball as a child in empty field 
    Founding of Pioneer Museum 
    Was county indigent hospital 
    Aunt, superintendent of hospital 
    Harry Metzger 
    Pioneer Museum incorporated in 1961 
    Original founders
SUSAN ROGERS: This is an interview with Henry Giclas, who is an astronomer at Lowell Observatory and a Flagstaff native. It's being conducted on December 4, 1975 at Lowell Observatory. The interviewer is Susan Louise Rogers, representing the Flagstaff City, Coconino County Public Library.
SUSAN ROGERS: Mr. Giclas, when and where were you born?
HENRY GICLAS: I was born here in Flagstaff on December 9th, 1910, which was about a year and four or five- oh no, a year and two months before Arizona became a state. It was the Territory of Arizona. And I was born up in a fourteen room house that had five fire places where the Holiday Inn presently stands. It was the old D.M. Riordan house. It was built near the old Arizona Lumber and Timber Company mill which stood there for many, many years into the 1948s, I think, or '49 before it was abandoned.
My father came here in about 1907 or 8 as a Santa Fe engineer to develop the water system for the big steam locomotives that had to stop here. In the early days, an engineer did about everything. He was a steam engineer; he was a locomotive engineer; he was a stationary engineer. And, my father did work as a locomotive engineer, and when he came through on the trains in the summer time, he would see this nice cool place in Flagstaff and decided that it would be a nice place to live. And, then when he was given the job developing the water, he decided to stay here in Flagstaff, and was the first water superintendent for the city. And, I'm not sure of that date, but it's around 1908 or something of that order.
And ah, he had two brothers that lived in Washington, D.C., and he would go back and visit them occasionally. And, on one occasion, he would have his dental work done back there, and during the course of having his dental work done, he met a dental nurse and decided to marry her. And that was my mother, Hedwig Leissling Giclas, who was born in Berlin, Germany, and had just come to America and was working as a dental assistant to her cousin, who was a dentist in Washington, D.C.
So, they were married in 1909 here in Flagstaff, mainly because my father's sister, Aurora Giquelais was here also, and they decided to come out here and get married. So, this is how the early- this is the early history, I would say.
The, ah- there were many interesting things that took place up in, as we called it, "Milton", which was short for "Mill Town", of course. There were many families there that stayed for many, many years. It seems in the early days there was very little turn over. The people that lived there, certainly lived there for twenty or more years, which now days, it's rather rare to find people that stay so long at one place. I guess that was because it was more difficult to move around and so forth.
But ah, from there, I went to dear old- I think it was Northern Arizona Normal School that maintained a training school as they do now. I don't know what they call it now, but it's the equivalent of that. And ah, in those days, there was only one large administration building, and the first, second, third, and fourth grade were down in the south side of the old administration building. You might say down in the basement where, I think, the janitors' quarters are now. But ah, this is where I went to school for grade school. The training school, I believe was- which is now the Journal, School of Journalism over there. That particular building was built when I was in the seventh grade, I believe as the- I spent the seventh and eighth grade in that new building before going to high school up in the big two story high school. That was torn down, I would say about five years ago.
The little suburb of Milton, you might say, was kind of an entity in itself, in the sense that there was a company store, which was across the street from this house where I lived. And, they paid the mill people there in the store every two weeks. And, of course, those employees that were working for the mill had the privilege of charging. And, it was the typical country store where most of the employees had pledged or charged most of the pay that they were getting to the country store, which was always taken out first. I remember these, the great to do that was made every two weeks when pay day came around, all the employees would line up to get their money, and their checks could be cashed right there at the store.
There was another great tradition in Flagstaff, at that time, which was the Saturday night promenade. It seemed every person in Milton would go to down town on the main street at Aspen and San Francisco, there, to do their shopping. The stores would always stay open 'til nine o'clock, because the mills always ran 'til six o'clock. So people would hurry home and have their supper and then go down to the city, and they would just greet each other and talk and socialize. And, the few that had cars, of course, would bring them down and park them along the street. And you'd sit in these cars and visit one, then another person. And this was famous Saturday night occupation.
The ah, since the lumber, at that time was fairly reasonable and cheap, most of the sidewalks in Flagstaff were wooden. And ah, the company, of course, had built a walk from the south part of town into Flagstaff out of wood. And, of course, these had to be repaired. Every two or three years, they'd wear down or get loose, or something. And ah, the great sport we used to have in the summer time was when there would be a flood up in that farm or that big area where KCLS is now. (ED: Milton Road by Denny's). And the water would come down at the five points where the light is at the north entrance to the University. This would all be flooded. And, of course, the wooden sidewalks would float around, and then they would break up into sections, and all the kids would get on these sections of sidewalk and raft around in the water. And then they'd have to replace all the sidewalks after the flood went through.
Some of the older people that lived in Milton- my father, of course then, was the chief engineer for the lumber company, and some of the people that worked with him there and under him were the Mayorgas. Many of them are still in town, they're Miguels now, some of them. And there was a colored person by the name Walter Garrison, who my father trained to be the chief pipe fitter, that put in all the plumbing and pipe work for the mill, as well as putting steam heat into most of the houses around very close to the mill. That is, into the house that I lived in and the old hospital, which was later called the "Mercy Hospital", but it was the company hospital. And the I.B. Koch home, which is now the Dolan residence, and the two houses just to the north of that. And, and there was the Burnhelms, Mr. Burnhelm was the millwright, and Ike Smith was the chief machinist. They had a big machine shop. There were probably three or four people working in the machine shop to keep the mill in repair. It also served as a roundhouse, in the sense that the- the logging locomotives and the logging cars were maintained right there. They had even large equipment for turning down railroad car wheels and things of this kind. And, they were kept busy, or course, continually.
And the mill, in those days, had to run seasonally, because there was no way of getting out into the woods after the first heavy snows came. All the logging for the mill was done on the railroad. The old railroad grades are still visible going to the south, and after the first heavy snowfall, the woods were shut down. And, of course, there wasn't the automobile transportation in those days or truck transportation that we have now. So the logging camps were moved from one place to another by the loaders that would load the logs. They also built one and two room small cottages- well not even cottages, just places to live with cables over them. And the loader could pick these little houses up and put them on logging cars, and then they would move them to the next camp. And, very seldom that an automobile or a truck would go into the camps. It was only gratuitous that a automobile could get to the logging camp. And, occasionally there would- someone would stay too long at one of these logging camps, and they would have to go out, and the snowfall would come, of course, like some of these that catch us these days, and they would have to try to rescue this person by firing up the locomotive and plowing the snow out to the camp to pick them up. I remember that this was a great news event when something of this kind happened.
SUSAN ROGERS: Want to stop a minute?
HENRY GICLAS: Let's see you asked if I had ever gone to Emerson School, and, of course, the answer is "yes". They would have summer school there, and my parents always insisted that if there was any school in operation, summer or winter, I was to go. So, each summer I would go to summer school at Emerson, and I disliked it very much, because all of my friends didn't have to go. And they were out having fun, and I always had to go to school.
You asked something about travel and some of the things that we used to do in those days. My uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. John Love, who lived in Flagstaff many years. My uncle came in about 1880. But he didn't like the cold winters in Flagstaff, so many, many years ago, he bought ten acres out at the old Dolph Willard Ranch, which was about two miles north of Page Springs. There were quite a few springs on this particular ranch, and he built a winter home there. And, every October, they would move down there until about April. And, I remember, going down there, sometimes, in the wagon. Old Dolph Willard would come to Flagstaff with a wagonload of fruit. In fact, he'd come with several wagonloads of fruit that he would sell to Babbitts or some of the stores in Flagstaff.
And, on the last trip, which was in October, he would usually take my aunt and all her belongings down. And, I remember going down occasionally on those October trips. And it was a two-day trip to go down to Page Springs, in those days; sometimes two and a half days. But we would leave here very, very early in the morning, I remember, long before the sun came up, in the wagon. And we would get down about where the sign on I-17 says "Willard Springs" at about lunchtime. And then, just before dark, we would be down in Munds Park. And, we always stayed over night at the Lay Ranch. The Lay Ranch is still visible, it's the white little building that you see before you get to the off ramp for Munds Park or Pinewood, there. And we'd- because travel was so rare, the Lays would always be very, very happy to have anybody stop there. And, now I'll have to correct something. It wasn't the Lays, it was the Loys, it was LOY, instead of LAY. It was the "Loy Ranch", and we would have dinner there that night. And being a very small place, I remember that there was always my aunt and my mother, and I as a child, would have to sleep in one bed, which I detested very much, because, because, it seemed I was always way under the covers or the wrong place. Anyway, wasn't, wasn't very much fun. But anyway, we would start the next day, again in the early morning in the wagon, and, in this case, we always went down Schnebly Hill. And when you got to the top of Schnebly Hill, Mr. Willard carried a long, peeled sapling, that he would put between the hind wheels of the wagon, and these would act as the brake, mainly because you couldn't trust the old hand brakes that they had on wagons in those days. And, you would just drag those wheels down, and occasionally, when you'd get to a level place, why stop and pull out the sapling and turn the wheels away so it wouldn't wear the wheels on just one place. And, again, we'd have lunch part way down; the road still goes by these rocks that formed a little natural place where it was ideal for having lunch.
And I remember so well, Grasshopper Flat. There was absolutely nothing there, except that the road was through the red sand, and was very soft, and usually the horses would begin trotting through there. And it was not very rough riding, and you would always enjoy and thought you were getting near home, when you went through Grasshopper Flat. And, on some of the trips, we would go only as far as the Sherman Ranch, which was down near Red Rock Crossing there.
And we would stay a second night at the Sherman Ranch, and then, the third day. Then the Shermans had a car, which was something great for a farmer in those days to have, or a rancher. And, I remember, this car was out in the shed and was all covered up, and they would go out and uncover it and start it up, and take us the rest of the way down to the Willard Ranch, the place we were going. So, this, this was one long mode of transportation. My uncle would sometimes walk all the way. He would walk the same way that the wagon went, and stay all night at the Loys', and then, the next night down at the Shermans', and then come on down.
But he did do an awful lot of walking. In fact, he worked for Henry Ashurst's father down at Mormon Lake, and taking care of the cattle and splitting rails for a fence, and things of that kind. And he got caught down there one winter and was snowed in. And I remember that he got a bad case of scurvy, because the only thing he had left, after two or three months, was a little bacon grease and flour; nothing else to live on. But this was another episode in the early day history of Flagstaff. The other times, all the logging in the woods- (telephone rings and tape is interrupted.)
SUSAN ROGERS: Okay.
HENRY GICLAS: Yeah, well then some of the other excursions that were done with team and wagon, or horse and buggy as you may call it, was that the lumber company maintained a very large stable just north of the present Holiday Inn, along the old 66 highway. The lumber company also maintained some acreage that was put in to wheat and potatoes and things of that kind which was used to feed the horses with in wintertime. Horses and mules were used in the lumberyard to haul the lumber carts around to from the green chain. As the lumber came off, it was piled in different grades on the two wheel carts, and then the mules would come pull these out into the lumberyard where it was stacked for drying. They didn't have any steam dried kilns in those days.
And in this huge barn where the horses were kept, the mill company also kept buggies of different kinds. And, if you've seen some of the parade pictures in Flagstaff on the Fourth of July or something of this kind, the old pictures, you'll see some of these old four and five seater buggies that would hold ten people or more. These were stored up there. There was the real old surrey with the fringe on the top. It was a beautiful thing that had velour cushions that the Riordans would use, or other people would use occasionally. And my father would get these some times at six o'clock, and you'd get a horse or two, and we would go out in the summer time to old Buck Taylor's Ranch, which was at foot of the Peaks. This was out in Ft. Valley. It's now, I think the Ski and Spur Ranch. Buck Taylor, he was an old bachelor, and he homesteaded that area at Leroux Springs. And we were great friends with old Buck. When he would bring his potatoes and wheat in, in the fall would always stop by our house and have dinner. And we would go out there, and he would- he was one of these real old timers, you might say, that was out there with the Corys who lived on the farm just to the south of his farm. And, of course, it's probably still known as "Cory Corners". This is where you turn sharply to the right or north and go up the Snow Bowl Road.
We would also go out to Walnut Canyon in horse and buggy. And, later, we would go out with some of the early day cars. Dr. Schermann, the company doctor had an old Overland, and occasionally, he would take us out to Walnut Canyon for a picnic. My aunt, who for many years was the cook- I guess they're called "dieticians" now, but in those days she was the cook at the hospital, and for that reason, a great friend of all the doctors in town. They would take us here. Dr. Raymond would take us to these places like Walnut Canyon and top of Oak Creek in his old Packard. It was a beautiful Packard, not an old Packard. And my aunt, of course when she wasn't at the hospital was the housekeeper for Dr. Raymond up in the house on Elm Street where I live now.
Let's see, you, you asked me, Pinky, awhile ago, my father's name was Eli Giclas.
SUSAN ROGERS: Okay.
HENRY GICLAS: And I was looking up at the old cabin that's in the inner basin. I remember many years ago, when he repaired that cabin to work out of when he was putting in a water system, that in some of the cement that was used to chink with, the cracks, he had inscribed his name, "Eli Giclas", and I believe, that was nineteen and eight. And later when the cabin was made larger for the second water system around 1936 or so, that was lost. And last time I was up, I was looking for that little piece of concrete or cement, just as a little marker, you might say, the year and the date.
SUSAN ROGERS: Okay. Do you want to move into something about the Observatory. How did you come to be at the Observatory?
HENRY GICLAS: Oh yes, well, let's see, the first time I came to the Observatory was with my father. He was always interested in scientific things and was a great reader and student in general. But, he had assisted, I guess Dr. Lowell and the Sliphers, in placing the forty-two inch reflector here because of his engineering skills, I guess. And there are still some pictures in the archives of the Observatory of the early installation of the forty-inch reflector in 1910. Lowell wanted to try and to see if a reflector could be used for planetary studies and so decided to install one. And one of the great problems with the reflector, of course, was to, to keep the figure of the mirror in great changes of temperature. And for that reason, it was thought that if the telescope was put down in the ground, there would be less temperature variation between day and night, and therefore, the mirror would keep a better figure. That was many years before it had the low thermal expansion glass. And it was placed down under ground, with the dome just turning at the ground level.
END TAPE 1, SIDE 1, BEGIN TAPE 1, SIDE 2
HENRY GICLAS: So, sometime- of course I was born in 1910, so I couldn't have very well come to the Observatory then. But he was- my father knew Percival Lowell, of course, and it was probably before Lowell's death that that he came up here with me. And I remember it was one evening- as I mentioned the lumber company worked ten hours a day until six P.M. I remember having my supper real fast one night, and then walking on Milton up to the twenty-four inch refractor dome. And my father was always great for taking short cuts. He knew his way through the woods, and all I remember was walking over the railroad track and up in the woods, and walking a long, long distance in the woods before we ever got to the dome. But, anyway, we finally got there, and, I'm quite sure, it was Dr. V.M. Slipher and his son David, that were in the dome, and they were going to show us Mars. And I remember seeing it, very vividly remember seeing what Mars looked like; quite yellow with marks on it, and so forth. And the thing I think that impressed me most was that Dr. Slipher let his son pull the cords that turned the dome. This impressed me very much. And that was my first introduction to astronomy or Lowell Observatory. Again, I can't remember what year, but I would guess it was around 1916.
And then the next contacts were during high school when David Slipher and I and Alan Cree(?) were classmates, and we got the photography bug, and we were photographing various scenes and our girl friends, and so forth. And we would develop lots of the film and make enlargements in some of the dark rooms, or in one of the dark rooms here at the Observatory. And it was a great way to learn photography, and that was the second contact during those years. And of course when I was up here, I would look at the exhibits and look at books. Of course in those days, with I.Q.(?) of any visitors and, since we were friends and relatives of the director, why there was never too much a problem about coming in and going out of the Observatory. As I recall, nothing was ever locked even in those early days.
And then after finishing high school, I went my freshman year over to what's now NAU, but the following year I went to USC and lived in Pasadena, not very far from Cal Tech. And that was the great era of astronomical research by Hale, and Bowen, and Einstein was a guest at Cal Tech in those days, and they would have Friday night lectures. And since I lived so much closer to Cal Tech than I did to the campus of USC, I would go to these Friday night lectures, and among one of them Albert Einstein gave one. And of course all the astronomers like Nicholson and Hale and Thomason(?) and the early day astronomers on Mt. Wilson always took their turn. And so I became quite interested in astronomy there.
And then I was in engineering at USC and decided to come back to Flagstaff one summer and, again, spent quite a bit of time at the Observatory. And in 1931, I came back from California and worked here that summer as Dr. Slipher's assistant. And, in those days, he was trying to photograph the deep red end of the spectrum of the planets. And, of course, there were no photographic plates in those days that you could buy off the shelf that would do the job. And my first job was an experimental one to dye photographic plates with all kinds of aniline dyes that were, in those days, only obtainable from Germany. And you would make different concentrated solutions and bathe the plates in them. Hypersensitize them as well as dye them, and then try them in the spectrograph to see if they would be suitable for use in the red. When I'm talking about red, I'm talking about the oxygen lines around eight thousand to ten thousand ________, where the sensitivity was desired when it was trying to be developed. So, that was my first professional, you might say, contact with astronomy.
And, I was still in engineering school, and by that time, I transferred to the U of A, and had decided then that I would- It was during the Depression in the very early thirties, that I would lay out a year, and I got a job here at Lowell Observatory. I'm not sure whether it was the following year, yes, I believe it was, where I was earning the money to go on and finish at the University. And I remember I was making the great sum of seventy dollars a month plus a place to live in the big old main building, and in those days, you were very happy to get it as I recall. This was, while it was a small amount of money, it was enough to get along on and very happy to have a job in those days. So, the following year, of course, I went on to the University and finished up and then came back to work here at the Observatory for three or four years. After I finished, I married Bernice Kent, who was the secretary here at Lowell Observatory. And she was also working for a year to finish up her school, university work, and then she became a teacher, first at McNary and then at Seligman, and then we were married and moved back here. And later I went on to Berkeley for graduate work, and then, came back to Lowell ever since.
SUSAN ROGERS: Okay. Why don't you tell me about some of the personalities you knew. What about the Sykes brothers? What do you know about them?
HENRY GICLAS: Well, in those days, of course, the staff was very small. There were the two Slipher brothers, uh V.M. Slipher and E.C. Slipher and C.O. Lampland. And, C.O. Lampland was the real scholar of the Observatory. He was one of these perfectionists who would never quite get enough data he believed to, to come to a conclusion. He always wanted to get more data. And, for this reason, his name is not very well known in early astronomical circles, because he never published very much. He did get the Gold Medal of the Royal Photographical Society for photographing Mars; he developed the photographic technique that was used here for many years. Uh, later this work was turned over to E.C. Slipher who carried that on. Lampland, then worked with W.W. Koblance(?) at the Bureau of Standards and, where they were measuring the temperature of Mars; they were developed these very sensitive thermal couplings(?) that they measure the heat of the candle many, many miles away, ______ speaking. And he and Koblance(?) worked for many years to determine the equatorial weavings of Mars were over- were warmer than freezing of water that determined the insulation of curves, and determined the distribution of temperature across the disc. And Lampland worked many, many years, again, observing with thermal couples(?) that he had made. And, again, never reduced the work; he worked, the final work after his death was reduced(?) by Dr. Frank Gifford and published by. And it was very useful work.
Then, among the other well-known early timers at the Observatory were the Sykes brothers, and mainly Stanley Sykes. Stanley Sykes was an old Englishman, who came over here in the very early eighties with his brother. His brother, Godfrey, later worked at the Desert Laboratory in Tucson and ______ in some of the others. And he wrote the book "The Westerly Trend," which is a very interesting book about the Sykes brothers coming to America in the early days. And, the Sykes brothers came, really for their health. Stanley was not expected to live very long, because he had respiratory problems and, to show how beneficial Arizona was for him, he was working in the Observatory shops at age ninety-two. And, then finally succumbed to pneumonia, which was contracted at San Diego on a vacation. He still got- still quite able to work at age ninety-two in the instrument shop.
But, the Sykeses started out at Turkey Tanks. This was the- their homestead, and started running cattle with a fellow by the name of Billy Roden, and they built a little cabin out there, and, then they moved into town. Mr. Sykes, Stanley Sykes, had gone to Kingsbury(?) Tech and was a very fine instrument maker as well as quite an artist. Some of his paintings are still around town. Some of his friends have them, and they were excellent paintings. He just didn't take time to do very many; I wish he had. But, Mr. Sykes and his brother were commissioned to build the dome for the twenty-four inch refractor that came in 1896. The Sykes brothers had already helped install the eighteen-inch refractor that came in 1894. But they built this dome down on Sykes' lots, down on Dale Avenue and Humphreys, there. And then the dome was torn down and loaded on the flat cars, and the telescope itself, after it was tested here in Flagstaff, was put on flat cars and taken down to Tekievail (?), Mexico for the 1896 observation of Mars. And the dome was assembled and used there. It was torn down and brought back and assembled here, again by the Sykes brothers in 1897. And it's still in operation every clear night. The same old dome that went down to Mexico, and was put together by peons and torn apart by them in Mexico and sent back up here.
So Stanley Sykes was quite a westerner. He and his brother and Harry Hussy(?), another person that worked here at the Observatory, an Englishman, would go to Needles in early December, and they would build themselves a boat, and they would float down the Colorado River, down into the Gulf during the winter. And just- in those days, live off the land. They'd hunt either waterfowl or desert animals and would just float down beyond Yuma and on down into the Gulf. And there are many, many interesting experiences that have been written up by Godfrey Sykes, the brother. They built one boat that they called the "Snark"(?), and it caught fire when they were down in the Gulf and they almost lost their lives, because it was so far from civilization, and they could not find fresh water. It was only knowing about certain springs that when the tide- when the bore went out of the Gulf, that if you waited just before the tide would come back in, and you would dig in these shoals, if you would find some palatable water. And this saved them; they got back to civilization, finally, and it saved them.
You will recall some of the famous names like- I'm thinking now of the Boojam(?) trees. These were named by Godfrey Sykes after some of the mythological things ALICE IN WONDERLAND, they still carry that name as a scientific name. And, of course, some of the, of the motels in Phoenix, one chain still uses that as their symbol in advertisement, the Boojam Tree. And they were very colorful characters that were in the early west, beginning in the early eighties.
SUSAN ROGERS: Can you tell that story about when they went down the Colorado River and didn't have enough clothes? (laughs).
HENRY GICLAS: Oh, well, this was one time, they'd gone down there and they wore out their, most of their clothes. It was so warm, usually down in there, that it didn't make too much difference, but this time they had worn out many sets of clothes so that they would throw them overboard instead of carrying old torn up clothes. And when they got down near Yuma, some of them didn't have enough clothes to go into town. So they pooled their clothes and traded around so that one person had enough clothes to walk into Yuma to buy the others clothes and bring it back to the river. They would be respectable when they walked in town.
And, I've been many places with Stanley, his son- he had two sons. Harold, of course was the mayor of Flagstaff at one time. And the other son, Guy Sykes, moved to Seligman, and for many years was a mechanic and ran the Seligman Garage and had- he and his partner, Mr. Lamport, had the Chevron agency there in Seligman. But they were always building sailboats, and Stanley had built a nice sailboat, and we took it to Lake Mead, after Lake Mead was built. And, we'd go there once or twice a year. I'd go down Hualapai Wash; absolutely nothing there in those days, you just went down the rough wash. It was not even, well, it was probably a park, but there were no regulations about camping or anything of that kind. And we would go down Hualapai Wash, and launch this boat. Well usually we'd have another boat with us with a motor, and fish, camp on the banks there. I remember the first time I went down there, got down there just about dusk, and we slept right at the water's edge. There was a sidewinder, a little rattlesnake, chugging along, and I was all for dispensing with the snake, and Stanley says, "No, no just let it go away; it'll go away. If you kill it, why its friends will come around and they'll bite you. So you'd better leave it alone." So I thought all night long in the bedroll about this sidewinder back down(?). I remember one time, we got caught out on the lake in a windstorm, which was really quite bad, and, of course, it swamped our small rowboat that had a gasoline motor on it. So we finally decided to hitch it to the sailboat, which had a small inboard motor, and it took us three or four hours to get back to Hualapai Wash. And we were never quite sure whether we were going to make it or not.
SUSAN ROGERS: Okay. What do you remember about Mrs. Lowell?
HENRY GICLAS: Oh, Mrs. Lowell was a very interesting person. And she would come to Flagstaff quite often. And we would kind of dread it, because she would insist that she wanted to live in the old, old house. And, of course, in Dr. Lowell's will, he recited that she'd have the use of the- what we called in those days, the "B.M". or the "Baronial Mansion" on Lowell Observatory as long as she wanted.
SUSAN ROGERS: Now, where is that?
HENRY GICLAS: That has been torn down. That was just to the north of the twenty-four inch dome, and it was kind of like the old Winchester House over in California; it grew like topsy. It was a two-room place for the observer to get warm to begin with, in the early days in 1894. And then it just grew on to that original house until it was, oh, sixteen or eighteen rooms. The old library, which is now a residence, was part of the rambling building that’s the only part that is left now. But this house was at all different levels, mainly because it was built on the side of the hill. And, Mrs. Lowell would come back to this house, and, of course, it was very- it was never kept up during her absence. And, it was very dusty and rat infested, so that whenever Mrs. Lowell came, why everybody would have to drop everything, and we'd have to clean up the house. And, she would come back, usually with a travelling companion, and stay in the house from anywheres- a few days to several weeks.
And, she had very interesting idiosyncrasies. She still wore a complete black wardrobe in mourning for Percival Lowell up until the time of her death. She, of course, lived many, many years after his death. And, she always traveled with this black habit and black hat and black veil. And, she enjoyed poor eyesight, and what I mean "enjoyed it", she used it as a way of having people wait on her, and for not having to do many things. But the only problem of the eyesight was that she let the lids droop over the pupils and she couldn't see out. But if she would ever open her eyes, she could see very well. And, I remember several instances when- which Marsha Slipher brought her a cake one time. And this was clear across a very, very long room, and there was no way that she couldn't smell or guessed or anything else, but she hadn't opened her eyes and said, "Oh that’s a lovely cake." We laughed(?). We'd catch up on her, occasionally. And I remember one time that my wife, Bernice, when she was living on the hill, baked her a cake and took it up to her, and I think she cut one piece and had it. And then she decided she was going to take that piece of cake back, the rest of the cake back to Boston. And she- I'm sure that the cake was a week or ten days old before she got on the train. But I remember always, we'd always have to put her on the train. And she would get on the train this time with this cake and usually a bowl of cereal, and take whatever food (telephone rings) ______. (The phone call is for Mr. Giclas).
And then one of the last times that Mrs. Lowell was here- Dr. Lowell had a nice 1909 Stevens-Duryea seven passenger touring car; a big red car. The wheels, I believe, were thirty-six inches in diameter, as I remember, the tires were three inches by thirty-six. And she decided to give to a fellow by the name of _______, I think at Santa Barbara, who was with Crystal Ice and Storage, there. He sold Mrs. Lowell some stock in that ice plant and decided to give him the old Stevens-Duryea to ride in the- or to use in the parades of the Santa Barbara festivals. And I've regretted ever since that we didn't just ask Mrs. Lowell to leave the car here in Flagstaff. We could have used it ourselves in our home coming parades and other parades. But anyway, I remember that Stanley Sykes and, we drafted Harold Sykes, to help us- his son, to get this car ready to send over there. Of course, we- all the tires were flat, and we had an awful time. You couldn't buy tires that size any more so we had to vulcanize other tubes together, and finally got the car airborne, and got it running. And I have some movie films of it yet of the old red car. And then the- Mrs. Lowell would not let you take pictures of her except that this particular time, this event, she insisted on riding to town and riding into the boxcar where the old Stevens-Duryea was going for shipment to Santa Barbara. I took the picture of her in the back seat of the car, and the old car, leaving the hill and going down and running into the boxcar.
SUSAN ROGERS: Okay, you want to change to different subjects?
HENRY GICLAS: All right.
END TAPE 1, SIDE 2, BEGIN TAPE 2, SIDE 1
SUSAN ROGERS: Okay.
HENRY GICLAS: Yes. Oh, you were asking me about Dr. Raymond. Yes, Dr. Raymond, of course, came to Flagstaff in the very early days. He was a medical doctor, who maintained an office with Dr. Schermann and Dr. Fronske. Dr. Fronske first and then Dr. Schermann later. And, he was also the company mill physician at the lumber company. And he was a great member- a great friend of my family's from the very early, early days. And he was- I guess supposed to deliver me, but he’d gone back to St. Louis when the event occurred. And so it was Dr. Fronske, I believe that did it. And so Dr. Raymond, as I mentioned before, was in charge for awhile of the hospital there at- where the lumber company- which is on Riordan Road; it's a big two story house that's boarded up just to the west of the Dolan residence now.
And my other aunt, my second aunt became the dietician and, you might say, ran the hospital as the- if there was such a thing as someone in charge. She was the only one that had a residence quarters in the back of the hospital and stayed there day and night.
And it was through Dr. Raymond- that way, that he became quite a friend of the family's. And, Dr. Raymond also then went into the cattle business with the Riordans, and, together, they bought the Howard Sheep Company years ago. And Dr. Raymond was the person who brought many of the Basques over to herd sheep. Among some of the old timers that he brought over, I think, Ramon Aso was one of the early ones, who finally ended up owning Howard Sheep Company. The Auzas, the, the, oh- many other of these early sheepmen. And, during the course of the years, he would expand in the sheep company, and had many pieces of farm property- not farm, ranch property that he would buy as bases for allotments for the sheep. And many of these he would pick up, not purposely on hardship cases, but he was a very magnanimous person in the sense that anyone who was in trouble, he would help them. He would never ask if they would pay it back or- money if they would loan it to them, or whatever he needed, he would just say, "Well, here, if you need this, why take it." And, conversely, when these people were in real trouble or wanted to sell their little homesteads, why they'd always come to Dr. Raymond, and, while he didn't particularly want them, why he would, he would buy them. And as a result, he ended up with many, many pieces of acreage out in the most remote places of Coconino County.
And, of course during his lifetime, he started "The Flagstaff Educational Foundation", and in it he put the land that the Firestone Store (ED: Now part of Heritage Square) is now on. The Boice-Baker Building there was among the first pieces of property he put into this foundation. And the parking lot at the Orpheum Theater, and a few other things that were getting a little revenue from, and some money. And this was the beginnings of the "Raymond Educational Foundation". Of course, after his death, the residual of his estate, after all the other bequests were taken care of, went to the Foundation. And there were something like thirty-two pieces of land that remained, and these, some parcels- there was one parcel, I think almost nine hundred acres down near Mormon Lake, down in that area. And, then in Casner Park there was more, and there was land scattered all over. And over the years, we have liquidated this land and put it in the trust fund that is administered by the Valley Bank, and the income from which is used for scholarships. And there's over a million dollars in the trust fund now, and scholarships in the amount of- oh, from fifty to as high as a hundred and five thousand dollars have been made in different years, depending on the income and earnings of the Foundation. But, Dr. Raymond had many, many friends. He's never, never ever passed a moral judgment on any of them. Some of them might have been considered kind of old reprobates around town, but he helped them as much as he helped anyone else. And, he was very civic minded, and had offered land where the Baker Building is and, and where Sprouse Reitz is. Except for the little corner which used to be the bank, he offered that to the city for a park, but it was refused. And he offered them some other land, in later years, for a park, and it was turned down which is too bad. This, he and people like Dr. Colton, who similarly tried to buy areas in town and give it to the city for parks, and most of these were never followed up and accepted, which I think is too bad.
SUSAN ROGERS: What's his first name?
HENRY GICLAS: His name was Raymond, Raymond O. Raymond.
SUSAN ROGERS: Oh, really?
HENRY GICLAS: Yes.
SUSAN ROGERS: No one seemed to know his first name. Dr. Fronske didn't even know.
HENRY GICLAS: Oh, he didn't? I'm pretty sure, yes, well, I don't know where I got that, but I'm pretty sure that's right now. Try to look it up some place. Yes, well he lived, of course, in the back part of his offices, which were fixed up as living quarters. There was a nice big sitting room to the west with a fireplace, and this is now on Leroux Street just at the alley north of the Santa Fe Depot. This was the early doctors' offices, where Dr. Raymond always maintained the south side as his, and the north side was Fronske and Schermann and then later Dr. Sechrist was in there for many, many years. And he maintained that until his death, even though he wasn't in Flagstaff the last few years of his life, he had moved to Phoenix.
But, again, Dr. Raymond would, would take members of my family and me out to his various ranch holdings, out up to the Pump House Ranch. He was always a great conservationist in the sense that he would usually always have a sack of wheat or alfalfa seed or something in the car. He would find the appropriate place; he would strew it around and make feed and, especially down in south of Parks. He developed some places down there and would do conservation work in that little spring there, Bitter Springs. He made a little lily pond down there in that, and Sycamore Canyon, which was part of one of his allotments. This is where the Boy Scout Camp is now. Then he had places up north of Bellemont. And come take us in his car to these places, and loved to be out in the country. And, as you know, his final request was to be buried very simply in a pine box down on the Pump House Ranch. And he had selected the site, but unfortunately, the I-17 goes right by it. In the days that he- when he was buried there, and when he made that selection, there was no sign of a road there. It was way out in the open all by itself. So, it wasn't foreseen that there would be quite so much traffic in that area. And this was something- I'm sure that another choice would have been made had anyone foreseen that.
SUSAN ROGERS: Okay. Can you tell us a little about George Hochderffer?
HENRY GICLAS: Well, of course I don't know, I was only associated with Hochderffer in the Game Association many, many years ago when we had a Game Association. Ah, Hochderffer, of course, I think his books on Flagstaff and early history speak for themselves. Ah, I would meet him, of course, many places, but, except for those contacts, I didn't associate very much with Mr. Hochderffer. He was either up on his ranch up near the Peaks, or he was busy doing something else. And then the later years, he would spend a lot of time not in Flagstaff in the winters. So, I didn't see him.
I might digress back a minute to the old lumber company. As I recall, the lumber company would offer some of the young people around Flagstaff summer employment. And the summer employment consisted of pulling weeds in the lumber yard, mainly because they did not want the weeds when they died to become- and became flammable, to be fire hazards. And so, there were four or five of us boys that lived up in Milton, that would be hired for ten cents an hour, ten hours a day, seven days- no six days a week. And we worked even on Saturdays. And, I remember that they would take the whole sum of seventy-five cents a week out of your paycheck as medical insurance, you might say. That is if you had any, that was years before there was any industrial insurance, but the company would take seventy-five cents a week out of pay that would be credited to the hospital for its operation. And I remember how I regretted that seventy-five cents a week that was taken out of my pay. (Both laugh.) But, if you can imagine working for a dollar a day, six days a week and we were quite happy. And, of course in those days, old John Yost was the foreman of the lumber yard, and he was really our top boss, except that our straw boss was Robert Riordan, that was Mike Riordan's son. And he was the straw boss, but he was not there too often. But, as you can guess, kids were always playing around the lumber yard having some kind of horse play, but "Old Man Yost", as we called him in those days would catch us and just give us the devil for not working hard.
And the other person up there, general superintendent of the grounds, was John Steinmetz (?), ah, he had two sons that were contemporary with me, Joe and Leo. Leo, for years worked for the city, later died a few years ago. And, we would play as children up in the area that is now where the bank is, the First National Bank. And north of there, that was a big open field, and play baseball there if we weren't playing in the streets. Which, of course in those days, were not paved; it was just plain dirt roads. And the main highway came along in front of the Gables now, and we'd turn at the corner where the new signal to the entrance to the campus is by the library there. We'd turn sharp at right angles and go west up the hill, and, again at the Holiday Inn, we'd turn left and get on the highway. The highway did not come straight down where it does in front of Bob's Hamburger place anymore, Bob's restaurant there. (ED: Bob's Bigboy stood where the Galaxy Restaurant is now).
SUSAN ROGERS: Okay, just one last question. Can you tell me a little bit about the founding of the Pioneer Museum?
HENRY GICLAS: Well, I would really need my notes to do that. It has all been written out.
SUSAN ROGERS: It has, uh huh.
HENRY GICLAS: And, ah, I'd better find that for you, because I have all the papers in my files of the original incorporators. If you would like, I will find them for you.
SUSAN ROGERS: Okay.
HENRY GICLAS: I've been told that there was a historical society here that began very shortly after Flagstaff was founded in the early 1880s. I don't know too much about that, but there must be records of what they did. But there was always some kind of pioneers' historical society, and, I do remember it. They were asking and taping things from my Uncle John Love, many, many years ago, even before I was interested. In those days, I was never, never interested, because I thought I would never be an "old timer". So, ah, the things I do remember is that the present building that the Northern Arizona Pioneers' Historical Society is housed in was the county indigent hospital. And I knew it very well, in the sense, as I mentioned to you earlier in the interview, my aunt was associated with the doctors in Flagstaff, and at one time, she was the person in charge out there. Ah, again Dr. Raymond and Dr. Manning, in those days, asked if she would take the job, as, you might say, superintendent. And, not only was she superintendent, but she was also the head cook and bottle washer. She had quarters, living quarters, again, out there, and supervised the preparation of meals for the people that lived there. And, I wish I could put an exact date on it, ah, it must be some time during World War I, but I can't remember exactly when. But, ah, after it was not used for a county hospital anymore, it was found by the Board of Supervisors that it was cheaper to pay for indigent care other places, it just was left, you might say, to go to rack and ruin. And, it was, at that point, that Harry Metzger got interested in it, and Bill Switzer, Sr. of Switzer's Hardware, and a few of the old timers decided to try to restore it, and they did do this. And, it was through, really, the volunteer hard work of Harry Metzger that the building was renovated. It was in pretty sad shape when he took it over. But, the actual legal formation of the Northern Arizona Pioneers' Historical Society didn't come 'til very recently. In fact, it was around 1961 that it was incorporated. And, the original incorporators, in those days, in 1961 was George Fleming, who, of course married Mamie McMillan, one of the early pioneer persons here. McMillan had the farm where the Museum of Northern Arizona big white old residence house is, ah, that used to be the director's residence; it isn't anymore. And, Bill Switzer, Sr. of Switzer Hardware, and, of course, Harry Metzger, and Ernest Burrus, who lived out in Doney Park and had been here for many, many years, and Laura Runke. Ah, those were the people that incorporated the, the Northern Arizona Historical, Pioneers' Historical Museum. And, now, of course, it's going on as a corporation and, ah, we hope will be in perpetuity.
SUSAN ROGERS: Okay.
END TAPE 2, SIDE 1