Back Road Adventure

Today it rained in the desert. It was a late winter rain, and great clouds wrapped themselves around the belly of Cat Mountain, one of the tawny peaks on the southwestern fringe of Tucson.

The rare mist that obscured the desert floor created an optical illusion: the top of the mountain looked like a small pyramid floating on a steamy lake.

About two weeks before, I had passed this same spot while headed for the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge and the hamlet of Arivaca. That day the sky was as blue as a vein of malachite, a normal day in the desert, with a visibility of roughly 50 miles.

Today, however, the veil of clouds that made the desert look so mysterious served as a dramatic reminder that this particular drive would be striking under any conditions: in rain, bright sun, or even at midnight when the arms of the cacti and velvet mesquite trees are barely visible under the light of a half moon.

THE PAST BECKONS ON THE TUCSON TO SASABE LOOP

The route leaves Tucson via Ajo Road, heads west to Three Points, and south to the Mexican border at Sasabe and Arivaca. It follows roads that are lightly traveled through a desert that still is sparsely populated.

To begin, drive west on Ajo Road in Tucson, which is also State Route 86. As you pass the intersection of Kinney Road, Cat Mountain is off to the right.

The small rounded structures on a ridge some 50 miles directly in front of you are the telescopes of Kitt Peak National Observatory. With the exception of an occasional row of mailboxes, there is little else to interrupt the expanse of desert until you've traveled 22 miles to Three Points (also known as Robles Junction). There is a general store with a gas pump at the junction.

Once you turn left onto State Route 286 at Three Points, no services are available before the tiny community of Sasabe, 46 miles to the south. The two-lane road that leads to the entrance to the Buenos Aires wildlife refuge, a mile or so before you reach Sasabe, runs parallel to the rocky Baboquivari Mountains, the sacred range of the Tohono O'odham Indians.

The entrance to the 115,000-acre refuge is well-marked at a good dirt road on the left before you reach Sasabe. The refuge was established in 1985 to preserve habitat for the masked bob-white quail, an endangered species. (See Arizona Highways, June '86) The bird disappeared from southern Arizona at the end of the last century but has been reintroduced at the refuge by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Today, the refuge is considered to be the only location in the United States where the quail survives along with some 239 other bird species that have been spotted in the flowing grasslands that straddle the Arizona-Mexico border.

Migratory waterfowl are attracted to the refuge's 150 lakes (most of them small basins) beginning in September and peaking in the first two weeks of October. The lakes, including the 100-acre Aguirre Lake near the refuge headquarters, are filled by monsoon rains that fall from July through mid-September.

TIPS FOR TRAVELERS

Stop at the refuge headquarters (open Monday through Friday) and ask about the 10-mile-loop drive to Sasabe. Most of the year, the one-lane dirt road is easily driven in an ordinary sedan, but, after a heavy rain, it can get badly rutted and muddy in low spots at the bottom of washes.

For a unique experience, plan to have lunch at Rancho de la Osa Guest Ranch on the outskirts of Sasabe. A rustic hideaway, it has been a guest ranch for more than 100 years and has been favored by celebrities for its isolation.

One of its more prominent guests was Adlai Stevenson, who arrived for a rest after being defeated by Dwight Eisenhower in the 1952 Presidential election.

The dining room at the ranch is a charming 200-year-old hacienda surrounded by flat-roofed adobe structures left from Arizona's Territorial days. If you want to eat at the ranch, the owners ask that you call before you leave Tucson, or the day before. (Telephone: (602) 823-4257 or toll-free 1 (800) 872-6240.) Just before the entrance to the refuge, the Arivaca Road meanders between the low hills of the Las Guijas Mountains on the left and Arivaca Creek on the right.

It is 12 miles on a two-lane road from the refuge to the historic community of Arivaca, population roughly 150. Commercial enterprises in "downtown" Arivaca include a general store with a gas pump, a restaurant, and bar. Take a left at the dirt road next to the store and visit the town's historic schoolhouse and adjacent cemetery.

When the Cerro Colorado Silver Mine (later called the Heintzelman Mine), some eight miles north of Arivaca, was in operation in the last century, its ore was smelted at Arivaca and the bullion was hauled across the Mexican border to the port at Guaymas, Sonora, and shipped to San Francisco. However, Arivaca was inhabited long before the miners arrived.

Like much of southern Arizona, it was first populated by Pima and Papago Indians, the latter now called Tohono O'odham. In the 1700s, Spaniards were attracted to Arivaca because of its abundant water and grazing and silver-mining potential.

Known in the early days as a ranch called "La Aribac," it was abandoned after a Pima uprising in 1751. In 1812, decades before the Gadsden Purchase made the area a part of the United States, Augustin Ortiz bought the ranch from the Spanish Colonial government.

The original spread included the land now owned by the Rancho de la Osa Guest Ranch. Heintzelman's mining company purchased all of the Ortiz rights in 1856. The ranch changed hands twice more before 1915 when area residents petitioned the U.S. General Land Office for a patent to the townsite. The township deed was signed by President Woodrow Wilson in 1916.

Some 8.5 miles north of Arivaca, a dirt road on the left leads to the long dormant Cerro Colorado Mine. If you drive in, note the crude grave on the left of the road.2 of a mile in. John Lee Poston, murdered in a robbery at the mine in 1861 along with two other men as they took an afternoon siesta, is believed buried there. John's brother, Charles, was one of the founders of the Cerro Colorado, as well as a key player in the push for Arizona statehood. (See Arizona Highways, August '88) Back on the main road, it is 14.8 miles through mesquite thickets and cattle-grazing country to Arivaca Junction and Interstate 19. Tucson is some 40 minutes north on the Interstate, not far in minutes or miles but a world apart from this back-country loop.