A Visit to Charming Nogales

No Nogales, Arizona gal es Southern Border City Boasts its Share of colorful Characters

The exquisite sitting room at Mary Darling's bed and breakfast drips with Old World charm, even elegance. It's in Nogales, Arizona.

If such words have ever been used to describe any part of the little town on the Arizona-Mexico border, it was probably in a work of fiction. Science fiction. Most think of the town as a smuggler's haven, its traffic-jammed streets and chaotic sidewalks pulsing and jangling with a jumble of languages and official badges.

But take a seat on Darling's couch at her Dos Marias bed and breakfast, a hilltop home built in 1907, and every notion you have about Nogales begins to dim. Upon arrival you sip a nice Merlot. Chocolate chip cookies-so fresh they are still steaming -sit on a plate nearby. A crackling fire eases the winter chill as I gaze out the window at twilight, the hillsides of Mexico twinkling a few hundred feet away.

"This view is why I'm here," says Darling, who is a 60-year-old former business professor, and now works as a private tutor. "It's exciting to live on the edge of another country. But most people don't know they're here. They think Tubac is the southern-most part of the state.

She's right. As far as tourism goes, Nogales, Arizona, hides in plain sight. The problem always has been its neighbor across the border, the brash magnet of Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. The vast majority of American visitors will cross the border to eat, shop and return the same day, never raising their eyes to look at the Arizona side.

"We've always been a parking lot for Nogales, Sonora," says lifelong resident and historian Axel C.F. Holm. "Only recently did we wake up and say, 'Wait a minute, we can be a tourist destination ourselves."

A unique one, too-not wholly Mexican and not entirely gringo either. "We're a slice of Americana with a little salsa thrown in," says Pierre Baffert, a sixth-generation Nogalian.

Spanish dominates as the language of the streets, and the attitude remains decidedly manana. If a 5 P.M. dinner doesn't quite come off according to schedule, well, you're running on Nogales time.

Anyone who keeps track of such things would describe Nogales as a contradictory sort of place. A small town, yes, with a population of 29,000, and the joke is that everyone's related. But when you include the estimated 300,000 people in Nogales, Sonora, the area becomes the third-largest urban region in Arizona after the Phoenix and Tucson metro-politan areas.

Nogales also has, at least on its main thoroughfares, a willy-nilly appearance, as though buildings were hustled into place without much care. But Flagstaff architect James Woodward, who's helping city officials with restoration projects, says that among Arizona towns, Nogales ranks second only to Bisbee in number of historic buildings. And longtimers will argue, with some zeal, that Nogales has a surprising number of [OPPOSITE PAGE] A hillside view of the old domed Santa Cruz County Courthouse and surrounding neighborhood offers a glimpse of Nogales' fine architecture. Nogales ranks behind only Bisbee for number of historic buildings in Arizona. [ABOVE] Rosemary McCain enjoys a quiet moment in the sitting room of the Dos Marias bed and breakfast, a hilltop home built in 1907. sophisticated and colorful people and a history of attracting them. For starters, we give you John Wayne and a blond beauty queen who was an early love of President John F. Kennedy. How to understand this seeming jumble? The best place to start lies in neighborhoods few visitors ever see.

Two of them-the Crawford and Court street districts-are part of walking tours developed by the Historic Nogales Main Street Program, which focuses on revitalization through historic preservation and economic development. The stately early

20th-century homes in both these areas represent the Classicaland Mission-revival architectural styles. Many of these noteworthy homes are occupied by descendants of pioneer families.

The stories behind the homes add to their character. Some have bullet holes in the walls, evidence of cross-border shootouts in 1915 during the Mexican Revolution. One Crawford Street resident contends that a room in her home contains a sliding wall panel leading to a secret passageway that the rebel leader Pancho Villa supposedly used to make a dash for it.

"This is one of the finest neighborhoods in town," says Raul Castro, former Arizona governor and U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, Bolivia and Argentina. He has lived in Nogales for six years. "Some of the homes remind me of embassy residences in South America," he says.

Castro adds a touch of elegance himself. With his law office right across from his home on Crawford Street, visitors might get a glimpse of the dapper 85-year-old, dressed in a fine gray suit, headed to work in the morning.

The Court Street district, centered around a charming downtown park, stands behind the old Santa Cruz County Courthouse, considered one of the finest historic courthouses in Arizona.

In a current renovation, the town intends to transform the metal-domed structure, built in 1904 by noted architect Henry Charles Trost and closed in 1989, into a cultural and artistic center. It currently houses two small museums, one dedicated to the Arizona Rangers, a Territorial-era lawmen's group, the other celebrating the rich ranching history of Santa Cruz County.

But visitors can best understand the real Nogales at the former city hall on Grand Avenue, now headquarters of the Pimeria Alta Historical Society. Its artifacts and displays-including a black-and-white photographic history-depict the town's role as a commercial center.

The pioneers who immigrated to the little pass between the hills did so to make money. They were adventurous, ethnically diverse and invariably eccentric.

Merchant Jacob Isaacson opened a trading post in a tent just north of the border, and later built an ocotillo-walled shack. The settlement, founded in 1880, was named after the walnut trees-nogal is Spanish for

"walnut" - that grew in the area. Isaacson stayed only two years.

The famous frontiersman, Pete Kitchen, began ranching at Canoa south of presentday Green Valley in 1854, and moved to El Potrero, about 7 miles north of Nogales, in 1868.

To survive, Kitchen turned his ranch into a fortress, with hired riflemen on constant guard against Apaches. One day a renegade appeared on the hill 500 yards east of El Potrero, and the Kentuckian's wife shot at the intruder. The Indian man turned around, raised the flap on his breechcloth and bent over tauntingly. Kitchen, an expert marksman, made a target of the renegade's rear end, killing him.

El Potrero still stands amid the mesquites on private property, just east of Interstate 19 at Exit 8. Molina's Pete Kitchen Outpost restaurant, constructed in the old ranch style and located a half-mile south of Kitchen's ranch, celebrates his life with a few photos and artifactsand excellent Mexican food as a bonus.

Another spot of surprising news for travelers: The food in Nogales consists of more than just enchiladas and refried beans. Zula's on Grande Avenue remains a hit with locals for its Greek food, steaks and Idaho trout, and Ragazzi on Mariposa Road serves noteworthy Italian fare.

For fine dining in a luxurious setting, Medici's, at Palo Duro Creek Country Club, offers a varied continental menu and desserts, such as creme brulee, that keep people talking for days afterward.

Nogales attracted characters well after Isaacson and Kitchen. Jesse Grant, son of President Ulysses Grant, lived on Crawford Street during the 1890s. Published accounts describe him as a mining engineer and wanderer.

In 1957, actor Stewart Granger and his wife, Jean Simmons, bought the Yerba Buena Ranch, just outside of town. Tim McCoy, one of Hollywood's biggest cowboy silent film stars, moved to Nogales in the 1960s. But his wife, the beautiful Inga Arvad, left more lasting memories. Before marrying McCoy, she covered the 1936 Olym-pics for a Danish newspaper and landed an interview with Adolf Hitler, the only woman journalist ever to do so. Then in 1941, while working for the Washington Times-Herald in Washington D.C., she began a romance with an unmarried naval officer named John F. Kennedy.

With allegations afoot that Arvad was a Nazi spy, J. Edgar Hoover ordered a wire-tap on her home phone, while Kennedy's ambassador-father tried to break up the couple. The romance ended with John Kennedy's transfer to Charleston, S.C.

Axel Holm, a friend of Arvad, had no idea of her Kennedy connection until he attended a party at her home one night in 1968 and spotted a photo of JFK on her bedroom dresser. The inscription read: "To Inga Binga, Love, Jack."

Holm said to her, "I didn't realize you knew Jack Kennedy."

In what Holm describes as a Marlene Dietrich accent, Avrad responded, "Yes, I knew him, dahlink, vhat of it?"

Arvad, who has since become a Kennedy-scandal-book celebrity, wrote a column for The Nogales Herald. Holm says she called the paper from home in November 1963 to confirm early wire reports of Kennedy's assassination. She died in 1973 in Nogales.

John Wayne also spent time in the area. Craig Pottinger, who operates a ranch bed and breakfast outside Nogales, said the actor had been a business partner of the ranching Wingfield family, whose property abutted Pottinger's.

One day in the mid-1960s, the teen-age Pottinger and his friend Jeff Wingfield drove Wayne to the Santa Cruz County Airport. His private plane, coming in from Newport Beach to pick him up, parked in an area reserved for international flights. A Mexican customs official, a particularly small fellow, rushed over, shouting, "You cannot leave your plane here!" Then he spotted the towering figure of the Duke. "Oh, my!" he exclaimed. "You're John Wayne!"

Wayne glanced down and said in that deep voice, "I hope I look like him." The actor signed six business cards and gave them to the man, one for each of his children.

"Wayne had a heart as big as he was," says Pottinger, 52, whose CP Ranch Bed and Breakfast, off State Route 82, 6 miles from downtown, sits in a beautiful valley cut by the Santa Cruz River. He raises and trains Border collies. Many of his guests are dog lovers who enjoy watching Pottinger work his animals. He and his wife Carrie keep a herd of sheep on hand just for that purpose.

But the Pottingers also attract quail hunters, mountain bikers and bird-watchers. Hikers enjoy hoofing to the top of a rise south of the ranch, known to Pottinger as Indian Hill. Its peak once held an Indian settlement and still contains petroglyphs, metates and the stacked remnants of a fortlike structure.

The view at the top looks down on Stewart Granger's former ranch, now Kino Springs Country Club. Pottinger says old-timers tell how Granger's wife, Jean, complained of needing a place separate from the ranch to be alone and meditate.

"Granger, being a good old guy, built her a hilltop ramada right over here," says Pottinger, pointing south. "After two weeks of thinking, she came down and Dodge-divorced him."

On the way back to Nogales on State 82, also called Patagonia Road, drivers pass a ramshackle building on the left side. Don't be put off. The Arizona Vineyards replicates a rural 19th-century European winery.

Its darkened tasting room, heated by a roaring fireplace, has a bar for sipping samples of its 15 wines, including "Apache Red," "Grand Canyon" and "Desert Dust." Another, called "Tino Tinto," was named for owner Tino Ocheltree, who learned winemaking while growing up in Europe, where his father was an opera singer.

For a final stop on a tour of surprising Nogales, visit the thriving Hilltop Gallery, located on Cavalry Hill, a residential neighborhood above downtown. Exhibits change each month and might feature works by regional kachina doll carvers, cowboy artists or abstract painters. The gallery displays works of Mexican artists, too, but stays away from the kitsch sold in the curio shops of Nogales, Sonora.

Nogales, visit the thriving Hilltop Gallery, located on Cavalry Hill, a residential neighborhood above downtown. Exhibits change each month and might feature works by regional kachina doll carvers, cowboy artists or abstract painters. The gallery displays works of Mexican artists, too, but stays away from the kitsch sold in the curio shops of Nogales, Sonora.

"Not many people know we have an active and productive arts community in town," says Janice Johnson, president of Hilltop Gallery's board of directors. "We've been up on this hill for 30 years, right in the middle of the world."

Hiding in plain sight, like Nogales itself. And Tucson-based Leo W. Banks enjoyed exploring the back streets of Nogales.