Lock - Desert Magazine of the Southwest

Founder and for 22 years editor and publisher of Desert Magazine, Randall
Henderson has spent more than 50 years exploring the lands and mountains
of the American Desert. Through the pages of Desert Magazine he
has created a "living desert" for millions of people who otherwise would
think of the desert as only arid wastelands. His book, ON DESERT
TRAILS, published in 1961, is a factual and fascinating report of his
desert experiences.
ALTHOUGH RANDALL Henderson's
name has not been
listed in DESERT Magazine
tor more than five years, letters and
manuscripts addressed to him as editor
and publisher are received every
day. And they will probably be received
for years to come, for the name
Randall Henderson is synonymous
with not only DESERT Magazine,
but the entire American Desert.
No one conquers the desert, but
Henderson and his "old timer"
friends know the desert as only those
who have lived on the arid lands before
the advent of air-conditioned
homes, cars and paved highways could
know it. Those long time friends include
Indians, so called "desert rats",
prospectors, artists, scientists, missionaries,
and nationally known figures
such as Senator Barry Goldwater and
Secretary of the Interior Stewart
Udall.
Randall Henderson is not loved by
every one of his associates, but he is
respected by all. No man who has
used his physical and mental strength
to help settle the desert could be a
Pollyanna. He has been called stubborn,
unreasonable and a man too
set in his own ways. If this is true,
which his thousands of friends and
admirers will vehemently deny, it is
these very characteristics which were
needed by the men who explored and
settled desert areas. The true desert,
even today, is not for the timid nor
for those incapable of making decisions
and then lacking the strength
to put them in action.
This is a story of Randall Henderson.
It is also an attempt to bring a
better understanding to the new desert
dwellers of the concept of the so
called "old timers."
Fifty-four years ago Henderson himself
was a newcomer to the desert.
While attending the University of
California to study economics and
sociology, he worked as a sports reporter
on the Los Angeles Times.
His editor, Harry Carr, advised him
to "leave this city rat race" and work
for a small newspaper, the dream of
every old time newspaperman.
After graduating from U.S.C., Henderson
took the advice and gave up
his $21 a week salary on the Times
for a $6 a week income as an apprentice
printer on the Parker, Arizona
weekly Post.
RANDALL HENDERSON,
Man of the Desert
By Jack Pepper
Two years later he joined the small
staff of the Blythe, California Herald
and later went to Calexico, a California
town on the Mexican border
where he edited and published his
own paper until 1933 when he sold it
to start a printing shop in El Centro.
During those years he learned two
things; every phase of the newspaper
and printing business, and to know
the desert as only one who hikes or
rides horseback into isolated areas in
all kinds of weather can know the
desert.
Both of these accomplishments were
necessary when Henderson and Wilson
McKinney, a newspaper associate
and now editor of the California State
Teachers Journal, conceived the idea
of DESERT Magazine while sitting
around a campfire in the Santa Rosa
Mountains.
With only $6,000 capital, 600 charter
subscribers, a few local advertisers
who invested more for friendship than
monetary gain, Henderson and Mc-
Kinney published the first issue of
DESERT Magazine on November 1,
1937. In the first issue, Henderson's
editorial, which has been widely
quoted for 27 years, entitled "There
Are Two Deserts" was published:
One is a grim desolate wasteland.
It is the home of venomous reptiles
and stinging insects, of vicious thornbearing
plants and trees, and of unbearable
heat. This is the desert seen
by the stranger speeding along the
highway, impatient to be "out of this
damnable country." It is the desert
March, 1964 / Desert Magazine / 23