The Drive up Mount Lemmon

For an extraordinary scenic adventure TRY A DRIVE UP MOUNT LEMMON

Text by Lawrence W. Cheek Photographs by Edward McCain (RIGHT) Interrupted in the midst of noonday chores, an Aberts squirrel scrutinizes a curious visitor to its woodland home along the Mount Lemmon highway (OPPOSITE PAGE).

Forget the Mount Lemmon Highway. It's a waste of taxpayers' money. Within two decades, highways and automobiles will be as obsolete as horses and mules. Instead of a road, let's build an airport on the highest of Tucson's surrounding mountains. Then we'll buy a fleet of municipal planes. An air line would bring the cooling breezes and tall pines to within 30 minutes of Congress Street. Summer vacationers could breakfast on top of the range, fly to Tucson for a shopping trip, and be back in the mountains in time for lunch. The poor tired businessman could live at home beneath the pines and be at his office or store for the full eightor ten-hour shift.This was The Arizona Daily Star's editorial brainstorm of July 13, 1927, the middle of a long summer in which editors of the rival Star and Tucson Citizen sat in their sweltering offices dreaming of pine trees and feuding over the proposed road into the forests of 9,157-foot Mount Lemmon. The Citizen, which supported the highway, heckled the Star and its "air line" while trotting out a daily parade of experts predicting economic disaster with-out the highway. On July 20, the headline in the Citizen warned: TUCSON DOOMED TO BE 8 MONTH TOWN UNLESS MOUNTAIN ROAD BUILT Voters were unconvinced; they rebuffed $500,000 bond proposals to build the highway in 1928 and 1930. But the Citizen's publisher, Gen. Frank H. Hitchcock, wouldn't give up. In 1933 he heard that the director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons wanted to experiment with employing inmates on highway construction to help "rehabilitate" them. A flurry of meetings ensued, and work began on the highway within three months.

It turned out to be more daunting than anyone had imagined. By the time the 25-milelong road reached the ponderosa pines, it had taken 18 years, 8,003 federal prisoners, and nearly $1 million - even with all that free labor. But the result was a road that, mile for mile, is arguably Arizona's most spectacular - and one that remains controversial even today. It seems odd, at least judging by today's sensitivities, that no dispute erupted over how the highway was being built.

A large number of the inmates were Mexican citizens whose only crime had been crossing the border in search of work. Frequently they were malnourished and had to be fed for a week or two before they were strong enough for construction work. Their usual sentence was 30 days.

The gringo's-eye view, contained in a 1951 U.S. Department of Commerce report, was that the U.S. government did the illegal immigrants a favor. "These Mexicans were very proud of their assignment as skilled operators of equipment," the report said. "They worked hard

Life at the Top

There must be something in the thin, cool air of Summerhaven, the village at the end of the Mount Lemmon Highway, that induces a mystical high. One current resident calls it "Camelot." Last year a bewitched reporter described it as "a Brigadoon you can reach by car."

For many of the residents, though, Summerhaven's allure is simple and practical. "My kids walk two minutes to school, and my business is attached to our house, so I don't have latchkey kids," says gift shop owner Debbie Voight. "For a single mom, what could be more ideal?"

Summerhaven is home to about 50 year-round residents. In summer their numbers swell to maybe 400. It doesn't look like Camelot. Strewn along the road are about 200 motley cabins, four small shops, two inns, two restaurants, a post office, and a one-room school. That's it. Although Summerhaven is developing, it will never compete with Aspen. There are only 240 acres of private land in the village, which is surrounded by the Coronado National Forest.

This suits most of the residents just fine. None of them moved here to get rich. They came because they wanted to simplify their lives, or because they were attracted by the mountain.

"It's a different kind of stress," explains Chris Coppock, her smile radiating cheer. She and husband Steve moved up from Tucson in 1988. Now she's one of Summerhaven's cottage industrialists, running a diminutive retail bakery, shipping her roasted pecans down to stores in the flatlands, and renting cabins to overnight guests. She manages the work load like a juggler. Five minutes left on the oven timer? Enough to dash off to make a bed in one of the cabins. Yet it's not the kind of pressure she used to feel in Tucson. It has something to do with being a guest herself, in a sense, of the mountain. "Living here helps put things in perspective," she says. "I feel that what I do is important, but in the grand scheme of things? These trees, these rocks - they'll all be here after I'm gone."

Living on the mountain also seems conducive to developing independence, says Florence Koch. She teaches 15 students, kindergarten through sixth grade, in Zimmerman School's single room. "These kids seem exceptionally creative and free to express themselves," she says. "I've taught classes in other places where, if I gave them an art assignment, they'd be saying, 'I don't know what you want me to do.' That's not the case here. I don't have to draw them a map."

Jerry and Jackie Groch, who bought the Alpine Inn in 1988, add that Summerhaven is a community of fierce individualists. There's some feuding, they say, and newcomers are welcomed slowly. Still, the village's isolation means that its people help each other. "One of our neighbors stopped in on a busy night, saw that we were overloaded, and just started waiting tables," says Jerry Groch. "It's that kind of place."

Author's note: Accommodations: Alpine Inn, P.O. Box 789, Mount Lemmon, AZ 85619, telephone (602) 576-1500; and Pine Cone Suites, P.O. Box 716, Mount Lemmon, AZ 85619; telephone (602) 576-1542.

Ski information: Mount Lemmon Ski Valley, P.O. Box 612, Mount Lemmon, AZ 85619; ski and road conditions, telephone (602) 576-1400.

Continued from page 38 and became very capable operators. On completion of their sentences they were deported to Mexico and they sent word to the Prison Bureau that they had been able to secure employment as jackhammer operators in the mine [at Cananea, Sonora] at a much higher rate of pay than their former pay as muckers." Elsewhere in the report, though, the Mexicans appear less contented. "Mexican Immigration Law violators made the best common laborers at the pick and shovel work...but there was a period when none were sent to this camp because of their tendency to escape and because budgeted funds were insufficient to pay guards for the overtime required to recapture them." An assortment of tax evaders, bank robbers, opium runners, and conscientious objectors also did time on the road crew. For them, it probably was preferable to prison. They lived in an unfenced camp on the mountain at about 5,000 feet elevation, raised fresh vegetables, congregated around evening campfires, and played baseball with teams from nearby Civilian Conservation Corps projects. They even made pets of the mountain's wildlife: Sally, a captured javelina, "was very appreciative of table scraps and back scratching by inmates," the report noted. "A small percentage" of malcontents loafed or sabotaged equipment-a favored technique was to remove the spark plugs from engines and drop steel nuts into the cylinders. Most, the report concluded, underwent bodyand character-building and completed their sentences "much better qualified to take their places as normal members of society." The road they built was, and still is, astounding. Viewed from living room windows on Tucson's south edge, 20 miles away, the Santa Catalina Mountains look benignly two-dimensional, a great blue-gray construction paper cutout propped up on the horizon. Viewed from above-or on a highway engineer's topo map-the range is an outrageous jumble of canyons, gulches, ridges, escarpments, peaks, and spires. There are few gentle slopes and no highland meadows. This mountain did not invite the building of a highway; it had to be convinced with dynamite. The road leaves suburban Tucson behind at an elevation of 2,880 feet. Almost immediately it slices through a spectacular saguaro forest in Soldier Canyon. Five miles later, the desert gives way to chaparral, the second of six life inmates," the report noted. "A small percentage" of malcontents loafed or sabotaged equipment-a favored technique was to remove the spark plugs from engines and drop steel nuts into the cylinders. Most, the report concluded, underwent bodyand character-building and completed their sentences "much better qualified to take their places as normal members of society." The road they built was, and still is, astounding. Viewed from living room windows on Tucson's south edge, 20 miles away, the Santa Catalina Mountains look benignly two-dimensional, a great blue-gray construction paper cutout propped up on the horizon. Viewed from above-or on a highway engineer's topo map-the range is an outrageous jumble of canyons, gulches, ridges, escarpments, peaks, and spires. There are few gentle slopes and no highland meadows. This mountain did not invite the building of a highway; it had to be convinced with dynamite. The road leaves suburban Tucson behind at an elevation of 2,880 feet. Almost immediately it slices through a spectacular saguaro forest in Soldier Canyon. Five miles later, the desert gives way to chaparral, the second of six life

MOUNT LEMMON

zones on the mountain. At about 10 miles, geologic spectacles parade by: wind-sculpted rocks resembling, for example, a duck wearing a combat helmet. Juniper and oak, then piñon pine, and finally Engelmann spruce and ponderosa pine forests squeeze away the horizons. Periodically the road smashes through forest into open sky. From Windy Point Vista, you can see Mexico 70 miles to the south; if you ride the lift at Ski Valley, you may see the San Francisco Mountains 200 miles to the north. At Ski Valley or Summerhaven, where the road ends, it's a reliable 25 to 30 degrees cooler than in the Tucson basin. An average winter dumps 120 to 150 inches of snow on the slopes at Ski Valley. Tucson collects barely an inch of snow once every four years. No matter what the season, the mountain has the power to turn the city into a distant memory. "This highway offers the equivalent of driving from Mexico to Canada in an hour," says Sarah Davis, a landscape architect with the U.S. Forest Service. It also connects the city with several forms of recreation: picnic grounds, campgrounds, fishing at Rose Canyon Lake, an 85-day ski season usually beginning in late December, and a network of hiking trails. Some

ARIZONA ROAD ATLAS

Plan your next weekend getaway or family vacation with Arizona's first road atlas. This handy collection of 17 full-color regional maps points the way to scenic and historic attractions throughout the state. At a glance, you'll locate everything from interstate highways to unimproved roads. Other indicators pinpoint Indian reservations, parks and monuments, lakes, rivers, airports, campgrounds, and more. There are maps of 27 Arizona cities and a helpful mileage chart to plot your course. 56 pages. Softcover. $4.95 plus shipping and handling. Order your Arizona Road Atlas today with the attached order card, or write or visit Arizona Highways, 2039 W. Lewis Ave., Phoenix, AZ 85009. You can place telephone orders by calling (602) 258-1000 or, toll-free within Arizona, 1 (800) 543-5432.

Probably will invite increased traffic: the environmental impact statement projects 1,800 cars a day by 2005. Steve Plevel, the thoughtful Forest Service district ranger for the Catalinas, spends his furrowed-brow time thinking about how to protect the mountain from an increasing crush of people. As long as there's only one road in, and as long as the Forest Service keeps a watchful eye on how people use it, he says, it can be done. "There are two kinds of capacity on the mountain," he explains. "The first is its physical capacity. Exceed that, and you're going to have resource damage. Example: the Bear Canyon campground has been used so heavily that we've now got soil compaction, and there's no reproduction of trees. This isn't an irreversible situation, though. We'll probably go in and close a third of the campground for three to five years, loosen the soil, and it'll regenerate. Then we'll close another third, and so on." The more difficult problem, Plevel continues, is managing what he calls the "social capacity" of the mountain. For some people those who go up to escape crowds, noise, and civilization-the mountain's capacity is strained already. What the Forest Service must do, he says, is look at

MOUNT LEMMON

how the mountain is being used. "A lot of people take the highway up the mountain just to have a barbecue. They're not looking for a wilderness experience; they want to do exactly what they do in their back yards, but in a different setting where it's cooler, and the wind is rustling through the trees. These are the kinds of demands you can concentrate in a small area." Defenders of the mountain also can take some encouragement from the way the highway is being reconstructed. "Painstaking" doesn't quite describe it; perhaps "revolutionary" does. Says landscape architect Joanne Gallaher, who was in charge of the first three-mile segment, "We were able to change the highway engineers' thinking." Conventional practice in building a mountain highway, Gallaher explains, is to blast a cleanly beveled cut out of the rock above the highway ledge, then dump the rubble to form an even slope from the road down. The problem with this is its very uniformity. It's all straight lines, and straight lines are not the stuff of nature. The gashes are visible for miles. Wherever more mountain had to be blasted to accommodate this widened roadway, Gallaher and the design team went out with geologists and actually designed a blasting pattern that would leave a rough, jagged surface. Wherever the rubble had to be dumped downslope, they created irregular ledges so that plants could gain a foothold. Wherever barrel cacti, saguaro, and ocotillo were in the roadway's path, they were transplanted, not bulldozed. Even the guardrails came in for special design attention: they're a flat gray that doesn't reflect sunlight, and the posts are painted a dark green-identical to the mesquite foliage along the lowest several miles of the road. Most people who work with the mountain agree on one point: the road, originally built in an era of minimal environmental consciousness, would not be built at all were it proposed today. (No airport, either.) Only an insignificant fraction of the urban population below would ever get onto the mountain, and its wildness would be preserved. That position makes excellent environmental sense, and yet it's easy to be grateful for Frank Hitchcock and his relentless crusade. All it takes is a warm summer day, a picnic basket, a good friend, and a convertible with the top peeled back. The mountain, maybe, can be asked to forgive that much.

Free-lance writer Lawrence W. Cheek, an architectural critic and frequent contributor to Arizona Highways, has been a Tucson Citizen journalist and editor of Tucson City Magazine. Award-winning Tucson Photographer Edward McCain also is a frequent contributor to Arizona Highways.