THE PROPOSED SONORAN DESERT NATIONAL PARK

Stretching westward from Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument is a piece of Arizona bigger than three Rhode Islands without a single permanent inhabitant. No roads passable with standard cars traverse its wide-sweeping valleys and rugged mountains, and the few faint traces of man's past activities are swallowed up in the immensity of the desert wilderness. Furthermore, at present all trespass is prohibited and special permits must be obtained to enter. The result is that this extreme southwestern corner of the state is little known and seldom visited. It still remains a no-man's-land of brooding mystery — inhospitable, forbidding, yet with a strange and compelling allure.

The heart of this raw slice of primitive America is the Cabeza Prieta Game Range, which immediately adjoins the Monument on the west. Extending along the Mexican border for sixty miles, it varies from fifteen to thirty-five miles north-and-south, and covers an area of more than 1,340 square miles, or about 860,000 acres. Federally owned, and administered by the Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife in the Department of the Interior, the refuge was established in 1939 primarily for the protection of desert bighorn sheep. It also provides an undisturbed home for a remnant population of pronghorns, commonly called antelope; the collared peccary, a wild pig locally called javelina; Gambel's quail; and white-winged dove. Travel in the area is severely restricted as it is within a military aerial gunnery range. Although there is no air-to-ground firing, occasional stray shells and falling targets are considered to be potential dangers.

This stark and arid realm which contains Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and the Cabeza Prieta Game Range is of particular interest because it represents the last sizeable expanse of relatively unspoiled Sonoran Desert in the United States. One of the most unusual and distinctive biotic provinces on the continent, the Sonoran Desert spreads northward from the vicinity of Guaymas, Mexico, five hundred miles to beyond Phoenix, and is three hundred miles across at its widest point. Named after the Mexican State of Sonora, the entire region is extremely dry and searing hot in summer, but enjoys one of the world's most pleasant climates from November to April, and the sun shines the year round eighty percent of all daylight hours. But perhaps most remarkable are its complex, delicately balanced ecological communities, and probably no desert on earth can match the variety and abundance of its plant and animal life. Special symbol of the Sonoran Desert is the saguaro. It grows naturally nowhere else. Forming weird open "forests," this gigantic columnar cactus with fantastically widespread arms dominates a unique botanical and zoological life community in which many species of animals and birds are unique to the Sonoran Desert and the ranges of some are almost identical with that of the saguaro. But this is preeminently a land of cacti, and scattered among the giants are a dozen other kinds, as well as a surprising number of shrubs and small trees, mostly bristling, spiny or spiked. In fact, the Monument and Game Range are a veritable natural botanical garden and zoo. Because of the region's outstanding scientific, scenic and recreational values, there is growing sentiment to enlarge Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and raise it to full Park status. In response to this proposal, the National Park Service recently conducted a field study to ascertain the feasibility of adding to the Monument and, if desirable, how it might be accomplished. In January, 1965, a four-man inspection team spent five days in the area. They were expertly guided through the Cabeza Prieta Game Range by its Assistant Manager, and traveled some 260 miles over the rough terrain of the wildlife refuge in three four-wheel-drive vehicles. On the last day they made a 400-mile air reconaissance of the Monument, Game Range, and Mexico's remarkable Pinacate Volcanic Field. The members of the team were greatly impressed with the possibilities of creating a superlative National Park, and submitted a report recommending that the Monument be enlarged by the addition of most of the Cabeza Prieta Game Range, plus an extension beyond its present western border. With the suggested name of Sonoran Desert National Park, this new Arizona outdoor playground would cover 1,242,000 acres, or 1,930 square miles, and rank as the seventh largest unit in our National Park System. If the Mexican Government would also set aside and preserve the great craters, cones and lava fields of the Pinacate region, just south of the line, the combination would be a magnificent International Park unduplicated anywhere else in the world. To qualify for National Park status an area should exemplify a definite type of natural scenery and be the Finest of its kind. So each of our thirty-two national parks is different from the others and are all supreme examples of America's originally rich and diversified wilderness. However, there still remain a number of highly individual and significant types not now represented. One of them is the Sonoran Desert. But Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and the Cabeza Prieta Game Range offer the opportunity of filling this gap by preserving a superb sample of our natural heritage for the benefit and enjoyment of the crowded generations to come. Human inspiration, education and recreation are the area's greatest potential resources, and undoubtedly the development of these intangible values would also produce the most economic good to the region and the nation. Tourism and recreation are among the largest and fastest growing industries in the country. The 45-page National Park Service proposal report describes the features of the area and details the topography, geology, biology, climate, history and pre-history. It points out that the Monument and Game Range are an almost perfect example of Basin-and-Range geological structure, which is typical of the arid intermountain region of the Far West. From the Monument's eastern boundary to just beyond the western end of the Cabeza Prieta area seven mountain ranges roughly parallel each other in a northwest-to-southeast direction. Between them are six valleys, in places so wide as to resemble nearly level plains. There are also groups of hills and isolated buttes and mesas scattered here and there.

Desert Wildness In Its Most Beautiful Form

The mountain ranges are the most prominent aspect of every view, despite the fact that they occupy a very small percentage of the total area. Their length varies from fifteen to over forty miles, but they are seldom more than two miles wide, and rise abruptly from broad valleys on both sides to linear crests of peaks and notches which differ little in altitude for considerable distances. Steep, plunging canyons gouge the mountains' rugged flanks, while cliffs and knife-edge ridges are common. In fact, these desert ranges seem like the skeletons of mountains whose naked ribs stand out in barren savagery, unrelieved by the softening effect of vegetation. Color alone gives them life and variety, and they glow with white, grey, yellow, sepia, brown and chocolate in the brilliant Southwestern sunshine of Southern Arizona.

Moreover, the mountains are surprisingly impressive considering their moderate altitude. Several peaks in the Monument surpass 4,000 feet, but westward the elevations are lower, the Growler Mountains having the only summits in the Game Range topping 3,000 feet. But as the valley floors vary in elevation from 600 to 1,000 feet, precipitous escarpments in excess of 2,000 feet are numerous. Without trees or noticeable vegetation to give the mountains scale, the impression is that they are twice as high as is actually the case.

The Cabeza Prieta Mountains in the western part of the Game Range are unlike the others. Consisting of a maze of canyons, peaks and ridges, ten miles long and five miles across, they contain some of the roughest country in the entire area. The wildlife refuge gets its name from lava-capped Cabeza Prieta Peak, near the south end. The Spanish meaning is "Dark Head." The dappled, pinto-like combination of brown volcanic rock superimposed on gleaming white granite is a spectacular feature of these mountains. Here, as elsewhere in the region, one can observe the dramatic results of earthbuilding forces operating for millions of years.

The Cabeza Prieta Game Range is one of the driest and hottest places in the United States. Average annual precipitation decreases rapidly from about 8 inches on the east border to 3.5 to 4 inches in the western portion, and July and August temperatures probably sometimes reach 130°F. in the lower sun-heated canyons.

About sixty to seventy percent of the rain falls in summer thunder showers, usually of short duration but often reaching cloudburst proportions. Both summer and winter moisture, if generous, brings forth gaudy wildflower shows, and in places green grass lush as the Vermont hills. But water resources are meager the year round: there are no permanent streams, reliable springs are nonexistent, and the playas or ancient lake beds in the lowest parts of the valleys have been bone dry for many years.

However, since prehistoric times both men and animals have taken advantage of the so-called tinajas, translated into English as "tanks." These are natural rock basins in the mountain canyons, scooped out by centuries of violent but infrequent flash floods. Most of them retain some water all year. There are many in the Game Range, such as Eagle, Heart, and Cabeza Prieta tanks, but the best known are in the Tinajas Altas Mountains just outside the western boundary, in the area suggested for in-clusion in the proposed National Park. The tanks were first used by the Indians and have been life savers to white travelers in this desert country for four hundred years. The Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife has deepened several mountain tanks by constructing dams at their lower ends, thus providing permanent water holes for bighorn sheep and other animals.

This corner of present Arizona was in times past the home of a few families of Indians known as the Sand Papagos. These primitive people eked out a bare living in the harsh desert environment by hunting sheep and subsisting on what other food they could find mainly cactus fruit and mesquite beans. A well-worn trail, still visible in many places, crosses the Game Range from southwest to northeast. This was an Indian trade route from the Gulf of California to the interior. Sea shells from the Gulf were a particularly popular item of barter with these people, and were eagerly sought by inland tribes. Along the trail are the remains of "sleeping circles" outlined by boulders, stone shelters, metates, pictographs and other relics of a long-gone Indian culture.

You asked for it... ARIZONA CALENDAR FOR 1966 HIGHWAYS

One of the most frequent questions asked this magazine, and one that has been asked with increased frequency during recent years, has been this: "Why don't you put out a calendar?"

After considerable thought and solemn consideration, we have finally decided to produce a calendar that will answer the many requests we have received. So now with great pleasure and with justifiable pride in parental achieve-ment, we announce our ARIZONA HIGHWAYS CALENDAR FOR 1966. If it is well received, we hope to have a new calendar available for each and every following year.

ARIZONA HIGHWAYS CALENDAR FOR 1966 consists of twelve of our favorite color photographs that have appeared herein in the past, one for each month of the year. We have, we believe, a calendar that will wear well in your home or office.

Our calendar is available at ARIZONA HIGHWAYS, 2039 W. Lewis Avenue, Phoenix, Arizona 85009. Price $1.50. Bulk rates for business firms available on request. See removable order blank in center of this issue!

DETAIL MAP OF ORGAN PIPE CACTUS NATIONAL MONUMENT AND THE PROPOSED SONORAN DESERT NATIONAL PARK

For the past four years Weldon F. Heald has been a consultant in the Office of the Secretary of the Interior. His specialty is making detailed studies of areas considered suitable for possible future National Parks and Monuments. In this capacity he was a member of the National Park Service team which inspected the site of the proposed Sonoran Desert National Park in southwestern Arizona. So he writes about the region in the accom-panying article with considerable authority. A professional writer, Mr. Heald has turned out 652 articles in 131 different publications, as well as guidebooks and book contributions. These are largely travel, exploration, nature and history in the eleven Far Western states, exclusive of Alaska and Hawaii. This is the 27th to appear in ARIZONA HIGHWAYS. With his wife, Phyllis, also a writer and literary counsellor, Mr. Heald directed the Southwestern Writers Workshop and Conference at Arizona State College, Flagstaff, for eleven years. The Healds have also conducted writing classes in several Arizona cities. Best known is the Huachuca Writers in the Bisbee-Douglas area, which has been continuously active for seventeen years.

Mr. Heald is also an ardent conservationist and outdoors enthusiast, and is a trustee of the National Parks Association, past vice president of Trustees for Conservation and the American Alpine Club, regional consultant for the Desert Protective Council, and for several years a director of the Sierra Club.

The Healds came to Arizona from California in 1946 after Mr. Heald's discharge from the army in World War II. First they owned and operated the Flying H Ranch, a cattle outfit in Cochise County, and later moved to the Painted Canyon Ranch in the Chiricahua Mountains. In 1955 they sold the latter to the American Museum of Natural History for its Southwest Research Station. Since that time they have lived in Tucson.

First white man to enter the region was the Spanish explorer Melchoir Diaz, who crossed a part of what is now the Game Range in 1540, on his way to the Colorado River. A century and a half later the country was often traversed by the famed Jesuit missionary priest Father Eusbio Kino, who was one of the Southwest's outstanding explorers and emissary of European civilization to its native population. His meticulous records describe Heart Tank, Cabeza Prieta Tank, Tinajas Altas and other places now in or near the Game Range.

In 1774 the indomitable Franciscan Padre Francisco Garces and Captain Juan Bautista de Anza passed through the southern portion of what is now the Game Range. Then, two years later, they repeated the journey accompanied by more than two hundred colonists for the founding of San Francisco. Their route later came to be known as El Camino del Diablo, or "The Devil's Highway," because of the great numbers of humans and animals who perished from fatigue, hunger and thirst. Many gold seekers followed this hellish track westward in the late 1840's and the 1850's, and it is said that at least four hundred died along the way.

But in spite of its early exploration, the country was too inhospitable to invite settlement, and it remained largely an unpopulated desert. However, the whole region has been thoroughly prospected for minerals for more than two centuries. No rich strikes were ever made and no mine is now operating commercially. The exception is the great copper deposit at Ajo, outside the area a few miles northeast. There the Phelps Dodge Corporation conducts an open pit operation and smelter, and it is one of the most important mining districts in the Southwest. Discovered by the Spaniards about 1750 and first worked by them, this copper bonanza is apparently unique in the region.

Unquestionably few sections of the United States have had such a long human history, yet remained remote, sparsely settled and little known. This, of course, contributes greatly to its attraction, and should be taken into account in any decisions regarding its future status. Except for requisite visitor services and accommodations, and adequate roads, the proposed National Park, if established, should be maintained for all time as desert wilderness.

In their report the members of the National Park Service inspection team unanimously agree that: "Careful analysis of the many factors involved supports the conclusion that Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, the Cabeza Prieta Game Range, and the contiguous Pinacate Volcanic Field constitute an integrated unit of unspoiled Sonoran Desert which should be preserved in its natural state insofar as possible. The biological, geological, historical, scenic and esthetic values of the entire area are of such outstanding significance and their recreation potential so high as to fully warrant whatever steps are necessary to provide for both adequately preserving the area and making it available to the public."