ArizonaRealCountry.com 37 July 2018 interested in bidding on the Harquahalla solar constant measuring site. Abbot roomed at the Bunkers and Bunker took him the 15 miles to the base of the Harquahalla. Abbot then hiked the 5-mile trail to the top and found the summit flat with many rocks and greenery but treeless. He found a spring halfway up the trail but no water at the summit. There was a miner, however, named William Ellison who was a recluse and mined copper some mile and a half away from the summit to the East. He had a spring and a garden at his remote camp. This nearby water and Abbot’s plans to build a tank and troughs to collect rainwater made him confident there would be enough water to operate the solar laboratory and meet the needs of its crew. Abbot stayed in Wenden for two weeks and made two trips to the summit site. Before leaving, he signed a contract with Tom Banks and Frank Lucas to build a four-room adobe structure ten by 40 feet with a cellar to house the equipment he needed. He also got miner Ellison’s permission to use the summit location. Abbot returned in September 1920 with his equipment from Mount Wilson. The building atop the mountain was ready when he arrived. It took two days to pack the equipment to the top. By October 3, 1920, Abbot was set up and making his first observations from Harquahalla. Living on a mountain was difficult. Water rationed to 30 gallons a week for drinking, cooking, bathing, dishwashing, laundry, and processing photographic plates. The observers did all of their own housekeeping as well as performing maintenance of the buildings and instruments. At first communications with Wenden was limited to heliostat, using a strong light at night or sunlight by day to order supplies, etc. through signals to Bunkers hotel. Messages to Washington were then transmitted through the hotel via telegraph. Observation and computation generally kept the crew busy from sunup to sunset. Other chores generally were conducted outside of this work time frame. Winter could be severe on top of the Harquahalla, as it was the first year Abbot was there. High winds, pounding rain and biting cold often was experienced by Abbot and his cousin, a 24-year-old from New Hampshire who was experienced as a farmer, painter and soldier and took to the rigorous life as an observatory assistant readily. It helped to have miner Ellison as a neighbor. He had worked the New State #1 mining claim on the mountain for 12 years and knew the mountain well. Weather conditions that first year proved favorable enough to permit observations 70 percent of the time, but the heavy weather that did occur took a heavy toll on the adobe building and some of the equipment. Once repairs had been made, Abbot returned to Washington, transferring management of the Harquahalla station to Loyal Aldridge at the end of January 1921. Later that spring, Aldridge turned over management to Alfred E. Moore, who recently had returned from managing the APO station in Chili and had married in Los Angeles. Moore and his wife Chella arrived atop the Harquahalla in April. They directed the station until 1925. By 1923, the information on solar constants gathered at the Harquahalla and Mount Montezuma in Chili were being telegraphed to the Smithsonian. The data was then transmitted to Canton, Massachusetts, where H. Helm Clayton used it for forecast the weather for New York City, an unheard of three, four or five days in advance, with mixed results. By 1926, solar constant measurements were appearing on daily weather maps. But by 1925, Abbot lost his enthusiasm for the Harquahalla as an ideal spot for a solar constant observatory. He sighted the tremendous summer thunderstorms, severe winters and less than favorable atmospheric conditions for moving the station to Table Mountain near Swartout, California where the summit was 2,000 feet higher than at Harquahalla. You can still see the old adobe structure of the Harquahalla station from Wenden and today the building is on the National Registry of Historic Places.