What’s in a name? A mystery, it seems

I arrived at the state Capitol early because I wasn’t sure exactly where to find the Arizona State Board of Geographic and Historic Names.

I’d taken the elevator to the seventh floor of the Executive Tower, and back down, and then trotted down the hallway to the 1938 addition to the building, up a curving staircase to the second floor, and through a set of double doors to the old Supreme Court chambers.

The room was packed, every chair taken, TV news crews set up across the back.

The board’s only staff member, research librarian Ryan Ehrfurth, told me later that typically two or three people show up for these meetings. Sometimes no one does.

But it isn’t often that the board deals with an issue that taps into a national controversy.

I was there to follow up on a proposal to honor former Gov. Rose Mofford, whose life I had written about often over the years. Her longtime friend Roberto Reveles had told me at her memorial service that he had submitted a petition to rename the Jefferson Davis National Highway in Arizona after Mofford, the state’s first female governor.

I expected a meeting, some discussion, maybe a vote. I did not expect to stumble into a mystery, one that would send me off in search of so many elusive answers, my investigator’s hat at the ready.

It turns out there was plenty of interest in changing the name of the highway, but not all of it because of Mofford. Some people wanted to change the name because it honored Davis, the president of

the Confederacy, and there was a growing movement to remove Confederate monuments and designations from state land.

In addition to Reveles’ petition, Leonard Clark, a community activist who has been avid about removing such memorials, submitted a second petition to rename the highway for civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

A third petition, from Marisa Scionti and Shannah Redmon, simply asked that Davis’ name be removed from the route.

“The name Jefferson Davis represents racist ideas,” Scionti told the board. “That’s what he’s known for: being president of the Confederacy and working to preserve slavery.”

Suddenly, a mystery

No one at the meeting spoke up against the idea of taking Davis’ name off the highway.

But there was a problem, a couple of them actually.

All three petitions contained the same error. Each designated U.S. Route 60 as their target when it was actually U.S. Route 80 that the Arizona State Highway Commission had designated in 1961 as the Jefferson Davis National Highway.

And that route has been truncated and decommissioned over the years.

Adding to the confusion, there’s a Jefferson Davis monument on U.S. Route 60 at Peralta Trail just outside Gold Canyon. Chiseled into the granite face, the monument reads, “Jefferson Davis Highway No. 70.”

Wait, No. 70? Not 60 or 80. No wonder people were confused. (And what if No. 70 wasn’t a highway at all, but the number of the monument? No wonder was confused.)

While this board can rename highways and geographic features, it doesn’t have the authority to remove monuments.

It was a more than a century ago, long before this board or even the Arizona Department of Transportation existed, that the United Daughters of the Confederacy had set out to name a transcontinental highway to honor Davis in the South that would run parallel to the Lincoln Highway in the North.

They marked it along the way with roadside monuments.

But which highway 80?

IIn Arizona, at that time, U.S. Route 80 snaked from east of Douglas to Tombstone, Benson, Tucson, Florence, up to Mesa and through Phoenix to Gila Bend and Yuma and into California, often sharing the route with other highways.

But Ehrfurth explained that U.S. Route 80 had been decommissioned in 1989, its status changed to State Route 80. Now all that remains of that highway is a less than 120-mile stretch from the New Mexico line to Benson, where it now ends.

Most of the rest of it became part of U.S. Route 60, including the stretch of highway where the Jefferson Davis monument sits.

So, Ehrfurth said, “The question is, when U.S. Highway 80 was decommissioned, did the Jefferson Davis name go away, too?”

He showed the board maps he had found that included the designation still, including an ADOT map, revised in 1992 after the highway’s status had changed, and even on Google maps. One map had that highway labeled as the 60, 70, 80 and 89.Just as many maps, or more of them, Ehrfurth said, don’t include the Davis name.

“Other than seeing it on the maps, we don’t know that’s the official name?” chairman Dennis Preisler asked. Ehrfurth shook his head. No. There’s no signage saying so on the route now.

I expected a meeting, some discussion, maybe a vote. I did not expect to stumble into a mystery, one that would send me off in search of so many elusive answers, my investigator’s hat at the ready.

She would have approved

This was fascinating, I thought, sitting in the meeting. Mother Mofford would have loved this discussion. Arizona history is filled with the best stories, she often told me.

If it turns out State Route 80 still holds the Davis’ name, renaming the U.S. Route 60 obviously wouldn’t change that.

And it was definitely U.S. 60 that Reveles wanted to name for Mofford since it is the highway she traveled between her hometown of Globe and the state Capitol.

Priesler asked the petitioners to resubmit their paperwork, correcting their requests to U.S. Route 60 instead of U.S. Route 80.

But Scionti argued that the board could still act on her petition to simply have the Davis name removed wherever it shows up on official maps. Advocates in the audience agreed, applauding.

“You can take the step to remove the name now, and it would be applicable anywhere they find it in the future,” the Rev. Reginald Walton said.

But the board directed Ehrfurth to find out whether the designation still legally exists and if so, where it applies. It would take the matter up again once they found out, likely next month.

“It’s a deliberate process. We don’t do anything quickly,” Chairman Priesler said.

“I’m not saying it’s not going to happen.” But he was reluctant to vote without all the information.

“We want to do it right,” board member Chuck Coughlin said, and not leave it open to challenges later. Anything the board decides has to be approved by the Arizona State Transportation Board.

Depending on the answer, there may not be a highway to rename at all.

Time to start detecting

After the meeting, I told my editor how there were more questions than answers, which gave it the makings of a good story.

Look into it, he said.

I got half a grilled ham and cheese sandwich and a pickle spear from the cafeteria to sustain me and then signed onto the computer. I felt a little like a private detective on a case.There’s been plenty written about the history of Arizona’s highway system.

An email from ADOT confirmed that no portion of U.S. Route 60 in Arizona carries the Davis name, no matter that there’s a monument sitting next to it.

The monument itself raises some questions, from the wording on its granite face to its original location.

In our archives, I found a story from Oct. 3,1943, touting the dedication of the monument by the United Daughters of the Confederacy the next day at the Arizona-New Mexico border in Duncan, 171 miles from its current location.

The Arizona highway department had built the foundation for the marker and would help install it.

The group’s national president from South Carolina would be there, the newspaper reported, as well as then-Secretary of State Daniel Garvey. The Duncan High School band would perform, and would play the official Jefferson Davis highway song.

Wait, an official song? Apparently it had been written by two members of the national organization, though I couldn’t find the lyrics online.

As to why the monument was placed there when U.S. 70 had not officially been designated as the Jefferson Davis Highway, no one seems to know.

History? Ask the historian

Ehrfurth says old minutes from highway commission meetings pulled from the state archives say only that the monument was placed in Duncan but not why.

Even Curt Tipton, an adjutant with the Arizona division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, isn’t clear on it. It’s possible that the UDC expected U.S. Route 70 to be designated for Davis.

“The answer is, we’re not really sure,” Tipton says.

It was not until 18 years later that the official designation went to U.S. Route 80. The next year, the monument was moved to its current location on U.S. 60.

But it makes sense if you know some history. Marshall Trimble, the state’s official historian, confirmed that stretch of highway, where the monument was moved, was still part of U.S. Route 80, which was named the Jefferson Davis Highway.

A June 2, 1962, story in The Republic reported that the Jefferson Davis highway marker would be dedicated the next day, moved from Duncan to “a spot on U.S. 80 about eight miles east of Apache Junction.”

It was moved to its new location by the Arizona Highway Department, and dignitaries gathered again.

This time, they sang “Dixie.”

Would they really do that?

Tipton thought the monument had been moved as part of the centennial of the war but had read that members of the UDC had been concerned about vandalism since the monument was in such an isolated spot.

His group takes care of the monument. They had gone out once or twice a year to clear the weeds and wash down the granite face. But it was vandalized twice in August, the first time with tar and feathers, the second with red paint. So now members check it regularly.

And every December, close to the date of Davis’ death, the group, along with members from Arizona chapters of UDC, mark the occasion with a short memorial service.

Tipton would like it to be left alone. He had read concerns that Confederate monuments were erected to intimidate and terrorize people, particularly African-Americans.

He said, “I just can’t imagine the Daughters of the Confederacy sitting around drinking tea and eating cucumber sandwiches and deciding to put up monument to terrorize anybody.”

“They were put up to memorialize the war and the soldiers.”

He said people are surprised to learn that Arizona, or at least the southern half of what is now Arizona, was a Confederate territory before it was ever a territory of the United States.

‘The history is confusing’

So what does all this mean? “Now what we’re left with is a monument next to a freeway that it doesn’t actually designate,” Ehrfurth said.

But that is not really his concern because the board only has the authority in this case to rename the highway — if it needs renaming — not remove the monument.

A coalition representing the Maricopa County and East Valley branches of the NAACP, Black Lives Matter-PHX, religious groups and others has called for the removal of six Confederate memorials in Arizona, including the Jefferson Davis Highway.

Gov. Doug Ducey has said he would not call for any removals, saying they are “part of our history.”

Oh, and just to make things more interesting, there’s another twist.

In July 2016, the Tucson Historic Preservation Foundation submitted an application to ADOT to designate U.S. Route 80 in Arizona as a historic road. ADOT’S Parkways, Historic and Scenic Roads Advisory Committee unanimously approved the request in June.

The Arizona State Transportation Board is slated to vote on it Oct. 20. If approved, that’s the designation that would stick, and there would be no changing it.

Ehrfurth is working with the Attorney General’s Office and ADOT to get answers for the board about the status of the Jefferson Davis Highway.

“The history is confusing,” ADOT spokesman Tim Tait said. They are searching minutes from state transportation commission meetings going back to 1929.

The good news for Reveles is that there are no concerns about U.S. 60, and he can ask for it to be named after Mofford, with no worries about Jefferson Davis.

Epilogue

I looked over my notes. I had found answers, but I had found at least as many questions. If I were a private detective, my final report would be less than conclusive, though interesting if you like this kind of thing. I might have an unhappy client on the receiving end of my bill, but I had learned a lot and that counts for something.

Some mysteries don’t have a neat solution. Sometimes we don’t get all of the answers. Even Sherlock Holmes stumbled now and then. We are left to wonder.

What I did have was some ripping good Arizona history about one of the lesser known chapters in the state’s past.

I think Mother Mofford might be as happy about that as a highway with her name on it.