McNary, Arizona, was a sawmill town. Although it actually sprang up as a mill town around the turn of the 20th century, one day I saw it as it might have been in the 1880s. A mist of rain fell, and five men rode into town in ankle-length slickers and turned-down Stetson hats. I saw the Cahill gang coming down main street and I knew they had come to take over the town. I couldn’t call it McNary, because it would not have existed. So I named my town Ponderosa, after the big Ponderosa pines that furnished planks for so many houses in the White Mountains and throughout the United States.
I wrote that scene first. I had no idea where the novel was going, but I knew the Cahills had come to town.
The Ponderosas grew thick and large, as you can see by the photo. This was probably in the 1950s.
The roads were mostly covered with cinders, as the area has many cinder cones that were easily mined for the wherewithal to keep the roads manageable. This photo would be much like the so-called Mormon Mail Road that went between Fort Apache and Saint Johns. In fact, most of the roads in and out of my fictional Ponderosa would have looked about like this. Not much like a John Ford movie, eh?
More about the making of Guns of Ponderosa in Part II. Coming soon.
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