EDITOR'S LETTER

editor's LETTER The old tree was still alive in

In 1945. Back then, the rangers figured it was about 400 years old. That was before the desperate souls of Tucson began the ritual exodus up the mountain to escape the oppression of triple digits down below.

In November 1945, we told the world about that venerable old tree. It was revealed by Clifton Abbott in a piece about a “new road” to the summit of the Santa Catalinas. “The brush begins to give way to scrub oak and cedar, and the bottoms of the gorges are filled with small fir and pine,” he wrote in Mount Lemmon. “For a mile or two this kind of scenery is prevalent and then the road is widened, and here a trail leads off to the General Hitchcock Pine. The trail leads up a colorful little wash replete with boulders, a stream in winter, moss, fern and flowers and towering pines. The General Hitchcock itself is a huge Ponderosa pine almost four hundred years old.” When I first read that, I was curious. I've looked up at the General Sherman and the General Grant many times - they're in Sequoia - but I'd never heard of the General Hitchcock. Also, I'd hiked in that same spot, and couldn't remember ever seeing anything that old. Especially a ponderosa. Although some have lived to be almost a thousand years old, a 400-year-old in the Catalinas seemed unlikely. So, I did what I usually do when I have questions like that: I walked down the hall to see Noah.

Noah Austin is our associate editor. I don't have enough space to spell out everything he does for us, but one of the things he does is solve mysteries. Like the unexplained disappearance of Darwin Van Campen, one of our photographers in the 1960s. After months of research, and a lot of dead ends, Noah finally figured out that Mr. Van Campen had died in Central Phoenix. Turns out, the General Hitchcock died, too, but its demise was less mysterious. It took Noah less than an hour to solve that one.

The answer came from an article in the Yearbook of Agriculture. “A quarter mile up the canyon from the picnic ground we see the decaying remains of the General Hitchcock Tree,” Clyde W. Doran wrote in 1967. “This massive Douglas-fir was rooted in a seep or spring which probably accounted for its large size. When the tree was blown down by high winds in 1952, it was nearly 8 feet in diameter and over 320 years old.” It's still not clear whether the tree a Douglas fir, not a ponderosa came down in '51 or '52, but it's definitely gone. In its day, though, it must have been quite a sight. As so many things are in the Santa Catalinas. From the broad vistas and towering rock formations to the natural wonders at your feet. “Twigs from oak, sycamore and ash lace the forest floor, tree bones of steel gray, gunmetal blue, and black. Leaves mat underfoot with sharp angles and gentle curves: brown leaves, russet leaves, tan, beige, black, gray, pale green, dark brown, silver. Six inches from my right boot, new shoots caress the decay with blue-green tendrils. That is one square foot in the Cañada del Oro.” Those words are from Frog Mountain Blues, Chuck Bowden's incomparable book about the Catalinas. He wrote many beautiful things about his beloved mountain, including an early piece for us in September 1985. In it, he described an adventure on the north side of the mountain. He was with photographer Jack Dykinga. “We have come to the peaks tracking a man and a woman who sought the summit in 1881. Botanists, their strange journey offers a way to know the beauty of the marvelous Santa Catalina Mountains.” The scientists were John Gill Lemmon and his bride, Sarah Plummer Lemmon - Mount Lemmon is named for her. As you'll see in The Santa Catalinas: Tucson's Nearby Wilderness, the couple's journey was rugged. “Day by day they probed an imaginary mountain. And day by day, they found the real mountain, one full of hard miles, cliffs, steep slopes, and a botany undreamed of in the ivy towers of Eastern academies.” Eventually, the mountain's battalion of shindaggers and catsclaw forced the Lemmons to surrender their attempt of the front range. However, they regrouped and moved to the more accessible north side, where, with the help of a local rancher, they finally made the summit. Today, you can drive to the top of the mountain from either side. Ironically, the back side - via Forest Road 38 - is now the rugged route. The easier drive is the Catalina Highway, the road we wrote about in 1945. It's since been named a National Scenic Byway, and in its 27.2 miles, it passes through five life zones and offers easy access to some of the best hikes and campgrounds in the Coronado National Forest. In Pitch a Tent & Hit the Trail, we'll tell you about a few of them.

One of our favorite hikes is the Green Mountain Trail, which begins at the San Pedro Vista and drops 1,300 feet to the General Hitchcock Campground. It's a beautiful route that winds around the mountain for which it's named and through a lush forest of ponderosa pines and Douglas firs. The latter, perhaps, descendants of another Douglas fir. A venerable old tree that grew in a seep along the trail and lived to be 320 years old.