Everett Ruess at Veit Springs near Flagstaff, Arizona
Serving as a homestead and a later rest stop for Everett Ruess' introduction to the Intermountain West as a solo traveler, Veit Springs rests on the side of Arizona's highest mountain, the San Francisco Peaks.
Just north of Flagstaff, Arizona sits in the San Francisco Peaks, or "Dook'o'oosłííd," The Summit that Never Melts, to the Navajo Nationa. In the year 1891, German immigrant Ludwig Veit received a patent for a 160-acre homestead where he and his family constructed a cabin and other structures at what came to be called Veit Springs. Randolph (Pat) Jenks, a student at the Evans Ranch School, a boys preparatory school in Mesa, Arizona, purchased the property from Veit’s relatives in 1930. Jenks, and his classmate Tad Nichols, enjoyed their summers in Flagstaff when the school summered up North. In 1931 the two boys encountered Everett Ruess on his journey through northern Arizona, inviting him to join them back on the homestead.
Everett Ruess was seventeen when he was picked up near Cameron, Arizona, by Jenks and Nichols. Everett was in bad shape, suffering from his history of anemia and other physical degradation from the desert environment. Tad Nichols, famous photographer of the Colorado Plateau, snapped a photo of Everett and Pat loading his gear, his dog Curly, and Burro Pegasus, into Jenks’ truck before they all set on their way to Jenks’ Deerwater Ranch on the San Francisco Peaks. While Everett was at Veit Springs, he bonded with Jenks over his love for ornithology, the study of birds, and their mutual love for art and the Southwest. Everett created a block print painting and described Jenks’ fascination with his art in a letter home. In fact, Jenks was intrigued enough to purchase one of Everett’s block prints of some native Cliff Dwellings. He enjoyed his new friends and wrote a letter about his “idyllic days” at Deerwater Ranch. Here, Everett escaped the traditional aridness of the Intermountain West and described the environment of the ranch as “cool and bracing” in a letter to his family on June 8th, 1931. Among Everett’s belongings in Davis Gulch was an unsent letter that expressed his “true spirit of delight, exaltation, [and] sense of being more than a man” that he experienced at Veit Springs.
Everett later traversed the Grand Canyon and resided throughout northeast Arizona, returning home later that year. He set off again to the region in 1932, one of the only years his journey was successfully documented.
In the 1970s, The United States Forest Service aimed to demolish the cabin Veit hand-built, but the Flagstaff community successfully advocated for its relocation just west of the city's downtown. The Veit Cabin relocation by the Arizona National Guard moved the cabin to its current position within Thorpe Park in Flagstaff, Arizona, just South of Francis Short Pond. Since 1988, the new cabin location has facilitated educational events regarding natural and cultural studies of the landscape. Meanwhile, the cabin’s former site at Veit Springs remains a beautiful spot among the tall aspens on the Veit Springs Hiking Trail where tourists can experience the bracing environment that Everett described, as well as Indigenous petroglyphs and abandoned pumphouses from its early days in history.
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