Salt River Explorer

On a one hundred and fifteen degree August afternoon, a Saturday, I attempted to drive along the dry Salt River bed west of Central Avenue in Phoenix. Actually, it is impossible to “drive along” the river bed because the city roads that parallel the bed, on both the north and south sides, are in most places at least a half mile away. In order to stay with the bed I had to steer a zigzag course, crossing the bed every few miles on streets carried by bridges or laid within the bed. These latter streets bear bright yellow signs warning, “Do not enter when flooded.”

For most of the first six miles west of Central Avenue, on both sides of the bed, the land between the bed and the nearest parallel street is occupied by landfills and open pits where aggregate–sand, stone, and rock–is quarried.

The sky and distant mountains were quite beautiful that day. The landscape was not and won’t be on any day in the near future.

I hoped to approach the spot where the waters of the Salt once flowed into the Gila River, but it seemed that the closest I could get by car was a graffiti-strewn concrete barrier on the Gila River Indian Reservation. The river bed is between the barrier and the mountains in the distance. It was far too hot for a hike.

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