Carry Through If Hell Freezes Over: Living at Arizona's first Smithsonian Observatory on Harquahala Mountain 1920 - 1925

An old building on Harquahala Mountain, northwest of Phoenix, Arizona, was once a site for a major program of the Smithsonian Institution. In the early 1920s, observers there aimed a variety of instruments at the sun to gather data and calculate what they thought were daily changes in the sun's energy. At the height of operations on Harquahala, once a value for the sun's energy was determined, the observers phoned the data down to a merchant in Wenden near the base of the mountain; the merchant walked over to the local railroad depot and had the data telegraphed to Washington, D.C. Then, scientist at the Smithsonian transmitted the daily values to a private meteorologist in Canton, Mass. The Harquahala site was part of a worldwide effort by Dr. Charles Greeley Abbot, director of the Institution's Astrophysical Observatory, to establish weather forecasting that would be "meaningful to mankind." Carry Through If Hell Freezes Over is about the people who worked at the Arizona field station; the book is based on the frequent correspondence they had with the Smithsonian and with families on both coasts. This is the story of Alfred and Chella Moore, newlyweds, with a cast of assistants, and their efforts to make Abbot's Arizona field station a success. Alfred was prone to grumpiness and did not like the Arizona site. Chella was frail but brave. As for the assistants: Fred was a jack of all trades; Paul was a budding Hollywood star; Worthington spit too much and lacked pep; Hoover lacked initiative; and Freeman was just too spooney. Along with personalities, the Moores struggled daily with the bums and loafers in Wenden, the elements on mile-high Harquahala, surprises from Mother Nature, the site's extreme isolation, underfunding and a scientific effort that was, at times, less than scientific. Carry Through If Hell Freezes Over is a fascinating glimpse of what life was like on a remote mountain in Arizona, the country's newest state, and how science was done in the early Twentieth Century.