Vanished Arizona
Arizona is lucky to have had such an excellent memorialist as Martha Summerhayes. Her bestselling book, Vanished Arizona: Recollections of My Army Life was first published in 1908 and hasn’t been out of print since. She was born Martha Dunham in Nantucket, Massachusetts on October 21, 1844.
From 1871 to 1873 Martha Dunham stayed with a German general and his family in Hanover, Germany and studied literature. She said she loved the grandeur of military balls and wound up marrying Civil War veteran John Wyer Summerhayes, a friend her brother, soon after she returned to America.
Their first duty station was Cheyenne, Wyoming but in a few months they were transferred to Arizona Territory. Her descriptions of their four-year tour of duty in Vanished Arizona make the reader feel the heat, thirst, and danger that she went through and yet her narrative skills, beautiful descriptions, and positive outlook keep the book from being a whiny or bitter tale. Through the course of their travels to Fort Mohave, Fort Whipple, Camp Verde, Camp Apache, and Fort McDowell the officer’s wife came to love Arizona’s beautiful landscapes, strange attractions, and Hispanic and Native American culture and customs.
Martha Summerhayes gave birth to Henry Roswell “Harry” Summerhayes at Camp Apache on January 27th, 1875 with no nurses, no running water, and a military doctor with no experience with newborns and their mothers.
Everyone who wants to know the personal history of Arizona should read Vanished Arizona. The book’s ending is a perfect example of why this is one of my favorites:
Sometimes I hear the still voices of the desert: they seem to be calling me through the echoes of the past. I hear in fancy the wheels of the ambulance crunching the small broken stones of the malapais or grating swiftly over the gravel of the smooth white roads of the river bottoms. I hear the rattle of the ivory rings on the harnesses of the six-mule team; I see the soldiers marching on ahead; I see my white tent, so inviting after a long day's journey. But how vain these fantasies! Railroad and automobile have annihilated distance, the army life of those years is past and gone, and Arizona as we knew it has vanished from the face of the Earth.