Platt Cline Encounter

Flagstaff's legendary newspaperman Platt Cline played a role in the creation of Buffalo Park. He was listed as a member of The Committee. It's reasonable speculation that Cline helped provide ample coverage for the fledgling Buffalo Park project in "The Arizona Daily Sun." Late in Cline's life he had a chance encounter with renowned author Mary Sojourner. Sojourner described those fleeting moments in a March 10, 2020 email:

See credit below.

"For decades I walked nearly every day in Buffalo Park - in part to be close to the Mountain. For many of those years, I worked with Save the Peaks activists to stop Snowbowl from making fake snow with reclaimed water on the sacred mountain. One day I started out on my walk and saw an old man walking slowly down the central path in the park toward the entrance. When he reached me, he stopped, turned and held his arms out to the mountain. "That is my cathedral," he said. I realized the old man was Platt Cline. "And, it is mine," I said. He nodded and walked past me to the exit."

In Cline's obituary, his Grandson Robert H. Cline II confirmed, "The woods and the mountains were his church." It's quite likely that Cline's personal affection for those woods and mountains helped shape his support and boosterism for the Buffalo Park project.


Platt Cline's Obituary can be found here:
https://azdailysun.com/mr-flagstaff-dead-at/article_3f700343-0875-55ff-b2d1-a286f045f2a0.html

Portrait of Platt Cline ©1994 by John Running from dust jacket of Cline's book "Mountain Town - Flagstaff's First Century"  Northland Publishing Company 1994. (ISBN 0-87358-569-0)