A Trip on Patagonia-Sonoita Sceinic Road in Arizona

A Trip on Patagonia-Sonoita Sceinic Road in Arizona

Sunday, 2014-4-14

We left home at 7:45 am for a trip to Patagonia-Sonoita Scenic Road. We took 22nd Street going west and

turned into Interstate I19 (I19) going south to Nogales at the Mexican border. I wanted to do some rock hounding at two sites on the route. The first one was at Saginaw Hill in west of Tucson. We took Exit #98 and turned into Irvington Rd going west. We passed a large new residential area and then the number of houses became less and the country was back into the desert. We parked the car before the Butt Rd turned into a narrow gravel road not far from a small hill. The road was full of broken rocks washed down from the hill, but I didn’t find anything spectacular except a small piece of

limestone with a crystal filled cavity. Part of the crystal was coated by bright blue colour copper mineral. I also found light brown rock with honey comb appearance. Ching was waiting in the car, I spent only an hour on the site and had not got close to the hill. I found it interesting, and was a good way to encourage me to hike. Since it was not far, I might come back again and spent more time on the hill.

We were back on the highway, and soon we saw the famous white Mission San Xavier del Bac not far from

the road. We took the exit and went for a visit. It had the same familiar architect of a two-story tall dark brown central façade with two four-story high white bell towers. The top of the north tower was kept unfinished for some superstitious reason. The remaining of the building was also in white stucco. A service was going on in the chapel, and I could see the altar had the same appearance as the central façade of the church. Some dwarf cacti grew in the courtyard were in bloom, One of them had a large flower like that of the night blooming cereus.

In front of the church was a large square and there were many simple stalls on the north side of the square. It

was built of wooden poles made of tree trunks to support the beams. And thorny mesquite sticks were used to lie across the beams as roof. All the stalls were run by Tohono O’odham Indian living in the area. They were very dark, large and fat, and they were selling foods made of freshly baked pan bread topped with some vegetables like onion etc, and some drinks mixed with fruits pieces. Ching bought some organically grown vegetables from a stall. I climbed up a hill next to the church. It offered a good view of the surrounding valley. The lands were all covered by green farms.

We returned to I19, and soon we saw the huge mining waste of Pima Copper Mine on the east side of the

highway. It continued for many miles until we took Exit 75 to Sahuarita. I followed the instruction given in “Gem trails of Arizona” by James R. Mitchell, and turned south into Santa Rita Road toward the northern part of the north-south elongated Mt Wrightson. In the far distant, we saw that there was a big scar on the mountain side indicating a major mining operation. We passed a huge orchard which we later found belong to Green Valley Pecan Farm. The road was serviced and gravelled, and we were climbing up the gentle slope of a large land deposited by

sediment washed down from the eroded mountain. From the road cut it showed that the ground was covered in deep good soil. With the availability of water, it should be easy to convert it into a large agricultural land. The instruction said that we would have to drive 12 miles to get to a cemetery. I didn’t check the odometer, and didn’t see any cemetery. We arrived at a fork at the end of the road. At the left was a road with a sign of “Imerys Santa Rita Operation”. This must be the mine that we saw at a far distance. And at the right was a much narrow and not

serviced road through many small hills. This must be the road that went through the Helvetia Mining district which was the destiny of this trip. I didn’t want to drive the car on this rugged road and decided to turn back. At this point, we had gained the elevation from over 800 m on the highway to 1,240 m. When we came, there was a new white pick-up in front of us, and we saw an old man and three old ladies came out and walked to the field. When we turned back, we saw them having a picnic in a small cemetery.

When we were back to Sahuarita Road, we saw an old red pick-up smashed into a pecan tree on the side of the road at the edge of the orchard. Two cars stopped in front of us, and the drivers rushed to the damaged car probably wanting to find out if they could help. Ching asked me to turn into the Green Valley Pecan Factory across the road from the site of the accident. Soon I saw police cars and ambulance came to the site. There were many varieties of chocolates and candies made of pecan. Many of them we didn’t see in the regular store. They also sale pecan pie but the price was $15 which was double to that sold in supermarket. The later was actually a tart with a layer of pecan on the top, but the one sold in that store had no pecan layer on its top. Probably the whole pie was made of pecan. We didn’t buy because it must be kept in a cooler which we didn’t have.

We continued to drive south in the desert valley along the western base of Mt Wrightson. The scenery turned

into hilly plateau as we reach the southern end of Mt Wrightson. A temporary immigration check point had been set up on the north-bound side of the highway to control the movement of aliens from the south. As we came close to Nogales, I saw many bands of roads on the surrounding low and bare hills, and each road passed or terminated in a house on the hill. The scenery was very special, but Ching, my in-car photographer, was taking a nap and we didn’t a photo of the area.

I had learned a lesson last year of crossing the border by mistake, and this time, I made sure that we didn’t

continue on the highway leading to the border crossing. We turned into Nogales town. It was only a small border town with nothing interesting. As soon as we were on highway #83, which was the beginning of the Patagonia-Sonoita Scenic Road, The scenery changed from desert into a high rolling hill of grass land. Although the grasses were dried and yellow now, it must be very green in other season. However, we didn’t see much agricultural or ranching activity.

We passed the road sign for Patagonia Lake State Park. We didn’t turn into it because I didn’t do any

homework about this park. We drove along the Sonoita Creek and soon entered a small valley at the southern tip of Mt Wrightson. On the east side of the valley close to the road was a small hill. Its face on the top had been falling off a created a multi colour cliff. I turned into the small parking area to look more closely at the rock face of this hill. The rocks on its peak crumbled and left a rather flat cliff exposing the multi colour and complex textures of the rocks composition. Some groups of harder and jagged rocks remained on the top of the hill. At the foot of the hill, we saw eroded soft rocks with multiple colour of black, red and white. The whole things looked very attractive.

Soon we passed the village of Patagonia. We drove slowly to see if there was anything interesting to make us

stop. In 15 minutes, we were out of the valley and arrived at Sonoita, the junction between HW #82 and #83. HW #82 continued east passing the southern end of Apache Peak, and HW #83 went north on the western slope of Mt Wrightson and joint the highway I10 east of Tucson. Sonoita was a small town on top of a plateau at an elevation of over 1,400 m. The scenery was very much like the rolling plateau in Alberta, but we saw only the grassland and no agricultural and ranching activities. Slightly over 10 km north of Sonoita, we were stopped

at a road side immigration check point. Fortunately, we all carried our passports and there was no question asked. Soon after, we reached the summit of the road with an elevation of over 1,500 m. We were actually on the east side of Mt Wrightson, and on the west side of the mountain was where we had been turned back on our rock hounding attempt after being close to the mine Imerys Santa Rita Operation. In half an hour, we had descended into the plain and saw Mt Catalina in front of us.