Back Road Adventure

Back Road Adventure Ride the Old Spanish Trail to Great Stands of Saguaros, a Cave, and a Country Market

Old Spanish Trail isn't old. It was built in 1949 after Rincon Valley ranchers got tired of being stranded by floods. It isn't Spanish. It plies no known route of 18th-century black robes or conquistadores. And it isn't a trail. It's a paved twolane corkscrew of a road linking Tucson's East Side with Interstate 10. Despite the best intentions of the romantic who named Old Spanish Trail, nobody knows about it. Not, at least, its full 24 miles from East Broadway to I10. Travelers prefer to shave five miles and 10 minutes off the run to the interstate, taking the arrow-straight and prodigiously boring Houghton Road.

There are two fine arguments for wasting time on Old Spanish Trail instead. The first is driving serious driving. If Mario Andretti's reflexes are slowing down, this is where he'd learn it. Traffic is next to nonexistent; curves and hills are epidemic. One bizarre half-mile section features 13 stomach-stirring dips in rapid succession. The sheriff really hates for people to speed out here; the 90-degree curve at Rincon Creek has 11 30 mph signs around it. I confess, I have sped. If you're in an agile sports car, know what you're doing, there's no other traffic, and can avoid being tempted to look at the scenery, this road is a marvel.

It also is open range, so the Andretti pretender will occasionally scorch through a blind curve and suddenly confront the bonus thrill of a placid cow standing squarely in the middle of the road. I've missed her, more than once. A few errant cows, a furiouslyly scribbling cop, you maybe think about slowing down and taking in the other attractions. Good idea.

The first is Saguaro National Monument. I used to bicycle its hilly eight-mile-loop drive every Sunday. I ruined the experience by installing an electronic speedtime calculator on my bike, which turned the loop into a physical trial: I had to improve my time every week.

There's no discredit in cruising the loop slowly and casually in a car. In winter the monument is alive with secret rivulets and quiet pools, courtesy of snow melting in the Rincon Mountains. In summer its trails are engulfed in the sweet scent of acacia and the sonatas of crickets. In any season, you cruise through alternating forests of mesquite, ocotillo, and saguaro.

In their own monument, ironically, the saguaros are in trouble. I stop to talk with Superintendent Bill Paleck, who shows me photographs of the same hillside in 1931, 1961, and 1992. The oldest picture shows a stand of saguaros so dense that a horse would have trouble weaving through it unscratched. In the latest photo, the cactus forest is alarmingly sparse.

"We know the population of large mature saguaros today is about 40 percent of what it was when the monument was established in 1933," he says. He ticks

off a litany of theories: air pollu-tion, commercial lime mining, cattle grazing, naturally cycling microclimates. He's not pes-simistic over the long term; young saguaros are sprouting prolifically. "In 100 years," he says, "we may be back to 1931."

The next landmark is unknown to tourists, very familiar to Rincon Valley residents: the Rincon Creek General Store.

"In the 1983 flood, we were enclosed in this valley for five days between Rincon Creek and Pantano Wash," owner Anne Gibson tells me. "At that point, we decided there was a need for a store out here."

Gibson's little market may be even more "general" than its predecessors in Territorial Arizona. She sells groceries and gas (out of 1937 pumps, rescued from a dump and retrofitted with electronic innards), housewares, yard tools, and art on consignment. A custom saddlemaker, Steve Singmaster, works here. Every November the Rincon Valley Festival, featuring a parade, chili cookoff, and children's petting zoo, takes place around the store.

"The people really consider this 'their' store," she explains. They knock at my house next door in the middle of the night if they need Tylenol.

"We didn't determine what we sell; the people did. For example, one gentleman has to have his Campbell's Chunky Chicken Nugget soup. Our distributor doesn't carry it, so I go into town, buy it at a grocery, and mark it up appropriately. He doesn't care what it costs. This is his store, and he wants to buy it here."

Six miles on is Colossal Cave, Arizona's largest known dry cave, and the source of a colossal fountain of hype. On the 45-minute tour, an earnest young guide relates the cave's most compelling tale. Here's one version. (Another is in the March '94 issue.) In 1879 one Phil Carver, a train robber, supposedly stashed $62,000 in gold in the cave. Eventually he was caught and served 18 years in the Yuma Territorial Prison. After release he arrowed for the caverns. Lawmen tailed him inside. In the gloom the sheriff heard a scream and a fall. Carver was never found.

"Only 2.7 miles of this cave have been mapped, and there are probably dozens of miles of passageways," our guide says, pausing pregnantly. "Quite possibly, Phil and his gold are still in here."

I hunt for Phil in the Arizona Historical Society archives. There are more variations of this story than bats in the cave. All I can pin down is that a train was robbed (in 1887, not 1879), and one or more of the bad guys did hole up in the cave for a time. Don Kiefer, the cave's manager, tells me that about 99 percent of the cave has actually been mapped, and he doubts Phil's bones still snore among the stalagmites.

I still prefer the guide's tale because it meshes so perfectly with the character of the Rincon Valley. Perhaps from the spell of its rapturous beauty, perhaps simply because there is good land and vast open space, dreamers (and schemers) have always come here. Peer at the ridge a half mile southeast of the cave: there's a private home that someone has built to look like a European-style castle. In a few years, a developer promises, the valley will cradle another 10,000 houses and three golf courses. That's dreaming, contends Kiefer there isn't enough water under the valley.

If the development happens, Old Spanish Trail will be a back road no more. But the saguaro monument will remain - in fact, it's expanding by 3,600 acres as will the stirring mountains, the spring festival of wildflowers, and the multiple legends of Phil Carver. A few local sports car aficionados also are praying quietly that the engineers won't mess with a certain section of the road. As we grow old, we'll occasionally need to check our reflexes.

Back-road travel can be hazardous if you are not prepared for the unexpected. Whether traveling in the desert or in the high country, be aware of weather and road conditions, and make sure you and your vehicle are in top shape and you have plenty of water. Don't travel alone, and let someone at home know where you're going and when you plan to return.