Author's personal recollection and photos, including pertinent newspaper clippings. Descriptions of ranches, businesses and biographical details.

Ruth (Pownall) Gilpin at the age of 10 helped established the town of Paulden with her family. As of the date of this writing in 2010 at the age of 96, she has lived for 86 years in Paulden. In keeping with the value she places on family and history, she wanted to leave her children and grandchildren and the future generations a glimpse of what life was like before they were born. She also wanted them to know and remember who "Grandma Ruth" was...

"For sixty million years, the Gila River, longer than the Hudson and the Delaware combined, has shaped the ecology of the Southwest from its source in New Mexico to its confluence with the Colorado River in Arizona. Today, for at least half its length, the Gila is dead, like so many of the West's great rivers, owing to overgrazing, damming, and other practices. This richly documented cautionary tale narrates the Gila's natural and human history. Now...

Most people know Ursula K. Le Guin for her extraordinary science fiction and fantasy writing. Fewer know just how pervasive Taoist themes are to so much of her work. And in Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching, we are treated to Le Guin's unique take on Taoist philosophy's founding classic. Reflecting more than forty years of Le Guin's personal study and contemplation, her rendering of the text is a brilliant testament to her deep-seated understanding of Taoist...

In 1864, the beautiful park-like basin under Thumb Butte was surveyed, and the town that is now Prescott was laid out along Granite Creek where gold had been panned. Twice designated the capital of the newly established Territory of Arizona, Prescott suffered a devastating fire in July 1900 that destroyed the downtown district, but the blaze afforded the town?s resilient citizens the opportunity to rebuild in more durable brick and stone. Since then,...