A DECEMBER TO REMEMBER

THE NAVAJO PEOPLE and their homeland have appeared on many of our covers over the past 96 years. The best known of them was published 75 years ago this month. "Ray asked me to photograph some Navajos in the snow, tending their sheep," Barry Goldwater said in reference to our longtime editor Raymond Carlson. "This was in late February 1946, and I told him he was out of his head, that it never snowed on the reservation in springtime. So I said I'd try to get something the next year. But, as it happened, I was up at the trading post [Rainbow Lodge] near Navajo Mountain the next week, and when I woke up one morning, there was about 2 feet of snow all over everything. So I ran down the road about 3 miles and got my picture. Just what he wanted." "It was a cold, raw winter day deep on the Navajo Reservation when Barry Goldwater took the picture we use on our cover," Mr. Carlson wrote in his December 1946 column. "The snow clouds were low and the little Navajo girls, watching their sheep, were wrapped in their blankets against the wind. The whole scene is real and simple." Of all the milestones in this magazine's storied history, that issue is among the most significant. In addition to having Mr. Goldwater's beautiful photograph on the cover, it was the first all-color issue of a nationally circulated consumer magazine we beat National Geographic, Life, The Saturday Evening Post we beat them all. Seventy-five years later, we're as proud as ever. - R.S.

THE ART OF OUR PHOTOGRAPHY

LEFT: 2021, oil and acrylic on canvas. 40 by 30 inches, $19,000. Painting by Amery Bohling ABOVE: The photo Navajo Camp. by Jack Zehrt, appeared in the August 1950 issue of Arizona Highways.

November 12, 2021 - January 16, 2022 Western Spirit: Scottsdale's Museum of the West, 3830 N. Marshall Way, Scottsdale Arizona Highways is proud to partner with Western Spirit: Scottsdale's Museum of the West on a new exhibition titled The Art of Our Photography, which features the work of 10 artists who were given access to our extensive photo archive. The gist of the project was simple: Select any one of the many images we've published since 1925, set up an easel and paint away. Their interpretations are spectacular. What's more, each artist agreed to donate at least half of the sale price of their paintings to a charity of their choice.