Across the Border

By the mere act of crossing a street in Nogales and Douglas you are in Mexico. A few miles south of Yuma is San Luis, a Mexican pueblo. South of Bisbee is Naco, south of Ajo is Sonoyta. These towns and pueblos in Sonora Nogales, Agua Prieta, Naco, Sonoyta, San Luis just across the border in Mexico, have the flavor and charm of foreign lands and distant places, and the life there, in some respects like our own, is strange and different, too. Because of that these places are so very interesting to us.

Sonora is an old land. Go to Alamos far south of the border. There you visit an older and less hurried century. Elegant grandees and their ladies were dancing the minuet there before the wild mountain men came into what is now Arizona searching for beaver. Cumbersome grand pianos were brought from France, and carried by muleback into the mountains so that there might be gay music for the people in that remote part of the world before the covered wagons brought the first settlers to our land. Missions are still standing that heard the soft Spanish prayers of the padres in the days of the Conquest. When those padres came into our southwest, they planted the seeds of our own civilization. Guaymas still bears the marks of the battle in which Mexican patriots expelled the French from Mexican shores forever. History in Sonora is not a dead thing in books but a living subject to be read in adobe walls, along dusty streets and trails, and in many little villages through which men of the Conquest and men of destiny trudged their way.

Sonora is high sierra, the hot desert, the deep blue sea. So much of that vast expanse of mountain range known as the Sierra Madre, which divides Sonora from her sister state, Chihuahua, is an unexplored wilder-ness, teeming with big game, holding a treasure in mineral wealth some day to be uncovered. Where the mountains of the east level off, the desert begins. Improved higliways, the railroad and now the airplane have (Please turn to page twenty-five) Hermosillo, Sonora's "beautiful little city," 187 miles south of Nogales, is Mexico's miracle city. The cheerful sound of the builder's hammer fills the air as a new city rises from the ground. Below, we view Sonora's new and modern university.

In Mexico, it is said of Sonora: her people are gay, progressive and "muy valiente." Here is the charm of yesterday, paced to the tempo of today. The old customs, echoes of Spain of long ago, are observed. There is gaiety, color and music in the land, but Sonorans, industrious and far-seeing, are looking ahead to tomorrow to keep apace with a modern, changing world. Arizona can well be proud of her up-and-coming neighbors to the south.

Guaymas, once the greatest port on Mexico's west coast, remembers her glorious past, but is planning a greater tomorrow. Here can still be seen signs of the French occupation and of the war of liberation. Today Guaymas is the center of a great fishing industry and the mecca of deep sea fishermen from all over the United States. The industrial development of Sonora has stimulated the shipping to the port of Guaymas. The port is about 285 miles south of Nogales. A new road is now being built from Nogales to this picturesque place.

During the Spanish Conquest, Sonora was center for exploration and colonization of the southwestern part of the United States. The Kino missions stand as evidence of the days of the Conquistadores. Shown are Tubatama (above) and Caborca.

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rendered this desert less formidable to the traveler. The green spots of this desert of Sonora follow the few rivers coming down from the mountains on their way to the sea.

The sea is vast. Five hundred miles of Sonora are washed by the sea, the Gulf of California. The sea itself is becoming Sonora's richest possession. It attracts the tourist and the sportsman and, since the beginning of World War II, has nurtured a huge fishing industry for the benefit of Mexican labor and Mexican capital. Sonora shrimp in greater amounts each year are finding their way to American dinner tables. Larger tonnages of fish are coming from the sea to market each season. Before the war this fishing industry in the Gulf of California was dominated by the Japanese, but times have changed. Sonorans are now taking advantage of their own possessions.

Sonora is contrast. If you follow the lonely trails you'll come upon pueblos where life has hardly changed in a century. Then you'll come upon Hermosillo and Ciudad Obregon, paced to the tempo of the present century-new, modern, progressive. Here you'll meet a rancher who uses his private plane to visit his ranching properties. And here you will come upon a simple peon whose life is in step with the slow, patient tread of his burro team. There is dancing in the streets during fiesta time, when the young ladies wear their gay, colorful dresses. There are still serenades in the moonlight and the evening promenade in the plaza square where young people exchange shy glances under the forbidding frown of the stern chaperon. All of this is Sonora, just across the border. Sonora is old and new, mixing the customs of the past with the progress of the present to the overtones of ancient Spain and with the mixed culture of many races. An interesting people in an interesting land! Above all, a fine and friendly neighbor in a land whose well-being is tied so closely with our own... R. C