Norton Allen: Tracking the Elusive Mapmaker

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My fascination with Norton Allen goes back to a hot day 15 years ago when I brought home a cardboard box of old Desert Magazines. The magazine, published from 1937 to 1985, offered an alternative to the Palm Springs of modernism and martinis, introducing me instead to an appealing world of mirages, ghost towns and lost treasure.

Then there were the maps.

Norton Allen, Corn Springs. Maps courtesy of Ethel Allen.

In these maps, the land seemed to be alive, the mountains exploding like star dust, the trails wiggling over the lip of a ridge, always drawing you on.  Sometimes it seemed the artist was in a helicopter, observing the Turtle Mountains or Chuckawallas with 3-D glasses. The maps were sprinkled with notes as if the artist was talking directly to me and didn’t want me to get stuck or lost: “Good trail here.” “Very sandy.”

The mapmaker Norton Allen became my guide and guru to life in the desert. My fellow Desert Magazine fans all speculated endlessly about this fellow and his 747 glorious maps, showing the way to geode beds, sandspikes, Indian trails and massacre sites. We all wanted to find out more.

“I’ve felt bad that someone with his talent didn’t receive more notice, but it sounds like it may have been by his own choice,” said Ruth Ann Smith, one of the Norton-seekers.

We kept coming back to the same clues. A few editor’s note from the “Just between You and Me” column by Randall Henderson. Some books Norton illustrated, such as Lost Desert Bonanzas and On Desert Trails. We knew Norton was disabled and that his bride, a teacher from Brawley, wore a Zuni ring at their wedding. Beyond that, not much. Norton apparently had no surviving family. No one had even seen a photo of him.

Masthead drawn by Norton Allen. The magazine began in El Centro then moved to Palm Desert.

One day I phoned Eugene Conrotto, a former editor of Desert magazine. My hopes soared when he told me he had actually known Norton, but then he said he never really knew him that well. Norton was slight and quiet: “He never would have starred in adventure movies in Hollywood, let’s put it that way.”

Yet Conrotto says the elusive mapmaker was largely responsible for the success of the magazine. “His maps sang off the pages. He did those maps for a pittance,” Conrotto marveled. “I think the rate was $22.50 or $25 a map.”

After this conversation the trail went cold again until I heard about a Phoenix bookseller, Mike Riley, who had purchased a trunk of 300 original Norton Allen maps at a bankruptcy auction. I made a mad dash to see the maps, accompanied by Hal Rover, an active volunteer with the Historical Society of Palm Desert. Palm Desert being the home of Desert magazine, Hal, too, was searching for Norton.

We sat at a table in Riley’s elegant bookshop and, finally, held the actual maps in our hands. The heavy paper was slightly browned, and smelled like old wood. The maps were marked with creases and folds, correction tape and white-out. Here and there in pencil we’d see faint tracings of a river, or editor’s notes: “Reduce to 10”. “29 picas.”

We combed the maps for clues to Norton but came away only with disjointed koans from the artist’s hand: “Sand spikes and cauliflowers”…“Probable arsenal location”…”Ridge of yuha oysters (both halves found here.)”

Seven Palms

Later, spurred by a random clue found online, I sent a note to Lynn Teague, former curator of archaeology for the Arizona State Museum. It was just another stab at the mystery. I had no way of knowing Norton’s story was about to break wide open. Not only had Teague known Norton, she knew Ethel, who as it turns out was still living in La Mesa, near San Diego.

Better yet, Teague told me Ethel lived in the very house where Norton grew up. Allen’s life had unfolded just over the Santa Rosa Mountains from where I lived, and important parts of it were still in place.

The missing link, all along, had been archaeology. The Norton we loved as a mapmaker was known to others as a rock star amateur archaeologist who made major contributions to Southwestern archaeology—a man who only incidentally made maps.

Thanks to Norton’s admirers in the world of archaeology, much of his story was finally told in a special double issue of the Journal of the Southwest (Summer/Autumn 2010). Longtime friend Richard Schwartzlose rounds out his biography. (Schwartzlose told me Norton actually was paid $15-$18 per map he drew). Arizona State Museum archivist Alan Ferg and others illuminate his work with the Hohokam along the Gila River in Arizona, along with his refined sense of archaeological ethics. Norton never sold his artifacts, even when a collector offered him $40,000 for a jar.

 

From the time he was a boy growing up near La Mesa, Norton took off on months-long camping trips, exploring the Southwest and hunting artifacts with his parents, Ernest and Lenna. (Artifact collecting was popular and legal at the time; it is now against the law.) When Norton was 21, a fall in gym class triggered a rheumatic disease called ankylosing spondylitis. The illness would leave him disabled, his hips and spine fused. On his back for 105 days, he began a deep study of southwest history and archaeology.

“Norton knew a horrendous amount of history,” says Alan Ferg. His interests seemed to multiply the more he was confined. He became an avid photographer, and at the time of his death owned 36 cameras, according to Schwartzlose. He sold postcards made from his photos, and learned to repair Indian pottery, making paint from pigments he found in the desert.

1947 cartoon of rockhunters. The man at left is tasting a specimen for mineral content. Courtesy of Ethel Allen.

He also drew hundreds of sketches and cartoons, doodling on the backs of envelopes and scraps of paper. In stylized line drawings of landscapes, he perfected the ability to capture the sky or a mountain in a few lines—a skill that would serve him well in mapping. He drew epic narrative panels of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, the Donner Party journey and other events. He also exercised his sense of humor in cartoons. In one panel of imaginary artifacts, he invented a two-way pipe.

The maps, sketches and historical study were all a way of roaming, despite physical limitations. As bookseller Mike Riley said: “The man traveled relentlessly in his mind.”

Unable to sit down because of his fused joints, Norton ate his meals and drafted his maps standing up. He did field archaeology lying down on his belly or with a scoop attached to a crutch.

Concerned about destruction of prehistoric sites due to farming, Norton and his family spent 40 winters at Gila Bend, Arizona, conferring often with the man known as the Dean of Southwestern Archaeology, University of Arizona professor Emil Haury. “He was never really in it for the pots. He was in it for preservation,” says Teague.

In 1937 Norton’s mother contacted Randall Henderson, editor of the then-new Desert Magazine, suggesting her son draw maps for the publication. It was the start of a brilliant partnership.

“From an editorial standpoint, our first lucky strike was Norton Allen, the artist,” wrote J. Wilson McKenney in his history of Desert Magazine, Desert Editor. In his 21 years at the magazine, McKenney was consistently awed by Norton’s knowledge of the land: “Literally millions of motorists and hikers have found their way unerringly to the destinations he mapped for them. “

Norton Allen. Courtesy of the Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona, Tucson

Another sterling partnership began when Ethel Louise Crane wandered by the Allen house one day on her way to the bus stop. Lenna had died by then, and Norton and his dad were living like bachelors, eating out of cans. Ethel, a potter, quilter and knitter, added a feminine presence and fit beautifully into their nomadic camping routine–winters in Gila Bend, summers in Utah and Colorado. In 1954, Ethel and Norton Allen were married.

Eventually Desert Magazine had to cut back on publishing maps because the archaeological sites they depicted were being looted by pothunters. Norton Allen died at age 88 in 1997. His cremated remains were buried on the Tohono O’odham reservation cemetery near Gila Bend. His collection of pots went to Arizona State Museum, his baskets to the Riverside Metropolitan Museum.

 

On a recent afternoon, Hal Rover and I whipped around the hilly, narrow streets of La Mesa in Hal’s compact truck, all the windows open to let in the hot wind.  When we found the address of Ethel Allen’s home, we pulled off in a turnout where there was an old garage, but apparently no house. The only sign of habitation was the overgrown stone staircase leading steeply upward into a sort of jungle.

We climbed the steps and came to an ancient (for California) house that looked, at first, abandoned, like a magical cottage in a children’s fable. We climbed more stairs to the porch and knocked on the door. No answer. Pots and clay were heaped on the porch, as if a potter had been suddenly called away on an emergency. (Ethel is the potter.) Still looking for anyone home, we walked around back calling “Hello”. We stood in silent reverie for a moment when we discovered the out-building that served as  Norton’s boyhood  “museum” of his artifacts.

Walking back down the steps, we prepared to leave knowing no more than we had before. Then, as we were climbing into the overheated truck, a vehicle drove up. In the front seat were Richard and Phyllis Schwartzlose, long time friends of the Allens. In the back was Ethel Allen, a lean, smiling woman who didn’t seem to mind strangers casing her house.

It was one of those rare moments when you know a long quest is at an end. We stood there on the driveway and talked. The conversation only lasted a short time. Ethel, now 90, told me that Norton always wanted his maps to be accurate because he knew tenderfeet were going out in the desert, guided by him alone.

Norton and Ethel Allen. Courtesy of the Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona, Tucson

She told of Norton laboring up sand dunes on his crutches, the tips sinking in at every step as he persevered in his search for a rare pot or bowl. Standing in the jungle shade, I clung to Ethel’s every word, willing myself to remember what she said. It just didn’t seem an occasion for tape recorders or note-taking.

Today there’s new interest in “creative cartography”, with books and exhibits dedicated to mapmaking as art. Once Norton Allen is discovered by this crowd, he’s sure to be a rock star again. His work shows, as clearly as anyone’s, that each map is a created world, reflecting what’s important to its maker. And, in Norton’s case, shaping the world for his fans, as well.

For more on Norton Allen, see: The Journal of the Southwest, Summer/Autumn 2010. Copies of the Norton Allen issue (vol. 52, nos. 2-3) are available for $20 each (this includes postage for domestic orders.) Checks should be payable to “Journal of the Southwest,” and mailed to Lupita Cruz, Southwest Center, 1052 North Highland Avenue, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, 85721. Ms. Cruz can be reached by phone at 520-621-2484.

 

 

 

 

10 comments for “Norton Allen: Tracking the Elusive Mapmaker

  1. Thank you very much, Ann, for your wonderful article on Norton Allen. He was truly a wonderful artist who made maps come alive. You have shed some much needed light on a great desert mystery. Great detective work! – Chris

  2. Thank you Chris! If you are in the area, I hope you come to the closing reception in Palm Desert on April 30, 1-4 pm. Ethel Allen may be there, as well as possibly Alan Ferg from the Arizona State Museum, Richard Schwartzlose (Norton’s friend and biographer) and Eugene Conrotto, a former Desert magazine editor and author of classic books on the Southwest.

  3. How did you know I was going to be busy doing my income taxes this morning, Ann? with no time to read anything not written by Uncle Sam’s minions! Your article is wonderful. I opened it, knowing I didn’t have time to spare, then you caused me to forget all about my taxes. I am in awe of your relentless drive to learn the truth, and your willingness to share it with we who have long wondered, but did little to uncover the history of Norton Allen. Now it’s back to the kitchen table with its sheaf of government forms. Thanks Ann, Pete

  4. This is an incredible article on the life and times of truly remarkable man. So little is known of him and yet he accomplished so much in his lifetime. I would like to personally thank you for a truly wonderful story… I would love to go into more detail with you about this GREAT artist, please contact me when you can…

    John Grasson
    Editor/Publisher
    Dezertmagazine.com

  5. I was sorry to have missed this exhibit! I was a big fan of his maps when I was a kid. My dad had a subscription to Desert Magazine for many years. I would have loved to have seen some of the original art for those maps!

  6. this is such a wonderful article…..i would like to know more…..i love geology but have never had opportunity to indulge other than reas. Thank you for introducing me to this wonderful person.

  7. Thank you for this wonderful article. My aunt Ethel Allen passed away on August 11, 2015. This was a great remembrance of their lives.

  8. Long live the true men of perseverance, exploring the sand washes on crutches? desert dunes too. A true American hero. thanks for the article.

  9. Dear Ann,

    What a wonderful article about an amazing man!! Thank you!! I came across your article in search of facts and images of Norton Allen. Many years ago I acquired a drawing that was labeled on the back, “Original by Norton Appen.” The drawing was funny and very well done so I kept it displayed for years and in a move it got put away in a cupboard. Today, I happened to come across it and decided to do a little more research on it. Long story short, it isn’t Appen, it was Allen. Yes an original Norton Allen! The most amazing part is as I scrolled down on my phone reading your article, there it is!! 1947 Cartoon of Rockhunters!! Imagine my surprise!! I see his wife supplied the image you included in your article. I checked mine several times and it definitely is not a print!

    Sincerely,
    Bill

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