Arizona's Museum on the Desert

A group of students admire a Boojum tree. Ray Manley A rufous hummingbird in the museum's aviary. C. A. Morgan These leopards enjoy the good life at the museum. Gill Kenny Recognized internationally for its unique re-creations of the great Sonoran Desert region (some 120,000 square miles of arid lands), this Museum of the desert is visited by several hundred thousand people each year. It offers students, vacationers, and residents an intimate educational experience not available elsewhere. Here is assembled the most complete collection of flora and fauna representing this unusual region which extends from the southwestern United States into northwestern Mexico.

The fourteen mile drive west from Tucson to the Museum takes you through wondrous desert mountains and lovely desert foliage. You drive through Gates Pass, a short but spectacular journey through ageless rocks and sentinel saguaros; spread below is a broad swale of alluvial desert stretching as far as the eye can see. Somewhere below, visible only if you know just where to look, nestles your goal, the amazing Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.

A serpentine drive across the undulating desert pediment of the Tucson Mountain's western slope brings you to the unpretentious Museum buildings, buildings formerly used by campers and scouts before the Museum was founded.

In 1951 the Pima County advisory committee, in establishing Tucson Mountain Park, resolved to make these old camp buildings into a leading educational center. Many of these committee people were true naturalists who loved and tried to understand Nature in all its facets, studying each part as it relates to the whole. The great Museum they sponsored still espouses that philosophy! Bill Carr authored the original resolution, supported by Bill Woodin and Arthur N. Pack, a former editor of Nature Magazine. Building use was assured in 1952 and the Museum was off and a-building. It hasn't stopped growing yet! In fact, with the recent addition of the Earth Science Center and an under-construction Mountain Habitat, it has expanded its educational horizons to include the inorganic realm to a greater depth than ever before. Displays of water management, soil conservation, and some static displays of rocks and minerals are now being joined by displays of wet and dry caves, including underground life, mining activities, and improved rock and mineral displays in the Earth Science Center. The Mountain Habitat will be a re-created home for a wide variety of animal life.

Approaching the Museum from the visitor's parking lot you are greeted by a host of reptiles sprawled on large rocks at the entrance. The first time I saw these creatures was on a blustery cold day in February, a day not well suited to the cold-blooded scaly denizens of this welcoming committee. Yet there they were as they would be in the middle of much warmer days. It wasn't until later that I learned from Merritt Keasey, small animal curator, that not only were the rocks upon which the reptiles reposed man-made but those rocks were heated as well.

No wonder Mr. Chuckwalla seemed so contented. He was warmer than his visiting audience!

The man-made rocks, an idea developed by museum director Mervin Larson, are the foundation, so to speak, upon which the Museum's most realistic and interesting displays are based. By subtle re-creation, Merv and his staff have brought Nature, with all her unbelievable variations, to your very feet. Visitors who last came to the Museum fifteen years ago will find hardly a thing the same. The plant life would hardly seem changed, yet it has changed! New species of plants are sometimes raised in the Museum's own plant nursery, sometimes rescued from road construction somewhere in the Sonoran Desert region. Along the winding pathways can be seen the common and the unusual, like the grotesque boojum tree, which looks like a huge inverted gray-green parsnip! There are specially planted areas such as the cactus garden, done in 1965 and sponsored by the Tucson Cactus and Botanical Society. Here desert cactus varieties are grouped and labeled for easy comparison, making this an important learning stop before venturing through the main Museum grounds. Then there is the demonstration desert garden, a more recent addition for plant study and enjoyment. Starting with the desert flora as it has lived for centuries, the staff has created or enhanced botanical displaysin such a way you cannot tell where the original desert plants end and the new-comers begin! Even the desert pediment surface of loose pebbles exposed by aeons of erosion is carefully preserved or duplicated to maintain the natural scene. Once you tear yourself away from the reptilian reception committee out front, you enter the main patio where a breath-taking view commands your attention. The spectacular western vista spread before you starts as a gradual slope (bajada) where you stand at 2840-foot elevation. At your feet is much of the Museum, yet you are hardly aware of it, for care has been taken to keep displays unobtrusive and in perfect harmony with the natural setting. Raise your sights and Avra Valley spreads its agricultural carpet before you. This dissolves into Altar Valley, extending some sixty miles to the Mexican border and beyond. The far hills to the west and southwest are in themselves a fascinating story. Baboquivari Peak, 7730-foot-high center of the Papago Indian's universe, and Kitt Peak, home of one of our most advanced astronomical observation facilities, are but some 30-odd air miles from the Museum. Then there is the unusual and easy to spot lava flow on the slopes of Recordato Mountain, only fifteen miles across Avra Valley. Looking south you see Ryan Air-field, used in World War II as a training and emergency airfield and now a part of Tucson Airport Authority's system. Close-by the airfield you can spot Ajo Way which wends it way through the Papago Indian Reservation to the huge copper pit at Ajo to the west. The scene is like a giant three-dimensional map, and hard to leave; but leave it you must, to see the residents of this great Museum. From the patio you pass first into the Small Animal Room. A visit here always brings squeals of fear from the girls and exclamations of delight from the boys, for here is housed a fine assortment of snakes and insects. A broad selection of the common types is well displayed, and explained in such a way that a greater understanding of their role in the desert ecology can be appreciated. The larger viewing modules here are among the earliest type developed at the Museum. Fiberglass has been used as a basis for painted backgrounds which depict accurately the natural surroundings of these animals. The background blends well into the actual living habitat of the animal on display. Such attention to accuracy and the natural mode is a keynote of the Museum staff's work.

Beyond the Small Animal Room is the Orientation Room. To grasp the full impact of the Museum exhibits, careful study in the Orientation Room is recommended. The room does not provide a visitor with a step-by-step guide to the Museum (this is done by brochure given out as you enter the grounds). Rather, the Orientation Room is designed to focus your attention on the special conditions that create deserts, accounting for the forms of life found in desert regions. The great deserts of the world are graphically described as conditions for survival are outlined. The Sonoran Desert is featured in detail, and living examples, such as the kangaroo rat, are used to portray the development of environmental adaptation. Another display in the Orientation Room describes the various life zones found within the Sonoran Desert region. The variety of climatic conditions, and their accompanying life forms all primarily due to changes in elevation in the region is truly amazing. Starting in what we refer to as the low desert, the region extends through almost every climatic zone identified on earth, right up to the Canadian zone, found on the higher peaks of the American Southwest. As the display points out, every thousand feet of elevation gain in the Sonoran Desert is equal to traveling 300 miles closer to the North Pole. The conclusion is that a drive to a nearby peak would be comparable to driving all the way to Canada, insofar as climatic conditions and flora and fauna are concerned. As the full impact of the Orientation Room sinks in, you become anxious to head out to the grounds. Given free choice, I head for the demonstration Desert Garden; there is no more beautiful nor restful spot on the Museum grounds. Created with gently curving patios of exposed aggregate rock and artistically-designed walks and walls, this garden displays a broad array of flora which seems continually in bloom. Cool trees, beds of flowers, solitary desert plants are artfully planted and carefully identified to provide restful enjoyment and an educational opportunity as well. This oasis of peace which attracts a host of native birds of the desert was designed by Guy Greene of the University of Arizonaarchitectural department with the assistance of his students, sponsored by Sunset Magazine, and constructed by Merv Larson and staff. The creation of this display is an excellent example of the cooperation which exists between the Museum and nearby institutions in achieving the best possible educational results.

The Desert Garden is located such that you can sally forth on short walks to other areas, the walk-in bird enclosure, the tunnel exhibit, and beyond to the popular river pool exhibits.

The Walk-in Bird Enclosure is a treat. Species of birds from turkey to vulture, along with a covey of smaller desert marvels, are free to fly around as you walk through. Nests of eggs may be seen early in spring. A saucy roadrunner, no longer shy of Man, may dash up and offer a stick in his wickedly-curved beak. Colorful ducks chase each other across a small pond while a riot of color overhead signals the presence of parrots native to the short-tree forests of the state of Sonora, Mexico. Other enclosures house still more birds: the eagle, hawk, raven, and others.

The Tunnel Exhibit was one of Bill Carr's early ideas. He was assisted in this by Lew Walker, Merv Larson, and many others, including Bob Craig, now the Museum's general curator. This unique structure provided experience for the staff, and since then Mr. Larson has served other institutions as consultant while remaining as head of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. From this work he has gained an expanded outlook, bringing back to the Museum fresh insights into planning and construction while sharing the Museum's hard-won knowledge with other museums throughout the world. In carefully selecting a staff which is museum rather than zoo oriented, the Museum's directors and leaders have been able to avoid provincialism and provide an educationally unique facility with depth and variety of staff.

Sonora Desert Museum. From this work he has gained an expanded outlook, bringing back to the Museum fresh insights into planning and construction while sharing the Museum's hard-won knowledge with other museums throughout the world. In carefully selecting a staff which is museum rather than zoo oriented, the Museum's directors and leaders have been able to avoid provincialism and provide an educationally unique facility with depth and variety of staff.

The Tunnel Exhibit fascinates visitors as they walk underground to view animals as they would normally be found in the daytime. Since the animals reside underground, only by bringing the visitors underground could the natural settings be properly simulated. Snakes, small mammals, even plant-root systems are incorporated into the tunnel, and are so realistic one gets the feeling of actually The Amphibian Room was the first to use re-creation of a natural setting as a display technique. Fiberglass makes a domed background while artificial rocks create an image so real that viewers feel drawn to the cool settings. Huge toads, frogs, and salamanders native to specific habitats found in the region live in complete oblivion to the large world outside the glass viewing-windows. Attractive, naturalistic exhibits of fish came next, and still provide one of the more relaxing settings at the Museum. Colorful intro-duced fish now common to the region will be recognized by sport fishermen. These often include bass, crappie, and bluegill. Native species of much smaller size, as the pupfish and dace, add colorful beauty to the tanks. Desert visitors seldom think of the region's close proximity to the Gulf of California which is virtually surrounded by harsh dry land. To represent the saltwater environ a fine aquarium has been installed and filled with undulatbeing able to walk “through” the ground. So realistic was this early concept of Carr's, the Museum gained immediate fame because of this feature. This same concept of underground viewing has become the basis for much development work since, and is applied wherever useful throughout the Museum.

ing and reticent brittle stars, spiny sea urchins, colorful anemones (which seem more plant than animal), the comic hermit crab living in someone else's shell, and sea snails. Plans are already being made to build a giant sea aquarium of much broader scope so future Museum visitors can study sea life in greater detail.

The most popular exhibits center around the River Pool area where otters play, beavers paddle, and a nearby bighorn sheep looks down with benign unconcern. Top the area off with an excellent Small Cat enclosure and you have the most advanced and realistic exhibits on the grounds. Man-made rocks have grown into mountain ramparts for the sheep. A shaded patio brings visitors close to the enclosures. Tunnels lead you below for underwater viewing of paddling ducks and playful otters. The rocks have been copied as exactly as possible from the natural formations of the area. Joints, cracks, and texturing have been carefully emulated, while exact coloring has been used to make the sprayed-concrete-andsteel-rod structures look just right. As you move underground, large glass viewing windows allow you to enjoy the underwater antics of the otters. Fish nuzzle right up to the glass and you can actually see the rudder tail of the beaver in action. Nothing could be more realistic. One can only wish that the natural sanctuaries in the Southwest where otter and beaver once abounded had not been so badly desecrated by Man these past decades.

The Beaver Pond is full of life. Fish like the chilid and mullet loiter below, while the Canada goose, known to the staff as “Goose-Goose,” lords it over the