| Wikieup is located in an area known as The Big Sandy Valley, between two mountain ranges. The mountains to the east are the Aquarius mountains and those to the west are the Hualapai (pronounced wall-ah-pie) range. The Big Sandy River flows down the valley to the south. Normally it is a trickle of water only a few feet wide, but at times a flash flood can turn it into a raging torrent hundreds of feet wide, in minutes. The old Spanish explorers, padres, and miners came here as early at the fifteen hundreds and established their influence in the area before the Pilgrams landed at Plymouth Rock.
Many Indian and Spanish petroglyphs have been found in the area. Old manuscripts of early Spanish expeditions describe specific landmarks and events that strongly suggest that Spanish Padres were through this area as early as 1550, and that Spanish explorers looking for gold and minerals, may acutally have camped in this valley, near Wikieup, in 1599. For centuries this was a popular site for Indian encampments, and there are old times still living today who remember seeing Indian encampments on or near Wikieup.
Currently there are only a few hundred people in the Wikieup area which covers hundreds of square miles. Between the Metro Phoenix area and Las Vegas, a distance of 300 miles, there are only three towns in Arizona. Wikieup is one of them, and it is almost halfway betweet the cities of Phoenix and Las Vegas. |
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