Fast and Young

The Fredonia Justice of Peace was a very interesting man, Joseph Brooksby. He had a ranch on the strip where he had raised sheep for years. He had some mountain grazing land up in Utah. Joseph Brooksby was also the Kanab Stake Patriarch. I really loved working with Joe as my judge.

Most days Joe was away from home so his wife Herma would handle my tickets when I sent violators in to see the judge. She did a great job. She was a Pratt and grew up in Fredonia.

One morning as I was leaving home and approaching the Highway 89 I saw a car heading South at a pretty fast pace. I followed the car to the Johnson Wash about 5 miles then realized he was going 85 miles per hour so I stopped him. The driver got out and walked back to meet me.

He was a very distinguished looking older man. I asked him for his drivers license and he gave it to me. He was Seymore Dilworth Young of Salt Lake City, Utah. I recognized him as a member of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles in the Church of JESUS CHRIST of Latter-day Saints. I advised him that he was driving too fast and particularly thru town. His reply was, "Those women in the back seat were talking fast so I was driving fast to keep up with their pace."

I wrote him a ticket and had him go back to see the judge. I felt sure that Herma would recognize who he was and not fine him. He was going to a Stake Conference in Mesa and his wife accompanied by the Welfare Representative and his wife. I told him I was a member of the church so he said, "Brother Johnston if you think I drive fast you ought to follow President David O. Mckay or Apostle Delbert Stapley sometime."

He thanked me for making him aware of his speed very graciously and sincere.

I went back to see the judge later and I asked Herma what she had done to S. Dilworth Young when he came in. She said who and I said who and I said Apostle Young. She hadn't recognized him because, like me, he never uses his first name so she had made him pay a $25 fine. She felt terrible about it that she hadn't recognized him as an aspostle of her church.

Later in 1958 while I was working out of Yuma we had a stake conference and S. Dilworth Young was the visiting authority from Salt Lake. He recognized me in the congregation and came back and talked to me. He assured me that he was still watching his speed all the time.

Then later in 1964 at a Grand Junction, Colorado Stake Conference S. Dilworth Young was our visiting general authority. This was a much larger crowd than the one in Yuma was but before the meeting started he walked back to where I was seated and addressed me as Brother Johnston and again thanked me for that time I stopped him for speeding near Fredonia, Arizona. We had a good visit that last time I saw him.

Rattling Tales

One duty I was given by my leaders was to make all of the many Utah residents that held jobs or ranched in Arizona get Arizona License plates on their car. They used our roads and highways but didn't help pay for the road upkeep.


A lot of people that worked at the Whitey Brothers saw mill south of Fredonia lived in Kanab, Oderville, Glendale of Mount Karmel in southern Utah. Many Utah residents had ranches on the Arizona Strip, the Kaibab and in House Rock Valley.

Most of them working at the sawmill have been forced to "double plate" by the men at the checking station but some have avoided it. When they were legal they had plates from both states. The ranchers were the ones that gave me the most trouble because they had been getting by without "double plating" for generations.

One hot summer day in 1955 I drove out to Pipe springs National Monument and as I drove up to the place where people filled water tanks on trucks a truck was pulling away with a full load. He had no plate on his truck at all so I stopped him right in front of the fort. I proceeded to write him a ticket. I was parked behind his truck and was writting the ticket on my car hood. He was standing beside me so I could ask him all the questions I needed answered. My car motor was running and vibrated quite a bit. For some reason I looked down at my feet and saw that a large rattle snake had crawled up and coiled right between my feet! I quietly and slowly took out my pistol and warned the other guy not to move. I shot the snake right thru his head and killed him instantly. The snake had apparently been sleeping around the base of the huge cottonwood paplar tree about 5 feet from my car. The vibration of the car motor running had enticed him to come nearer. He was the biggest rattlesnake I have ever encountered, 10 ratles and a button!

The rancher not only got a ticket but a good scare too.

I had learned about the fact that vibration drew rattlesnakes when I worked on a road to an old mine. It was when I was 16 years old, my dad and I were working on a road about 30 miles south of our home in Bryce, Arizona. They needed the mine in use for the war effort.

I ran a jackhammer driling holes in huge boulders that were in the way. We drilled holes all day then they put dynamite charges in the holes and blew the rocks up after we cleared out. Dad ran a bulldozer to make the road bed.

I worked with an older Mexican driller nd we had a compressor sitting near by to run the jackhammers. We had been drilling on this large boulder for quite a while when we stopped to change bits. We looked around and rattlesnakes were all around enjoying the vibration. A snake den was apparently under this rock. We spent a while killing snakes. It was on the south slope of the Santa Theresa Mountains.

Later that summer I spotted a guy that was with me when I killed the snakes at Pipe Springs, so I followed him. He was in a pickup that wasn't "double plated". I noticed he was driving very erratic; weaving alot.

I stopped him and noticed he was drunk. I talked to him for awhile ten I said "I am going to have to lock you up for drunk driving" He was already mad at me so he said, "Like hell you are!" He was standing with his back toward the bar-pit, a gentle slope for about 20 feet or so. I just flat handed him right in the chest and he went head over heels down the berm. When he landed I was on him and had the handcuffs on him before he knew what hit him. I locked him up for drunk and reckless driving and ticketed him for not having Arizona license plates.

He was a young man in early 20's from a big raching family in Orderville, Utah. He paid a big fine and was released the next morning. I never had any more contact with him.

Swimming Exercise Class

Police Work - Carjacker

In the spring of 1955 while I was hanging out at the only Fredonia checking station, talking to Joe Billingsley who had just been transferred from Gripe, the phone rang. The Flagstaff patrol officer reported that we were to be on the look out for a car of which they gave an accurate description. A couple had been headed North from Flagstaff on Highway 89 and had stopped and gave a ride to a young man hitchhiking. They had proceeded North a short distance when the hitchhiker pulled a pistol from his bag and ordered the driver to pull over. It was about 30 miles from Flagstaff. He ordered the couple out of the car and drove off continuing North. The couple flagged down a south bound car and returned to Flagstaff and reported the incident to the police.

Joe and I moved our signs around so any North bound car would have to pull into the checking station. We only stopped south bound cars for agriculture and license inspections ordinarily. We watched each car going north very carefully but after about 2 hours we hadn't seen the stolen car. Deputy Sheriff Slim and I decided to go check the two small motels in Fredonia. At the Baker Motel on the south edge of town we found a car parked in front of one of the units that fit the description. We asked Jim Baker, the proprietor, about who checked into a number three unit. He said it was a single young man.

Slim went around to the back of the unit and I knocked on the front door. A young man came to the door and I placed him under arrest putting handcuffs on him The gun was on the dresser.

We placed him in our little jail and reported to Flagstaff by phone that we had a culprit. The next day Slim and I took the prisoner to back to Flagstaff and placed him in the Coconino County Jail.

Curves of Kaibab

One of the interesting parts of being the first Arizona Highway Patrolman on the Arizona Strip area was situations on the highways on the Kaibab Mountain. The word Kaibab was an Indian word meaning “mountain lying down.” There were no peaks on the Kaibab, just a ridge running from near the Arizona -Utah border southwest only to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. This ridge was over 3000 feet above the Houserock Valley on the East and 2000 feet or so above the Fredonia area on the west.

Highway 89 wound up 15 miles from the Houserock Valley to Jacobs Lake climbing most of the way through small canyons and ridges. From Jacobs Lake it was pretty level for about 10 miles in a northwesterly direction then it dropped rapidly down for 5 miles to a sage brush flat 15 miles from Fredonia.

Highway 67 went south from Jacob Lake through a heavy forest of Ponderosa Pines most of the way. The last 15 miles before entering the North Rim of the Grand Canyon National Park was big open meadows called VT park.

One of the rare sights to see in the Kaibab forest was a Kaibab White Tailed Squirrel. I would see them often except in winter.

After I was in the area a short time my Sargent brought me a bunch of wooden crosses. I was instructed to place a cross on the highway shoulder where a highway death had occurred.

I asked the the Highway maintenance crew where death had occurred prior to that time. They told me about “Death Curve” where I was to put up 7 crosses. This was a curve near the bottom of the road going down toward Houserock Valley. The road made an almost 90 degree turn where the canyon turned sharply. If you didn't slow down and negotiate the curve you would run into a solid cliff. The road was pretty straight approaching the curve so many accidents had happened there.

The 7 crosses were for a wreck where 5 members of one family had died. There had been two other accidents where a single person had been killed.

The maintenance crew told me of the names of other curves on the road all going Southwest on Highway 89.

About five miles from Jacobs Lake was a curve they called “chicken curve.” Several years earlier a semi truck loaded with live chickens in cages had wrecked going too fast and had scattered chickens everywhere. The people from Kanab, Utah and Fredonia had rushed up to the wreck and salvaged a lot of chickens.

The insurance covered the lost chickens so the local people had a lot of chickens.

Truckers seemed to pick up too much speed going southeast from Jacobs Lake. The curve after the “chicken curve” going southeast was called “potato curve.” A potato farmer up in Idaho had a bobtailed truck so he would haul potatoes South into Arizona on his own and sell them. In the fall of 1953 he had a wreck on “potato curve” and scattered potatoes all over the area. The Kanab and Fredonia people salvaged the potatoes and had a lot of potatoes to eat that winter. The insurance company took care of the farmer. He got a new truck and I got acquainted with him at the checking station as he came through with his potatoes several times each fall. I reminded him to slow down on “potato curve.”

In the fall of 1954 a big semi truck wrecked on the first curve southwest of Jacob's Lake about 2 miles. He was loaded with boxes of prunes from California.

I had always thought prunes were just dried plums but these were real prunes picked by “California prune pickers.” They were big juicy prunes.

When word got out a lot of people came from Kanab and Fredonia and salvaged boxes of prunes. We got a few boxes and Wanda and I put them up in jars. We are prunes for several year from that wreck. They were delicious.

I was able to name that curve “Prune curve.” None of the prune salvagers suffered from constipation.

None of the truck drivers ever got injured in these wrecks.

On the way to the North Rim on Highway 67, the first 20 miles or so is pretty straight but just before you entered VT part, where all of the large meadows are, the road winds around some. One Saturday afternoon on one of the curves a young couple in a convertible with the top down wrecked going real fast.

The couple were from California an a weekend visit to the Grand Canyon. They were both killed when the car flipped over onto it's top and went scooting off into a small meadow on it's top.

I found a ticket in the glove compartment written hours before on old 66 highway near Seligman by Chick Harddup, a highway patrolman.

I named this curve “convertible curve” and put two white crosses on it.

In the fall of 1956 the Mackelprangs were moving their cows from their ranch adjacent to the Buffalo ranch in the Houserock Valley back to their home place in the Kanab area in Utah. They had hauled their horses from Kanab in a bobtailed truck and sorted the cows and calves. They had loaded the cows only in a big semi cattle trucks and headed for Kanab toward evening.

Northwest of Jacob's Lake about 10 miles is a rest stop and view point where you can overlook Fredonia and Kanab in the distance. A couple of hundred yeard past this view point the road starts winding down a canyon. The cattle truck was going too fast as he went into the first curve so he flipped to his left side and went plowing through the pinon pine and juniper trees on the left side for quite a distance down a ridge.

I came upon the accident shortly after it happened. The small truck carrying the Mackelprangs and their horses was right behind the cattle truck. They found that 6 cows were killed. They unloaded their horses and were able to herd the remaining twenty or so cows down the road to a corral at the bottom of the mountain. I had the inspection station operator warn each South bound car about cattle in the road so no one ran into the cattle. It was getting dark by then.

The truck driver wasn't hurt. I got the necessary information for my reports and then I wondered; what to do with the six cows. The driver said “Don't worry about them. The Navajos will take care of them.”

Earlier in my tour of duty there I had learned that if a Navajo Indian finds a dead animal, they take everything but the feet and a pile of the stuff they squeeze out of the guts. From time to time I had found 4 cows feet and an ant hill like pile of what was in the guts. I also found deer and sheep remains.

A big wrecker had to come from Cedar City, Utah to set cattle trucks on its wheels. I drove on home and had supper and when I came back to assist the wrecker I found 6 sets of four feet and 6 piles of green stuff from the guts where the six cows had been laying. The Navajos that worked at the saw mill in Fredonia had been on their way home to spend Sunday at their homes on the reservation, saw the dead cows and helped themselves.

The people of Kanab and Fredonia didn't get to salvage any beef but the Navajo people sure did well. That curve is now “Cow curve.”