{"id":524,"date":"2019-05-05T12:09:45","date_gmt":"2019-05-05T16:09:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/hell-spring2019\/?page_id=524"},"modified":"2019-05-05T12:17:19","modified_gmt":"2019-05-05T16:17:19","slug":"the-forbidding-reputation-and-hypnotic-scenery-of-the-devils-highway","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/hell-spring2019\/the-forbidding-reputation-and-hypnotic-scenery-of-the-devils-highway\/","title":{"rendered":"The Forbidding Reputation and Hypnotic Scenery of the Devil\u2019s Highway"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Saguaro and blooming globemallow in Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge.<\/span>Credit<\/span>Credit<\/span>Michael Benanav for The New York Times<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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The Forbidding Reputation and Hypnotic Scenery of the Devil\u2019s Highway<\/span><\/h1>\n<\/div>\n
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By\u00a0Michael Benanav,\u00a0New York Times, <\/em><\/span>April 29, 2019<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

If your timing is right, along this 130-mile dirt road in the Sonoran Desert you may see blankets of flowers along with sad reminders of history.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n

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While filling out a permit application to drive El Camino del Diablo \u2014 a dirt road that cuts through 130 miles of saguaro-studded desert between Yuma and Ajo, Ariz. \u2014 I marveled at the hazards it warned I might encounter along the way, including \u201cpermanent, painful, disabling, and disfiguring injury or death due to high explosive detonations from falling objects such as aircraft, aerial targets, live ammunition, missiles, bombs, and other similar dangerous situations.\u201d I might also stumble across warheads embedded in the ground, not to mention rattlesnakes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Still, I knew from a previous trip that while\u00a0the Camino del Diablo<\/a>\u00a0may feel like a\u00a0death-defying excursion\u00a0into forbidding territory,\u00a0it\u2019s actually quite safe. The road \u2014 which is on the National Register of Historic Places, and passes through the vast Sonoran expanses of the Barry M. Goldwater bombing range,\u00a0Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 is surprisingly well maintained and no special skills are needed to navigate it. The scenery is vast and mesmerizing. Ocotillos sprout from arid basins, their spiky tendrils and bright red blossoms swaying in the breeze like some kind of weird desert anemone. There are sand dunes and lava flows and knife-edged mountains slicing skyward from the desert floor. Owls roost in saguaro cactuses, endangered antelopes browse sparse grasses, bighorn sheep leap among rugged crags.<\/p>\n

I went in late March, hoping to see desert wildflowers in bloom. Though it\u2019s possible to make the drive in one ridiculously long day, it\u2019s better to go slowly, so I took three days, camping along the way.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n