The Devils Highway

Devils Lake winds reach speeds of 60 mph

By: Kevin Bonham , Grand Forks Herald

DEVILS LAKE — Fierce, cold, wet winds gusting to 60 mph whipped white-caped waves 6 to 7 feet high Tuesday across N.D. Highway 57 just south of Devils Lake, forcing the North Dakota Department of Transportation to close the state highway leading to the casino and points to the south until further notice.

With snowplows and other heavy equipment pushing tree trunks, branches and other debris from the roadway, pilot vehicles led local traffic along Highway 57 on Tuesday from the city of Devils Lake to the intersection of N.D. Highway 20, where they were detoured. As they worked, side-dump trucks hauled hundreds of loads of clay and other road-building materials through the traffic and to the construction zone.

“You just can’t believe what it’s like out there,” said Devils Lake Chamber of Commerce public information officer Tim Heisler, who drove to the casino for a meeting in the morning.

During daylight hours, local traffic on Highway 57 was being detoured along Bureau of Indian Affairs roads at Spirit Lake Nation. However, most of that traffic was expected to be prohibited overnight, as the National Weather Service forecast gusts of up to 60 to 65 mph.

Officials also closed the only road to Grahams Island State Park until further notice, as persistent winds and rain eroded the roadway.

Amtrak also suspended passenger rail service through Grand Forks, Devils Lake and Rugby, N.D., as the winds pushed waves over the tracks on two water-threatened bridges east of Churchs Ferry, N.D., area.

Devils Lake, which has risen by 32 feet and quadrupled in size since 1993, surpassed a record elevation of 1,454.2 feet late last week. Unofficial gauge readings Tuesday at Creel Bay indicated it bounced around the 1,454.3 to 1,454.4 mark, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The National Weather Service forecasts a 50 percent chance the lake will surpass 1,454.8 feet this summer, just more than 3 feet below the 1,458-foot level at which it would begin flowing naturally from Stump Lake through the Tolna Coulee to the Sheyenne River.

The Devil's Highway | DesertUSA

El Camino del Diablo – the Highway of the Devil – once a 250-mile link between the northwestern frontier of Mexico and the colonies of California, began at Caborca, in Mexico’s state of Sonora. It extended north northwest across the desert to what is today the United States/Mexican border. It turned west northwest and followed the border through a phantasmagoric landscape of organ pipe cactus, desert flats, drifting sand dunes, ancient lava flows and searing summer heat, passing through the southern edges of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, and the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range. Marked by graves and headstones, it reached a merciful end at Yuma, Arizona.

The landscape has changed little since the coming of the early Spanish explorers, who chronicled their own passage across the region but gave us few insights into the local tribes they encountered—the Sand People or Sand Papagos, Yuhas and others.

El Camino del Diablo entered history when Francisco Vasquez de Coronado arrived in 1540, having led his famed expedition from Mexico City to begin exploring the Southwest in search of the mythical seven cities of Cibola with their streets of gold. At an Indian village near where Caborca now stands, Coronado heard of a juncture of two major rivers some three to four weeks travel to the west. He dispatched one of his captains, Melchoir Diaz, to lead a side expedition to investigate the report.

Diaz assembled his party and supplies and set out across the desert, the first Spanish “entrada,” or excursion, into the region. The hardships they encountered prompted them to name the route “El Camino del Diablo.” Padre Eusibio Kino, a Jesuit priest, undertook the next major exploration of the area late in the 17th century. He mapped the area and located most of the water stops. Juan Bautista de Anza led 200 colonists from Tubac, Arizona, across part of the trail in 1775 on his way to found the city of San Francisco.

Conquistadores seemed to manage relatively well in the harsh, desert climate, perhaps because many of them had come from Extremadura, an arid region in western Spain, where hardship and poverty forged endurance.

U. S. pioneers from the east, especially the gold hungry 49er’s, seemed to fare less well. With water holes three to four days apart, they struggled to carry enough water for people and animals. (In the 120 degree Fahrenheit heat of summer, a person requires two gallons of water a day just to survive.) A breakdown, injury or sickness that cost a delay of a day or two on the trail could mean calamity. The gold seekers most often crossed during the summer, when temperatures climbed to fearsome levels, but also when marauding Indians retreated to the cooler high country and when monsoon season rains filled at least some of the few tinajas, or water holes.

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