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 At What's Left Of Mohawk Station, Even The Ghosts Are At Rest. By Kevin Franklin A MORE PERFECT moment I cannot imagine. The early morning light is fading from purple to orange as the sun begins to rise. From my vantage point in a wash of clean, white, granite sand at the foot of the Mohawk Mountains, I can see across the San Cristobal Valley to the east. Brittle bush sprouting golden flowers line the wash and a grove of lush ironwood trees surround me. A distant wren is greeting the sunrise. I have a sense of absolute peace. However, if I could turn the clock back 122 years, this place would be the site of absolute terror. Josephine Clifford describes in her book, Overland Tales, a murder and robbery here that drove a Texas woman to madness.
She tells Clifford the story of how she and her husband were employed doing odd jobs by a Mr. Hendricks at Mohawk Station. Three weeks before Clifford's arrival, two Mexican men came to Mohawk Station seeking shelter from a cold and storming night. Mr. Hendricks drove them off, only to hire them for work several days later. While Hendricks was napping, the two men stole into his room, murdered and robbed him. When the Texas woman (Clifford never reveals her name) and her husband found the dead Mr. Hendricks, the husband ordered his wife to hide in the hills while he hiked the 25 miles to get help. While he was gone, the marauders returned to finish looting the station. They almost stumbled into the frightened woman's hiding place, but she managed to avoid detection. After they left, a pack of coyotes showed up and tried to get into the house to gnaw on the late Mr. Hendricks. When one coyote jumped up on the window sill, something flew at him from inside. Thinking Mr. Hendricks had returned from the dead, the poor woman fainted dead away and was still in a state of shock when her husband found her. As it turns out, the coyote had merely managed to catapult a cracker box when it jumped on the sill. Nevertheless, the Texas woman never recovered. Clifford writes that she continued to lay in her bed, pale as a ghost and quaking. " 'The poor woman,' echoed the station-keeper, 'those two greasers have killed her just as dead as if they had beaten her brains out on the spot,' " Clifford writes.
At one time, this forgotten corner of the world would have been the only thing on the minds of folks with overheating engines. Driving out here in the deep desert, Mohawk would have been a godsend. Rummaging through the debris of the gas station, we find a pile of flat-head, six-cylinder head gaskets--a likely part to replace after overheating. The gasket is almost in usable condition, but most of the vehicles it would fit have long-since gone to the scrap yard. This narrow gap between a long, and otherwise impassable mountain range has been a natural route since as long as people have known the area. The Butterfield Overland Stage ran through here. In fact, that's how the mountains got their name, writes Byrd Howell Granger in Arizona's Names. The men who built the stage came from upstate New York and named the range for something familiar, despite there being no Mohawks in the area. Mohawk's past is a turbulent one. In 1871, station manager John Kilbride committed suicide by taking poison and leaping into the station well. Shortly after that, the lead horses of a six-horse coach fell into the same well, Granger writes. These ghosts seem to have left Mohawk. I find a peaceful dichotomy between the forgotten settlement and the volley of traffic racing down Interstate 8 just a quarter mile away. This may have been a place of terror, despair and mishap for folks long gone, but it suits me just fine.
Getting There
Take exit 54 off Interstate 8, 60 miles west of Gila Bend. Follow
Old Highway 80 a quarter mile west and keep an eye out for the
really old Highway 80 on your left. The remains of Mohawk
are scattered around the area.
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Clifford's book follows her journey west from New Mexico to California.
In 1876, Clifford and her group are a half-day's hard ride east
of Mohawk Station when they encounter an hysterical woman.
Meandering around our campsite, all traces of Mr. Hendricks have
vanished. In fact, it's unclear exactly where Mohawk Station was.
The simple adobe structure has long-since washed away. However,
we do find the remains of Old Highway 80 and what folks from the
1950s would have called Mohawk. The decomposing foundation of
a gas station and a few piles of debris are all that remain of
the old town site. Even the original highway is beginning to crumble.
I can just make out the ghost of a faded median line.
