Ambos Nogales

Coverage of the county is slightly over 1200 square miles, but more than half of this is classified as forested terrain, including some of Arizona's richest ranch lands.

If the demography of Nogales were discounted, Santa Cruz could claim a populace of a few thousand, no more. Compared to the spiraling surges recorded for other sections of Arizona, the population growth here has been minimal.

What Nogales lacks in counts, it makes up for in natural setting, gracious living, and an enviable commercial traffic that belies its size and modest numbers.

AMBOS

BOTH NOGALES - "both Nogales" - is two cities that complement one another where the international boundary cuts across the Arizona-Sonora border.

Geographically they're one town separated, but not divided, by a wire fence. The ethnic, economic, and cultural roots of these twin cities run deep, expressed by the sentiment, "If God made us neighbors, let us be good neighbors."

Nogales, Sonora, has experienced a residential boom over the last decade and can boast 50,000 inhabitants. In population it ranks third in the state. The capital and cultural hub of Hermosillo is first; Ciudad Obregón in the Yaqui Valley, second.

With the exception of the Federal District (D.F.) of Mexico City, Sonora can claim the distinction of being Mexico's wealthiest and most progressive region. Ambos contributes considerably to this reputation and enjoys the ensuing advantages and benefits.

Arizona's Nogales has a much thinner population. Under 8,000. The municipality is the seat of Arizona's smallest county, Santa Cruz ("Holy Cross"). LandAmbos Nogales is situated in a mountain pass. Level land, apart from the designation "limited," is wishful thinking. The border intersects a north-south canyon, like a punctuation mark, at its narrowest point.

The topography is hilly, often rugged, dotted with narrow side-canyons worthy of song, hilltop homesites, and unexpected pastoral slopes.

To reach many of the homes on the Sonora side requires the skill of a mountain goat, the persistence of an Alpinist, and the tenacity of an army jeep. Not even the devil-may-care taxi fleet, noted for accomplishing Herculean feats, is able to scale these heights.

The casual visitor to Ambos Nogales rarely grasps the geographical scope of the area's expanse, since his activities are usually confined to the flat land that hosts the business and industrial enterprises, including the arteries that cater primarily to shopping interests on both sides of the line. Shopping here is big business.

This understandable negligence deprives the adventuresome of enjoying some exceptional scenery and of gathering a wider appreciation of a rich historical locale.

"Nogales" is Spanish for walnuts. You can take your pick as to how the naming came about. Credit can be given to a Boundary Commission crew. In 1854 it made the recommendation that the location be known as Los Dos Nogales (“The Two Walnuts”). Supposedly identical walnut trees mirrored each other on opposite sides of the division between the countries.

Military maps until 1860 designated only the mountain pass as Los Nogales.

A more fanciful story exists. Sometime around 1870 a peddler by the name of Isaacson (in some accounts “Isaacs”) opened a store on the Arizona side. His Mexican neighbors and customers had a fierce time prohealthful, mountainous air is smog-free and invigorating. Official U.S. Weather Bureau records show, on a year-round basis, that the general area has the most equable and livable climate in the Southwest.

Winters have sunny days and cool nights. Summer mid-days are warm, but by dusk the temperature is down and the atmosphere bracing. Outdoor living is affable and rewarding. Rainfall averages less than sixteen inches annually with approximately 320 sunshine days on each year's calendar. There are occasional traces of snow during the winter. Residents call any gusty

NOGALES BY TIM KELLY

nouncing his name. “Eez-ah-cocks” seemed as close as they'd ever get to it. Finally, his nerves frayed from the repeated mangling, he decided to favor a change. One day he heard a boy singing a Spanish song, which sounded not just melodious, but simple to repeat. He had the youngster write out the words. The first line was: “Subio una mona a un nogal.” Reputedly, Mr. Isaacson put his finger to the last word nogal walnut and announced to the astonished listener, “My name in English is the same as this word here. Señor Nogal.” And the story, or legend, goes that the shop-keeper stuck to his new name, suffering a barrage of irksome puns: “Señor Nogales he has a hard shell; Señor Nogales he belongs up a tree; Señor Nogales he's a tough nut to crack.” By the time the Southern Pacific Railroad came in, the cluster of rude buildings on the line passed as Isaacson, although Line City was frequently heard. Whatever, the railroad was satisfied that its line terminated at Nogales and consequently when the town incorporated in 1893, the confusion was formally resolved.

In climate Ambos Nogales has a bonanza. The flurry “a dusting.” July registers the warmest month with a high of 94 and a low of 65. January is the coolest, with a peak reading of 63 and a base of 30. With confidence as well as pride, the Nogales Chamber of Commerce remarks, “There are sunnier places, of course, but not many.” Day-to-day living on both sides of the line is pretty much the way it is in most small towns. This is particularly true for the Arizona side. There is a weekly newspaper (Nogales International) and a daily (Nogales Herald), one local radio station for the Arizona side, four for the Mexican; one local Nogales, Sonora TV station, four area movie theatres, the expected number of schools, churches, and civic organizations, and some small industry not contingent on either tourism or agriculture. On the Arizona side, night life is quiet; the Sonora side supplies more pepper.

Day-to-day living on both sides of the line is pretty much the way it is in most small towns. This is particularly true for the Arizona side. There is a weekly newspaper (Nogales International) and a daily (Nogales Herald), one local radio station for the Arizona side, four for the Mexican; one local Nogales, Sonora TV station, four area movie theatres, the expected number of schools, churches, and civic organizations, and some small industry not contingent on either tourism or agriculture. On the Arizona side, night life is quiet; the Sonora side supplies more pepper. Cooperation between both Chambers of Commerce is easy-going. The same philosophy holds true for service clubs and varied fraternal groups. In a sense, “Ambos” might be construed: together.

The Arizona side has about 500 motel and hotel rooms available for the tourist trade and there are excellent guest ranches in the immediate vicinity. On the Sonora side there are ample hotel and motel accommodations in the heart of the shopping district.

New Shapes Begin to Form the New Image VFW Auditorium - Nogales, Arizona

On snap appraisal the visitor to Ambos Nogales is likely to assume that tourism supplies the meat and potatoes of its economy. After all, tourism constitutes Arizona's third most important source of income after manufacturing and mining, and a border town is likely to thrive on this potential. Such is not the case.

On the Sonora side, for example, only the northernmost part of the urban district caters specifically to the tourist. True, tourism injects a substantial boost to the general prosperity, but other considerations are preeminent.

A crack communication system connects the Pacific Railroad and the Mexico City-Nogales, Sonora Highway, thus enabling the Arizona side to be a link between the United States and Canada and the lush agricultural complex along the western coast of Mexico. Over $65 million worth of produce, including a hefty shrimp yield, is annually shipped from this compositeness to the reaches of the North. Hence, Ambos Nogales functions as the distribution point for the productivity of the winter harvests.

The Sonora state seal, as a point of interest, centers a Yaqui Indian dancer in a triangle bordered by the emblems of mining, wheat, fish, and cattle.

Railroad-car and truck shipments freight tomatoes, green peas, green peppers, melons, graphite, fish, molasses, ores, cattle, chili, beans, and bananas. The shipping begins to move out in November and continues through April. From the Arizona side, on into Mexico, goes a barter of fertilizer, insecticide, agricultural machinery, seeds, and various consumer goods.

The Arizona Customs District, a department estab lished in 1890 with six ports of entry besides Nogales: Naco, Douglas, San Luis, Lukeville, Sasabe and Lochiel, reports the value of imports for the 1963-64 fiscal year to be a record-breaking $78 million; the export total for the port of Nogales alone over $64 million!

The human side of statistics may not be the scholarly route to proper assessment, but it has the advantage of being warmly lucid. Doctors and dentists on the Sonora side report that a large proportion of their patients are from north of the border. In at least one instance the ratio is nine to one. Lest this be taken as revelation, consider the retail business on the Arizona side. Here the situation is reversed, with stores doing between 80 and 90 percent of their business with Mexican nationals.

Incidentally, virtually all business on the American side is bi-lingual. This see-saw has some amusing sidelights.

Arizonans patronize pharmacies on the Sonoran side because prices are comparatively low. However, Sonorans are prone to make their drug purchases on the Arizona side where standards of uniformity and quality are set and enforced by rigid law.

From the Santa Cruz side pour hungry tourists hankering for a taste of diced pork in fresh chili sauce, seafood, and the wide menu of Mexican cookery. They are likely to encounter a swarm of teen-agers from Nogales, Sonora, crossing the line for a cheeseburger and a malt.

On the Sonora side a regulation ball park yawns across its diamond to the Plaza de Tores. While tourists constitute most of the audience for the Fiesta Brava, Sonorans are the fans that cheer the exhibition games put on by professional ball clubs in winter training on the Arizona side. Mike De La Fuente, all-round impresario of both the bull ring and baseball stadium, makes a salient point, "Where else can you see a big league game and a bullfight within walking distance of one another?"

Some 1200 Sonorans work in Arizona, most close to the border, although many make the 85-mile trip to Tucson in near-by Pima County.

Ambos Nogales is a "free port." Simply put, this means that Mexican and American citizens may travel freely across the frontier as long as they remain in the other Nogales. Too, Mexican citizens can purchase many items in the United States without having to pay duty.

New railroad station - Nogales, Sonora

The economy of one Nogales is dependent on the economy of the other. Congeniality should be the result and it is but, sadly, this is not always the case with border towns. In fact, the connotation of "border town" suggests pessimism. Ambos Nogales occupies an uncommon niche.

De La Fuente is typical of the businessmen on both sides of the line.

Reciprocity takes all forms. Not long ago a mammoth commendatory statuary, the work of famed Valencian artist Alfredo Just, whose bullfight sculptures at the Plaza Mexico in the capital are world-famous, was placed in a side park that borders the road heading south from Nogales, Sonora. The entire concept is yet to be completed, but the first two pieces, Benito Juarez and a massive personification of man's struggle and triumph over evil in the guise of a man slaying a mythical beast, are now in position. There were no cranes available on the Mexican side to hoist the statue to position, so one rolled down from Tucson. There was no profit to be made in a financial sense, but the bounty in goodwill was inestimable.

This ease of friendship that canopies Ambos Nogales can probably be traced to the International. Relations Committee that De La Fuente once headed.

One afternoon a procession of Mexican ladies bearing trays of tamales and frijoles, passed through the International Gate into Nogales, U.S.A. "We hear your PTA has a food sale tonight," they told a startled official. "We want to donate our food."

And so, years back, it began.

So exceptional has been the relationship between the towns that other border communities with less enviable situations have called upon the Ambos contingent to broadcast just how they have succeeded where others have failed.

"If I could spread the genuine friendship and unity of the people of Ambos Nogales throughout the world, it would go very far in abolishing war and hatreds and would establish a reign of universal peace." (Alvaro Obregón, former president of Mexico.) Apart from the tourist aspect Ambos Nogales is a practical and business conscious entity, but the tide of visitors that ebbs and flows back and forth across the border supplies the frosting on the cake. No matter how well-traveled a person may be, the simple maneuver of crossing a border and entering a foreign country remains a thrilling experience.

Ambos Nogales is located at the intersection of U.S. 89, that long, long road that winds from Canada to Mexico, and Arizona 82, serving the mining area of Bisbee-Douglas and points east.

The annual trans-border movement presently amounts to eight million persons entering the U.S. at Nogales. To get a clear accounting of how many crossings are made and by how many would require the skill of a mathematician the likes of Lewis Carroll. Daily commuters are likely to cross back and forth several times in a 24-hour period and a single Arizonan may make the two-way crossing a score of times in a month. Suffice to say thousands use the Ambos Nogales point of entry each week. Actually, a mere 20 percent of the visitors to Ambos go on to the Mexican interior, usually aiming for stops along Mexico 15 to Mexico City; Guaymas, Mazatlán, Guadalajara, and sundry towns and cities that dot the route. Hermosillo, Navojoa, Culiacán, and San Blas are popular.

Ambos Nogales is proof that a border is not a barrier. After a crossing from the Arizona side, the West Coast of Mexico, such an integral part of The Friendly Land, beckons. "If my life depended on naming the one country that had the most to offer visitors seeking all sorts of things, my candidate would have to be Mexico. It has everything you could ask for on a pleasure trip; color, scenery, glamor, art, music, splendid hotels, an interesting cuisine, very possibly the world's best beer, a varied climate, luxurious resorts and spas, wonderful things to buy at a rate of exchange that practically guarantees reasonable prices, cosmopolitan cities with sophisticated diversions mountains, beaches, jungles, splendid hunting, fabulous big-game fishing." (Richard Joseph). Sonora is fun, gentle people, and exciting events

The vast majority, however, come to Ambos Nogales for a day of shopping, to see a bullfight, or merely to enjoy the novelty of passing time in another country. Sometimes the stay is extended for a day or two longer. This is pointedly true on weekends.

A special attraction is the Delmonico's of Ambos Nogales the Cafe Caverna, referred to as "The Cave" or "The Cavern." This dining establishment was once a jail and rumor has it that Geronimo slept here. The proprietor, Demetrios (Jimmy) Kyriakis, was born in Pani, Greece, to spice the international flavor of Ambos Nogales. The Cavern is his domain and the personal attention he lavishes on his establishment is reflected in meals that disappeared from the American side of the border when Diamond Jim Brady passed on. The bar has the first tile floor that Nogales, Sonora, ever saw, put in in the late twenties, and the music of the mariachis against cool rock walls gives this restaurant a charming uniqueness. So much wordage for a single restaurant may appear excessive, but the fact remains that a trip to the Cavern is the sole reason countless visitors make the crossing. In any case, the general consensus seems to be that without Jimmy Kyriakis' Cafe Caverna, Ambos Nogales would be less than a happy place.Most of the shops are located along Avenida Obregón, the town's main thoroughfare. For the uninitiated the shopping suggestions are few: Take your time in selecting what you want, don't be stampeded, go from shop to shop for comparison. The tiendas are side by side, so this involves no difficulty.

The quality and range of goods; handicraft items, wines and liquors, watches, jewelry, clothing, and art objects, is wider than open spaces.

In contrast to times past, prices are relatively standardized. Mexicans remain among the most gracious people on God's earth and to prove it a clerk will haggle with a willing customer about a purchase price, but this is basically something to please the buyer who wants to believe he's struck a hard bargain in the lion's den.

There are two peak crossing seasons: June-July and November-December. The former undoubtedly due to the normal vacation period, the latter in preparation for the gift-giving of the Christmas season.

Traveling through Santa Cruz on U.S. 89 grants an added bonus, and the visitor making the journey for the first time is well advised to slow down and enjoy the approach.