Tucson Arizona continues to be one of my favorite places to visit in the southwest. There are so many things to see and do in the area that each time I visit I find new and interesting places to go, and some great places to revisit. This year I was joined by my friends Annette, Dick, Mark and Brent which made it an even better visit.
A study of the colorful history and the expansive skies were on tap for this visit.
“Man must rise above the Earth—to the top of the atmosphere and beyond—for only thus will he fully understand the world in which he lives.”— Socrates
In this case, a journey of 335 million miles began at 6,875 feet. It did for Mark & I, anyway, as we stood on an Arizona mountaintop on a dazzling but chilly February night contemplating the universe.
We were at the Kitt Peak National Observatory, home of the world’s largest collection of research telescopes — 26 in all — and one of the United States’ preeminent sites for serious study of the heavens. The observatory offers public stargazing programs, and we were there for one of their introductory night programs. Kitt Peak, southwest of Tucson, is the second-highest point in the Quinlan Mountains, part of the 2.8-million acre reservation of the Tohono O’odham Nation.
The dedication of the Kitt Peak National Observatory (the country’s first national observatory) tied two cultures together, one with ancient roots in the Southwest, the other with modern eyes on the universe. Kitt Peak takes its English name from Philippa (Roskruge) Kitt, the sister of a 19th-century surveyor. And the Tohono O’odham call it “Iolkam Du’ag” meaning “mountain of Manzanita shrubs,” or “I’itoi’s (creator) garden.
”Reach for the stars, even if you have to stand on a cactus.” ~Susan Longacre
The mountain’s elevation is a key reason the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, the national center for ground-based nighttime astronomy, chose this site in the 1950s as its primary base of operations in the United States. (NOAO also helps run a telescope atop the nearly 13,800-foot Mauna Kea in Hawaii.)
Although Kitt Peak is far from the highest accessible point in the country — or even in Arizona — it offers a suite of conditions favorable to astronomy: very low light pollution; reasonable proximity to Tucson’s international airport and the University of Arizona’s astronomy department; and exceptionally dry air, which produces fewer, thinner and less-frequent clouds than do more humid climates.
Our tour was excellent, after watching an incredible sunset over the desert landscape we moved to one of the many telescopes to spend several hours enjoying glances into the vast space around us. I’m not sure why but the universe really intrigues me. I would have to say looking into space is when I feel the most spiritual and connected. This is likely one of the reasons I have taken to night photography, the camera can see so much more than our eyes and it is amazing what is out there.
“Astronomy taught us our insignificance in Nature.”— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Continuing the astronomy focus I booked a tour of the Richard F. Caris Mirror Laboratory. Unknown by many, under the east wing of the University of Arizona’s football stadium, a one-of-a-kind process is underway. And it has nothing to do with sports.
Below the stadium seats, an immense building houses the Richard F. Caris Mirror Laboratory, the only place in the world that can manufacture gigantic 27-foot mirrors for what will be the world’s largest telescope. Making the next generation of telescopes that will explore deep into outer space and produce cutting-edge scientific research involves science, engineering and a lot of skill and artistry as well as unparalleled technology and revolutionary processes.
The Giant Magellan Telescope’s primary mirror will be comprised of seven separate 8.4 meter diameter segments. Each of the primary mirror segments weighs approximately 17 tons and takes a year to cast and cool. After casting, the fabrication of each segment requires more than three years of surface generation and meticulous polishing.
Eventually, the mirror will be ready for the GMT, a $1 billion project under construction on a mountaintop in northern Chile. Officials expect to have the telescope begin operating, with four mirrors, by the end of 2023. The tour itself we very interesting as watching these massive mirrors being developed in real time was amazing.
“If you don’t know history, then you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree.” – Michael Crichton
Arizona history has deep roots in mining. So it was time to check out some of Arizona’s most famous mining towns Tombstone and Bisbee.
In 1877, the city of Tombstone was founded by Ed Schieffelin. At the time, there was a scouting expedition in Tombstone against the Chiricahua Apaches. Ed was part of this mission and was staying at a place called Camp Huachuca. During his stay, he would leave the camp to look for rocks within the wilderness despite the fact that fellow soldiers at his camp warned him not to. The soldiers told him that he wouldn’t find stones out in the wilderness and would only eventually find his own tombstone. Fortunately, for Ed, he did not find his tombstone, but he did find something more valuable – silver. Heeding the advice his fellow soldiers gave him, his called his very first mine The Tombstone.
The population in Tombstone increased to approximately 7,500 by the mid-1880s. However, this figure only consisted of the white males over the age of 21 that were registered vote. The figure that consists of women, children and other ethnicities, the population was at least 15,000 and possibly as much as 20,000. Tombstone was considered to be between San Francisco and St. Louis as the fastest populating city. Tombstone was home to more than 100 saloons, a multitude of eateries, a huge red-light district, a larger popular of Chinese, newspapers, churches, schools, and one of the original Arizona community swimming pools, which is still being used today.
“The town too tough to die” is best known for Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and the rest of the gang and their storied 1881 gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
Today the legendary silver mining and Hollywood-hyped boomtown houses 1500 residents as well as a wonderful climate thanks to the Cochise County’s high desert. Each one of these year-round residents believe in heritage and history preservation of their Wild West Town. Despite Tombstone’s obvious tourist-trap trimmings (gun-slinging cowboy actors, strips of souvenir shops, etc.), the kitschy spirit of the Wild West here is all in good fun.
Our visit included touring the Tombstone Courthouse (now an Arizona State Park) as well as wandering around enjoying the spirit of the place as a good beer at the local brewery.
We finished the visit with a side trip to founder Ed Schieffelin’s grave site located on a hill overlooking the town and the vast Arizona desert.
Ed Schieffelin’s last wishes were found among his papers. They were: “It is my wish, if convenient, to be buried in the dress of a prospector, my old pick and canteen with me, on top of the granite hills about three miles westerly from the City of Tombstone, Arizona, and that a monument, such as prospectors build when locating a mining claim, be built over my graveyard or cemetery.”
A claim marker 25 feet tall and 16 feet in diameter was constructed over his grave. The plaque reads, “ED SCHIEFFELIN, DIED MAY 12, 1897, AGED 49 YEARS, 8 MONTHS, A DUTIFUL SON, A FAITHFUL HUSBAND, A KIND BROTHER, A TRUE FRIEND.”
“I worked on a peak outside Bisbee, Arizona, where we were only eleven or twelve miles from the sun. It was a hundred and sixteen degrees on the thermometer, and every degree was a foot long. And that was in the shade. And there weren’t no shade.” ― Denis Johnson
In 1877, a reconnaissance detail of U.S. army scouts and cavalrymen was sent to the Mule Mountains to search the area for renegade Apaches (from what I can tell the same detail that found Tombstone in the same year). What civilian tracker Jack Dunn found instead were signs of mineralization indicating the presence of lead, copper and possibly silver. The first mining claim was staked in what would later become the City of Bisbee. The filing of this claim, and a multitude of others sent prospectors and speculators scurrying to the Mule Mountains in hopes of striking it rich. Numerous ore bodies were located, and Bisbee soon became known as the “Queen of the Copper Camps.”
It’s one of the oldest cities in Arizona. Bisbee a century ago was a booming mining town where gold, silver, and copper flowed from the mines, and the cash poured into posh hotels and shady saloons.
“Arizona is young and daring. She is not tied to precedent, to convention, to other states’ ways of doing things…. She is bent on making her own ways, and in her own way. Her mistakes will be her own, and her triumphs likewise.” ~George Wharton
Situated about ninety-three miles southeast of Tucson and only a stone’s throw from the Mexican border it’s a survivor of a town, once the largest city between San Francisco and St. Louis. Bisbee is now a tourist spot thanks to its old west charm and what the old west left behind.
Like Tombstone, far from being a ghost town, Bisbee has made a comeback thanks to tourism, where many visits the town’s mining past or check-in to a landmark hotel where the guests reportedly don’t always check-out. Having little flat land to work with, the town grew up along the surrounding mountainsides — meaning that stairs were often more sensible thoroughfares than streets in this pre-automobile town. The miners may be gone—replaced by artists, hippies, retirees, and a colorful palette of quirky local characters—but the remnants of the former mining boomtown remain via the well-preserved and artfully reclaimed Victorian-style architecture that is largely clustered along Main Street.
The explosive growth of the town around the turn of the century is thanks to the Copper Queen Mine where 8 billion pounds of copper were mined. At the overlook you can peer down into the Lavender Pit, a decommissioned open-pit copper mine that’s marked today by the gaping gash left in the earth’s crust—it’s a jarring testament to mining’s destructive environmental aftermath. Even so, kudos to the people of Bisbee who have made lemonade out of lemons and enjoy the fruits of their labors and the many thousands of tourists every year.
It was a great day exploring this quirky town as I was also spending time with good friends enjoying great company and at the end of the day good beer on brewery row.
“Arizona, our beautiful state, was built on mining.” – Jan Brewer
Twenty-five years ago, a missile silo south of Tucson was one of the most top-secret places in America. At the height of the Cold War, it was part of a network of nuclear warheads designed to avert a nuclear attack. The silo housed the Titan 2 Missile, which could be launched in less than a minute from its position 150 feet beneath the Sonoran Desert.
One of the more intriguing places visited this time around, the Titan Missile Museum, is the only publicly accessible Titan II missile site in the nation. It is located in the hot Arizona desert – a bleak setting that feels appropriate for a nuclear missile silo – and was the largest nuclear missile silo in the continental United States until Ronald Reagan decommissioned it in 1982.
During The Cold War, there were 54 Titan II nuclear installations in the United States.
Today, this is the only one that’s left. By treaty, all of the others had to be destroyed. This one, which closed in 1982, was allowed by the Soviets to survive as a museum and tourist attraction. Holes were cut in the 103-foot-tall missile and it was left outside for a month so that the Soviet spy satellites could verify that it no longer carried a payload. An interesting start for a museum!
The tour was a unique experience and one that made me reflect on the past, present and future of peace in the world. The corridors look like they belong on the Death Star, but this is no science fiction. The culmination of the tour was a simulated launch, complete with secret codes and two-key ignition, a count down, and a blastoff. The nuclear winter, resulting fallout and post-apocalyptic aftermath is left to the imagination. Sitting deep within the chambers of one of the most destructive devices ever created by man is a much more frightening experience than I might have imagined. The experience was highlighted by the fact that I was the one chosen to “turn the key” to fire the missile. Quite sobering……..
“Together we must learn how to compose difference, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower
When a country develops any effective weapon, sooner or later it will be used in a conflict against its enemies. It may kill hundreds, thousands, even millions, but some may argue that that is the price of war (or peace, but that seems an oxymoron to me).
The Cold War defied that trend. Nuclear arsenals were not fired; atomic missiles didn’t fill the skies. Duck and Cover became a high school memory rather than humankind’s last thought before they turned to glowing gray powder. So much potential energy, never unleashed, so much self-control. This decades-long legacy of non-use compels the Titan Missile Museum’s interpretive efforts. The museum’s message is “Peace Through Deterrence”. Hopefully todays leaders will be intelligent enough to learn from this aspect of history.
“There are two problems for our species’ survival – nuclear war and environmental catastrophe – and we’re hurtling towards them. Knowingly.” – Noam Chomsky
Annette and I visited the museum and thoroughly enjoyed the tour and the knowledgeable volunteer guides. This is a place that I would be interested in returning to as they have some in-depth tours of the facility that would prove extremely interesting and thought provoking.
I believe there are two reasons that I am compelled to go back to Arizona each year. The first is the wonderful friends that I have there. One cannot underestimate the value of good friends and visiting them just makes our lives richer.
“Sunset fell…. The red and golden rays of sunlight swept down over it, spreading light over the desert.” ~Zane Grey
The second is the amazing sunrises topped only by the even more amazing sunsets. The combination of desert landscape, clear skies and excellent evening weather make this one of my favorite places.
Among all the geographic areas of the United States, the Southwest in general and Arizona in particular is blessed with a panoramic beauty that almost defies description. Only a limited number of poets, painters, and photographers have been able to do justice to her splendor. ~Marshall Trimble
Leave a Reply