DESTINATION Yuma's Sanguinetti House Museum

photos and artifacts of the years Yuma was founded and developed. Artifacts included camel bones from the “Camel Experiment” of 1855-1861, when the Army tried to introduce dromedaries to the Southwest, a ball and chain from the famed Yuma Territorial Prison and part of the “old plank road” that linked Yuma and San Diego in 1915.

Next I ventured into the original portion of the house built in 1871. Two small furnished rooms with thick adobe walls and high ceilings (for natural cooling) exemplify a “Sonoran row house” popular during its day. I discovered clues about Sanguinetti’s life in the north room, which contained a gold-framed portrait of Lilah Balsz Sanguinetti, wife of the pioneer merchant whose life story reads like a Horatio Alger rags-to-riches tale. At age 15, Sanguinetti ran away from his San Diego home to seek his fortune—and found it in the most unlikely of places: in Yuma, described by his California neighbors as “just a portion of hell.” It wasn’t an extreme exaggeration. When Sanguinetti arrived in Yuma in 1883, there was no air conditioning, electricity or ice. Peddlers drew Colorado River water, placed it in barrels, left it to settle a day or two and then sold it to residents by the bucketful. With more than 20 saloons and one church, the raucous river town held few amusements befitting 15-year-old Sanguinetti. But it didn’t seem to matter. He doggedly worked to build an empire that one day would include a department store, ice-making, farming, banking and mining ventures, to name a few. In fact, he rose to such prominence that one New Yorker simply addressed a letter to “E.F.

Sanguinetti, Sanguinetti, Arizona,” and it arrived without delay.

Today his passion for Yuma lives on in the Sanguinetti House Museum and its backyard gardens harboring brilliant red and fuchsia bougainvilleas, towering bottlebrush trees, fragrant lemon trees and aviaries everywhere. In one aviary, an African gray parrot named Rebel wolf-whistled, barked and greeted “good morning.” Another towering cage housed a flamboyant peacock with brilliant blue and green feathers.

In the gift shop nearby, Sanguinetti’s daughter, Rosemarie Gwynn, lovingly recalled childhood afternoons spent in this garden with her father. “Even before Yuma had air conditioning, he just loved this place,” she said fondly.

hike of the month Buck Mountain Trekkers Can Visit Historic Fire Lookout Tower

LADYBUGS ARE EVERYWHERE -tiny jeweled beetles clinging thick as plaster to trees, with more arriving. They number in the thousands at the end of the trail up 7,571foot Buck Mountain in the Coconino National Forest, 37 miles southeast of Flagstaff.

In late August, when mountain nights become cooler, ladybugs congregate before hibernating throughout the ponderosa forest. Time your day hike just right and you may witness a gathering of these “good bugs” that eat plant-killing aphids and other insect pests.

Cheryl Rexford, a Phoenix journalist, might have overlooked them were it not for Forest Service engineer Douglas Denk of Flagstaff. Denk was surveying the restoration work on a historic fire lookout tower and pointed out the orange and black-dotted beetles to her.

“What an incredible sight!” she reported. “The ground seemed to be moving in places, there were so many.” The ladybugs were still massed by the tens of thousands when we climbed to the lookout tower a few weeks later. We were careful where we walked to spare the helpful little bugs. We hiked up the Buck Mountain Trail, actually a two-track service road with a locked gate that has an opening large enough for hikers to pass through. The easy-rated hike involves a 300-foot elevation gain over three-quarters of a mile up the road to the lookout.

Forest Service entomologist Bobbe Fitzgibbon of Flagstaff said the ladybugs awaken from hibernation in spring, apparently timed to mate with the hatching of prey insects and with the hatching of aphids. “I’m not sure whether it is daylength, colder temperatures or lack of prey that triggers the late summer gatherings,” she said.

The lookout atop Buck Mountain is only one of two towers in Arizona made completely of wood. The other is East Pocket Lookout in Oak Creek Canyon north of Sedona.

Built in 1939, Buck Mountain Lookout was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988, then “mothballed” when the Forest Service ran short of maintenance money and allowed it to deteriorate. “It was kind of embarrassing to have a historical structure that we weren’t taking very good care of,” Denk said. “So we decidedbecause it’s a little more visible and visited by the public more often, and because we wanted to use it-to use our funds for reconstruction.” Completed in September 2003 at a cost of $52,960, Buck Mountain’s restored 30-foot-high tower is an example of towers commonly built in the 1930s, Denk said. “Because it was a historical structure, we had to reconstruct every detail according to the original design,” he said.

If you’re lucky, you’ll get the chance to walk on history. The lookout cabin and catwalk are open to the public only when a spotter is on duty.

The nearby national forest offers many primitive campsites, and other area attractions include the easy drive to another fire lookout atop Indian Maiden Mountain. But be sure to include the hike up Buck Mountain as part of a summertime outing in Arizona’s high country. The incredible views from the summit reveal the craggy San Francisco Peaks to the north. Maybe the ladybugs like the views, too. All