Skip to main content

National Park Wednesday; Saguaro National Park and Cactus Forest Drive

By
Back in 2012 I visited the Rincon Mountain District of Saguaro National Park located in the Rincon Mountains east of Tucson in Pima County, Arizona.  My goal for the trip was to drive Cactus Forest Drive and visit the location of the Loma Verde Mine.


Saguaro National Park was legislatively created by Congress out of the land that was Saguaro National Monument in 1994.  Saguaro National Park consists of two districts; the Rincon Mountain District in the Rincon Mountains east of Tucson and the Tucson Mountain District west of the city.  Saguaro National Monument originally consisted of land that is now part of the Rincon Mountain District, the Monument was declared in 1933.  Saguaro National Monument was expanded in 1961 when the Tucson Mountain District was added.  Additional land was added in 1976 and when Tucson National Monument was expanded to a National Park in 1994.

The primary attraction to Saguaro National Monument is the namesake Saguaro Cactus.  Originally the Rincon Mountain District had far more Saguaros but many of them died off during a hard freeze in the Tucson Area.  The Rincon Mountain District is traversed by the one-way Cactus Forest Drive which completes a clockwise circle of the Rincon Foothills.





North of Cactus Forest Drive is a trail through the desert washes of the tailings of the Loma Verde Mine.  The Loma Verde Mine opened in the 1880s during an era of homesteading around the Tucson Area.  The Loma Verde Mine mostly consisted of copper ore but miners were also searching for gold and silver deposits.  The tailings on the Loma Verde Mine site were from a 350 shaft dug in 1901.  The Loma Verde Mine continued to operated on and off until 1942 during the onset of World War II.














The rest of Cactus Forest Drive consists of views of the Rincon Mountains which connects to various trailheads.  The roadway is very old and follows the general course of the somewhat rough terrain.  Interestingly Cactus Forest Drive is connected to the Old Spanish Auto Trail by the Park Entrance Road.










Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Trimmer Springs Road (Fresno County)

By
Trimmer Springs Road is an approximately forty-mile rural highway located in Fresno County.  The corridor begins near in California State Route 180 in Centerville and extends to Blackrock Road at the Kings River in the Sierra Nevada range near the Pacific Gas & Electric Company town of Balch Camp. The roadway is named after the former Trimmer Springs Resort and was originally constructed to facilitate access to the Sanger Log Flume.  Trimmer Springs Road was heavily modified and elongated after construction of Pine Flat Dam broke ground in 1947.   Part 1; the history of Trimmer Springs Road Much of the original alignment of Trimmer Springs Road was constructed to facilitate access to the Sanger Log Flume.   The  Kings River Lumber Company  had been established in 1888 in the form of a 30,000-acre purchase of forest lands in Converse Basin.  This purchase lied immediately west of Grant Grove and came to be known as "Millwood."  The co...
Post a Comment
Read more

When was Ventura Avenue east of downtown Fresno renamed to Kings Canyon Road? (California State Route 180)

By
California State Route 180 was one of the original Sign State Routes designated in August 1934.  The highway east of Fresno originally utilized what was Ventura Avenue and Dunlap Road to reach what was then General Grant National Park.  By late year 1939 the highway was extended through the Kings River Canyon to Cedar Grove.   In 1940 General Grant National Park would be expanded and rebranded as Kings Canyon National Park.  The Kings Canyon Road designation first appeared in publications circa 1941 when the California State Route 180 bypass of Dunlap was completed.  Kings Canyon Road ultimately would replace the designation of Dunlap Road from Dunlap to Centerville and Ventura Avenue west to 1st Street in Fresno.   The Kings Canyon Road would remain largely intact until March 2023 when the Fresno Council designated Cesar Chavez Boulevard.  Cesar Chavez Boulevard was designated over a ten-mile corridor over what was Kings Canyon Road, remaini...
Post a Comment
Read more

Interstate 99 at 30

By
When it comes to the entirety of the Interstate Highway System, Interstate 99, when fully completed, is nothing more than 161 miles of a roughly 48,000-mile system (0.3% of total length).  Yet, to more than just a handful of people, the number '99' rubs them the wrong way. Interstate 99 follows the path of two US Highway Routes - US 220 from the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Bedford north to Interstate 80 and then to US 15/Interstate 180 in Williamsport.  It then follows US 15 from Williamsport north to Interstate 86 in Corning, New York. Interstate 99 runs with US 220 through much of Central Pennsylvania. (Doug Kerr) US 220 from Cumberland, Maryland to Interstate 80 and US 15 north of Williamsport were designated part of the Appalachian Highway System in 1965.  Construction to upgrade both corridors progressed steadily but slowly.  In 1991, the two corridors were included as a National High Priority Corridor.  The route from Cumberland to Corning consisted of High P...
Post a Comment
Read more