Re: Arizona Mineral Belt Railroad - the rest of the story

A few corrections. The AMBRR ran south along the bottom of Clark's Valley, this was before the lakes were there. The sawmill called Mill No 2 was at MP 16, which was 12 crow miles from Flagstaff. There were actually two mills, Mill No 2 was on the Lake Mary Road side of the valley, below the current upper dam; it was built in July 1888, and last mentioned in April 1894. The second, Greenlaw Mill was built at the mouth of Babbitt Draw, which is above the upper dam, on the side of the valley away from the road; it started operation in May 1899, and burned in June 1900. It was finally closed in 1904 when the lower Lake Mary dam was enlarged and the valley was flooded.

The FLM RR, built in about 1917, ran above the Lower Lake Mary between the lake and the current highway. It went down the Narrows Boat Ramp road and crossed the valley at that point; this high bridge is south of the current upper dam, which was built in the late 1930s. Just after crossing the drainage, it was laid on top of the AMBRR, for about a mile, and then exited the valley to the southwest. The Mineral Belt, however, continued along the valley floor all the way to the upper (south) end of the upper lake. From Lake Mary Road, one can see where it exited the valley; it ran through the woods to Pine Grove Campground Road, which is built on top of the grade for a few hundred feet. It comes out from under the road, and the Arizona Trail is on the grade for about 1.5 miles; at that point, the Trail turns west and is on top of the FLM RR for another about 1.5 miles. Eventually the Mineral Belt goes under the FLM RR - this is the 'branching grade' the author says he hasn't yet explored.

There are only two sections of Mineral Belt that have never had anything else on top or were a different railroad. One starts in Upper Lake Mary where the FLM leaves the valley, to the point three miles south of Pine Grove Campground Road where the FLM again is on top of it. The other starts in a meadow above Mormon Lake, where the road drops down into the lake area. The FLM leaves the top of the AMB, and goes on the east side of the drainage; the AMB was on the west side of that drainage, probably under the current road. At the bottom of the drainage, the FLM goes under the road, and the AMB drops down into the lakebed, crossing below Diary Spring. The AMB is pristine all the way to Fulton Canyon, when the FLM again runs on top of it. The AMB (with FLM on top) branches in Fulton Canyon and runs up a side canyon, into Bear Park, where it curved to the southeast and ended. My saying is, if you didn't use a metal detector, you found the wrong railroad. The AMB RR is very obscure, but it did use an unusual spike, we call hollow-back - they have a groove down the back side, for an unknown reason. They were also used by the Central Arizona Ry in several areas, but they are a dead giveaway of Mineral Belt grade.

I have made a .kmz file which can be downloaded at [www.dropbox.com] This file can be loaded into Google Earth, and shows the path of the Arizona Mineral Belt RR to within a few tens of feet, usually much better.