Officials say the free admission is intended to get the public to enjoy National Park Service sites.

The waiver applies to only entrance fees and doesn’t apply to fees for camping, boating and river use.

Future free-admission days are Aug. 14 and 15, Sept. 25 and Nov. 11.

The tribe collaborated with author Jeffrey Shepherd over 10 years to assemble bits of history. Shepherd will give a lecture and sign copies of the book, “We are an Indian Nation,” next Monday and Tuesday evening at the Hualapai Cultural Center.

The center opened earlier this year with a ceremony that included drumming, dancing and singing performances.

The tribe’s cultural director, Loretta Jackson-Kelly, says the center reinforces productivity, and helps teach language and cultural arts, and provides facilities for children to learn traditional practices.

The center is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Cochise County sheriff’s spokeswoman Carol Capas said Friday that deputies pulled the U-Haul over Thursday evening, and the driver and front passenger ran out of the vehicle into the desert.

The two, believed to be smugglers, got away.

Meanwhile, deputies found 67 illegal immigrants in the back of the 26-foot truck.

Capas says the truck appeared to have been loaded in the last seven hours and that it was “cramped.”

She could not speak to the conditions inside the truck and says the immigrants were turned over to the Border Patrol.

Border Patrol spokesman Mario Escalante did not immediately know where the immigrants were from, where they were headed or what the conditions in the truck were, although he says none had to be taken to the hospital.

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press.

BULLHEAD CITY, Ariz. (AP) — Sue Willis, who lives on the channel at Sunshine Marina, said she’s been complaining to the city of Bullhead City about the water quality for three years.

“The city’s just been giving me nothing but a run-around,” Willis said. She was concerned about stagnant water which generated a foul odor.

Now, the situation has deteriorated even more, with the growth of algae in the water and even on the beach. Its stench can be detected in the Willis home with the windows closed, she said.

Kirk Koch, Bureau of Land Management program manager from the Lake Havasu field office, stopped by on his way to a meeting in Bullhead City and took a sample of the algae. He believes it’s cladophora.

Willis is concerned about the health of kids swimming in the channel.

“The Sunshine Marina is a project that we’ve been trying to address for many, many years,” said Steve Johnson, Bullhead City public information officer. The city leases the land from the Arizona State Land Department. It also falls under the jurisdiction of federal agencies, including the Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corps of Engineers, Johnson said.

Arizona Game and Fish is also involved. They’re offering the city a grant to repair the marina’s boat launch ramp, but for Bullhead City to qualify for the grant, they’re requiring a longer lease agreement with State Land. The city’s current lease expires in 2014. Game and Fish requires the city to obtain a 20-year lease.

The city also wants to install a culvert to allow water to circulate between the channel and the river. Johnson said he believes the culvert will help alleviate the algae problem, “but there’s no money to do it.”

City Manager Toby Cotter and Mayor Jack Hakim have had recent contact with the State Land Department, but Johnson was unable to say whether the subject of algae was discussed.

“We know (the marina is) an issue, it’s a big issue for the city because the city would like nothing more than to see that as an attractive, thriving marina,” he said.

There are people willing to dredge the channel if they could get permission, Willis said.

“There’s not a simple answer,” Johnson said. “There’s several agencies involved, so coming up with a solution is not simple. And of course, it takes money, and that’s another issue.”

Right now, the challenge is sorting out which governmental agency will take responsibility.

“The agreement we have with the state doesn’t say anything about water quality, keeping algae out, even dredging it or anything like that,” Johnson said. “In referring to the Sunshine Marina (in the city’s lease agreement), we’re talking about the land. The water, that’s a different issue.”

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press.

Sgt. Fabian Pacheco says the owners of the property that serves many University of Arizona and local community college students had hired off-duty police officers to keep the peace, control underage drinking and discourage drunken driving, but things still got out of hand.

Property owners decided to shut down the yearly event after the number of people cited for underage drinking climbed.

As officers from across the city moved in to break up the party, several fights broke out.

Pacheco says most of the arrests were for disorderly conduct or underage drinking, and most were cited and released.

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press.

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — Trish Martin didn’t need help the first time, but breast-feeding her second baby was a little trickier.

Her 3-month-old girl wanted to nurse all the time and never seemed satisfied, said Martin, 31. So Martin called Mama’s Latte and within hours, TJ Marsh arrived at Martin’s home.

Martin learned her baby wasn’t latching on properly to nurse, and so the infant wasn’t filling up during her feedings.

Things improved quickly.

“(TJ) wrote out a care plan for me so I could remember what to do,” Martin said. “They’ve just been a tremendous help for me.”

Marsh and her business partner, Sibylle Rundel, started Mama’s Latte here in 2006. Since then, they’ve helped up to 300 mothers with in-home services.

Rundel, 44, and Marsh, 50, worked together for five years as doulas (people trained to help mothers through birth and postpartum) with Desert Doulas before starting their new business.

“Working as a birth doula, you also have to help with the initial breast-feeding because you stay there for the birth and you stay there for the first latch after the baby is born,” Rundel said.

The friends decided women needed more help with the breast-feeding, and they needed it at home.

“It’s very hard to get the support you need unless you can throw everyone in the car and get down to a hospital where they have outpatient support,” Marsh said. “It’s so much easier to have someone come to your home, with your chairs and your cushions.”

A study published recently in the journal Pediatrics showed the lives of nearly 900 babies would be saved each year, along with billions of dollars, if 90 percent of U.S. women fed their babies only breast milk for the first six months of life. The results are only an estimate, but several experts who reviewed the analysis said the methods and conclusions seem sound.

In addition to helping nursing mothers, Mama’s Latte also offers consultations for pregnant women who want to learn about breast-feeding before the baby arrives. Rundel and Marsh said they are board-certified lactation consultants. The pair charge $65 for the first visit and $40 per visit after that. Clients living in rural areas outside of Tucson are charged more, Rundel said.

Martin said Marsh still checks in on her now, long after their January visits. She said she finds that comforting.

“TJ calls me probably once every week or two weeks. And she’s always available for me to contact,” Martin said.

Marsh said they stay as long as it takes to help mama and baby — or, in Jackie McGuire’s case, babies.

McGuire gave birth to twin boys 12 days ago. They were born prematurely and so McGuire, a first-time mother, also was faced with that challenge.

“After my first night in the hospital, it was clear that breast-feeding required a lot of work and wasn’t quite as natural as I expected,” McGuire wrote in an e-mail to the Star for this story. She supplemented with formula to make sure her babies received the nutrition they needed, but ultimately, she wanted to breastfeed.

“The lactation specialists at the hospital were great, but unfortunately I couldn’t bring them home with me and by day four I was on my way home with two babies that I couldn’t feed on my own,” she said.

After a day at home, she sought help.

“I had heard about Mama’s Latte from my OB-GYN and pediatrician,” she wrote.

Rundel arrived at her home the same day McGuire called.

“She showed me some techniques and we were able to get both babies to latch on, with some assistance,” she wrote. “Our next session with Sibylle, the boys showed off what they had learned. We had made huge strides since our first meeting with Mama’s Latte.”

In this Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2010 picture, Genevieve Hardy plays a Navajo stick game at the Navajo Nation Museum in Window Rock, Ariz. The staff at the Navajo Nation Museum is on a mission to preserve Navajo language and culture. Part of the effort includes monthly cultural presentations that have now been going on for more than a year. (AP Photo/Gallup Independent, Brian Leddy) ** NO SALES, MAGS OUT **

WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. (AP) — The staff at the Navajo Nation Museum is on a mission to preserve Navajo language and culture. Part of the effort includes monthly cultural presentations that have now been going on for more than a year.

For many of the participants, the information from the presentations is something they had once known.

“It’s good. It’s something that comes back to you,” said Nellie Beno of Tselani-Cottonwood. “When you’re small, you don’t think about it.”

Beno was at the Four Sacred Foods presentation on a Wednesday morning with her husband.

Also at that presentation was Marlene Price of Fort Defiance.

“It’s something I’m very interested in. It goes back to my grandmother who used to work for Dine College. Grandma is pulling me back over there,” she said.

The museum has presented on a variety of topics since the series started at the beginning of 2009. The subjects are usually chosen based on the seasons since certain teachings are shared during specific Navajo seasons.

The wintertime presentations brought Coyote stories and string games, for example. Spring is the season for planting, which is why the museum has held presentations on sacred plants and sacred foods in recent weeks.

“We thought, let’s get this information out to our people so they can take it back to their cornfields,” said Char Tullie, museum education curator. “We want to bring planting back to our people.”

Those teachings could be a lifeline for the Dine people even in today’s times.

Robert Johnson, museum cultural specialist, spoke about how Navajo people would prepare for the winter season by storing food underground. His own family still does that, he said.

“If we still do that today and stored this, we wouldn’t have this Navajo Nation Operation Haashliish,” Johnson said referring to the winter emergencies in the past couple years. “We kind of just look to the government. We forgot about our cornfields.”

Besides the recent plant and food presentations, the museum has hosted gatherings on how to make blue corn mush, the stick game, identifying animal parts, the Treaty of 1868, the Long Walk, Navajo Code Talkers, counting in the Navajo language, weaving, and identifying one’s self through the Navajo clan system, which was a particular highlight for Tullie.

Tullie said people still come up to her to thank her for the teachings on the clan system.

“I had several of the ladies come up to me and shook my hand and said, ‘Thank you so much for teaching us.’ These were ladies older than me. They broke those ties when they were off to boarding schools or they were forbidden to learn the language,” she said.

Johnson said that a study done by the Navajo Nation Rural Systemic Initiative on schoolchildren in the early part of the millennium found that the use of the Navajo language was decreasing among them.

The initiative took the findings back to the Education Committee with a recommendation to re-educate the people on the Navajo language.

When the museum started the program, staff met with the Dine Medicine Men Association and the medicine men stressed teachings according to the season.

Tullie said she doesn’t believe the Navajo people are losing their language and culture.

“It’s there. We wake up to it every single day and it’s up to us to take the initiative to want to learn it. Our four sacred mountains, our songs, our ceremonies were already set in place for us,” she said.

Since starting the educational presentations series, Tullie said she has found more and more people getting involved. While there are only up to 10 people at some presentations, there are up to 50 at others and hundreds turn out for the museum’s annual New Year’s Eve shoe game.

Another aspect of the museum’s program is the Walk In Beauty Book Club that meets about twice a month. Readers choose a book that is available at the museum gift shop and get together to discuss it. The book club is growing and several members come from as far as Shiprock and Farmington to participate, Tullie said.

Another presentation coming up on March 31 is focused on the Navajo Nation flag and seal.

Tullie said she is hoping that the men who designed the flag and seal, respectively, will be at the museum to talk to people about their creations.

She is currently searching for John Claw Jr. from Many Farms, who designed the tribal seal, and Jay R. DeGroat from Mariano Lake, who designed the Navajo flag, so they can speak about their work.

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press.

At issue is whether Mary Robbins’ head and brain will be preserved by cryonics — extremely cold temperatures — in the expectation that future technology may be able to bring her back to life and restore her health.

She signed a contract giving her remains to Alcor Life Extension Foundation of Scottsdale, Ariz. in 2006. But her family says shortly before she died she asked to cancel that arrangement.

Alcor argues that Robbins never signed a document canceling contract.

Robbins died of cancer Feb. 9. Her body is being stored on dry ice at a Colorado Springs mortuary until the case is settled.

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press.

Our own Darryl Jacobsen joined some Flagstaff residents over the weekend to… cut a little rug.

In this Dec. 11, 2009 photo, Paul Felix, is seen at his desk in hisn Florence, Ariz. home.Felix is the grandson of Jesus Felix, who founded the family's ranch near Florence in 1865. (AP Photo/The Casa Grande Dispatch, Susan Randall)

CASA GRANDE, Ariz. (AP) — A longtime ranching and farming family in Pinal County will be inducted into the state’s Farming & Ranching Hall of Fame on Feb. 27.

Paul Felix’s grandfather, Jesus Felix, started ranching and farming in the Florence area 145 years ago.

Jesus was 9 years old when his father, Salvador, was killed during an Indian uprising around 1860 in Mexico’s Bacatete Mountains. Jesus and his mother, Dolores Valenzuela Angulo, fled to northern Sonora.

Jesus joined his uncle, Gabriel Angulo, on a trip to the Arizona Territory in 1865 to find a better place to farm.

Jesus helped his uncle clear a small piece of land northwest of what would become the town of Florence. Then they cleared another piece of land for Jesus farther to the west on the north side of the Gila River.

When they arrived at the ranch, the water table was 6 feet deep, Paul said. “The trees and mesquite were ideal for cattle.”

Jesus returned to Mexico to bring his mother to the ranch. On the way back, he worked for a short time as the custodian at San Xavier Mission south of Tucson. Besides running cattle, Jesus hand-dug ditches to bring water from the Gila River so he could raise grain and hay for his cattle. He and his neighbors built brush dams in the river to catch the water.

Judge A.C. Lockwood of Cochise County initiated water rights proceedings in 1914 to determine the legal appropriation of Gila River water. He issued a decree on April 6, 1916, giving Jesus Felix rights to Gila River water dating back to 1868, with a note that it had been farmed several years before.

Jesus acquired more land in 1872 and 1873, enlarging the ranch to 318 acres. He later increased it to almost a section, 640 acres. Jesus also grazed cattle on the open range as far north as the foothills of the Superstition Mountains.

Before Florence and Casa Grande existed, Jesus and his cowboys drove their cattle 70 miles to Phoenix once a year to sell them. On the way back, they bought supplies at the Hayden Flour Mill where the ferry crossed the Salt River — now part of Tempe.

Jesus married a neighbor, Antonia Lopez, in 1874. They had two daughters, Antonia and Delores, but their mother died while carrying her third child. Jesus remained a widower for six years, working on the ranch and hauling freight from Casa Grande to Florence after the Southern Pacific Railroad reached Casa Grande in 1879.

In 1884, he married Carmelita Salazar at Assumption Catholic Church in Florence. Her father, Mateo Salazar, owned the flour mill in nearby Adamsville.

Jesus and Carmelita had seven more children: Salvador, Pedro, Refujio, Carmen, Encarnacion, Juan and Manuel. Because there was no school for them to attend, Jesus built a one-room school at the ranch. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1894 in Pinal County District Court.

Paul’s Uncle Salvador said in an undated interview that the family seldom went to town because it raised almost everything it needed on the farm.

“Once a year we made the trip by covered wagon to Phoenix to see the Ringling Brothers Circus,” Salvador said. “The visit usually lasted a week — two days in Phoenix and the rest of the time on the road. That was our big entertainment spree of the year.”

The farm’s first piece of mechanical equipment was a three-stroke hay press.

“It was powered by a horse traveling in a circle to turn the cam,” Salvador said, “which in turn drew back the ram and released it against the loose hay in the baling compartment. The machine was stationary, and hay had to be brought to it from the field.”

Jesus and his four sons put up as many as 10,000 bales of hay in a season and sold most of it to cattle-feeding operations, including the well-known Tovrea’s in Phoenix. They also sold grain, thrashing the barley by trampling it with a horse, then using big wooden shovels to toss it into the air and let the breeze blow away the chaff and straw.

After Arizona became a state in 1912, Jesus learned that his ranch was in one of the sections of land that Congress had set aside to support education. He had to purchase it from the state.

In the 1920s, Jesus was approached by Arizona Eastern Railroad for an 18-acre easement across his land. He offered to sell the easement for $1 if the railroad would build a siding so he could load his cattle. His cattle drives ended after the siding was built where Attaway Road and Hunt Highway meet today.

As Jesus’ sons grew up and married, they each built homes on the ranch. Jesus turned the farming operation over to them in 1926 and divided the land so each son would have some farmland and some desert land. He gave his daughters houses in Florence.

Juan was still farming when his son Paul graduated from high school.

“I was farm-oriented,” Paul said. “The whole family, we were farmers, period. But the farm was not big enough. My dad had three brothers, and as the kids grew, they had to move out.”

Paul’s first job off the farm was during World War II, guarding Italian and then German prisoners of war at the camp where Florence Gardens is now.

“I went to work down there, because they told me, ‘Paul, if you want to have a good job, go Civil Service.’ Well, I didn’t know what Civil Service was.”

His next job was working for the U.S. Soil Conservation Service. By the time he retired in 1984, he had helped survey and design the leveling for most of the farms in Pinal County. When the Soil Conservation Service became the Natural Resources Conservation Service and began using computers, Paul helped the programer understand what he had been doing so she could write the program. She understood the computer, but not the engineering terminology.

“He used to come home all upset trying to talk to her,” said Paul’s wife, Katie.

“For me to translate to them what this stuff was was almost a fist fight,” Paul said.

Farmer Jim Henness said he has known the Felix family for a long time.

“They are a wonderful family,” he said, “wonderful people, and a great deal of the success of agriculture, of farming in this valley can be traced back to the Soil Conservation Service and its personnel.”

Paul made a career working “hand in glove” with farmers to conserve soil and water in the desert, Henness said.

“And following in Paul’s footsteps is his son Mark, who has continued that rich tradition of the Felix family … They were incredibly valuable people to all of us landowners and farmers and ranchers, and we owe them a great debt of gratitude.”

Information from: Casa Grande Dispatch.

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press.