A score of years ago Flagstaff[68] was chiefly known to the traveler as the gateway to the Grand Cañon of the Colorado, 70 miles to the northwest. One may still reach that marvelous chasm by automobile from Flagstaff, arriving at Grand View after 5 or 6 hours’ driving, now through a park-like forest of yellow pine, now across an open plateau region with alluring views of far-off mountain ranges and of the Painted Desert. The completion of the railroad spur from Williams to the Grand Cañon, however, put a quietus upon the operation of the horse stages from Flagstaff; and since the passing of the Grand Cañon business the town has cut small figure in tourist itineraries, its energies since being concentrated on the less precarious profits from lumber, cattle and wool. Nevertheless, its situation in a clearing of the beautiful Coconino National Forest, 7000 feet above the sea makes it a convenient base for visiting certain attractions of a remarkable nature thereabout, as lava beds, ice caves, extinct volcanoes, prehistoric cliff[69] and cinder-cone dwellings, the Painted Desert, and the famous San Francisco Peaks, fabled home of the Hopi Katchinas and the scene of many an Indian legend. The town has several hotels of a modest sort, and is on the line of the National Old Trails transcontinental motor highway; and if you have your own car or the wherewithal to rent one in Flagstaff, you can be very happy in this neighborhood for a week or two. The town itself, with a population of a couple of thousand, has a certain picturesqueness of an up-to-date frontier fashion, in which automobiles and soda-pop largely take the place of ponies, pistols and “forty-rod,” for at this writing the hand of “bone dry” Prohibition rests paternally upon Arizona. Especially interesting are Saturday nights, when the streets are likely to be thronged with lumberjacks, cowpunchers and ranchers—American and Mexican—come to town to swap news and trade, to see the “shows,” play pool and listen to the “rag” of blatant gramophones. A Navajo or two, standing in the glare of the electric lights, may add a touch of aboriginal color to the scene—teamsters for some desert trading post.