Cienega Valley (Arizona)
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Cienega Valley (Arizona)
Cienega Valley is a valley located southeast of Tucson, Arizona, in the transition zone between the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts. It is bounded by the Rincon Mountains to the north, the Whetstone Mountains to the east, the Mustang Mountains to the southeast, the Canelo Hills to the south, and the Santa Rita-Empire Mountains complex to the west. Much of the area is now part of the Las Cienegas National Conservation Area, which preserves habitat for a variety of threatened plant and animal species in the valley and along Cienega Creek. The town of Vail, Arizona, is located at the northwestern edge of the valley, next to the Colossal Cave Mountain Park. The small community of Sonoita is located in the southwestern part of the valley, a few miles south of the historic Empire Ranch, which is now used as the headquarters for the Las Cienegas National Conservation Area, as well as a local history museum. The ghost towns of Greaterville, Kentucky Camp, and Total Wreck are located ...
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Vail, Arizona
Vail is a census-designated place (CDP) in Pima County, Arizona, United States. It is southeast of Tucson. The population was 10,208 at the 2010 census, up from 2484 in the 2000 census. The area is known for the nearby Colossal Cave, a large cave system, and the Rincon Mountains District of Saguaro National Park, a top tourism spot within Arizona. Vail was originally a siding and water stop on the Southern Pacific Railroad. It was located on the last section of flat land before the train tracks followed the old wagon road into the Cienega Creek bed. Vail was named after pioneer ranchers Edward and Walter Vail, who established ranches in the area in the late 19th century. Vail deeded a right of way across his ranch to the railroad. Vail owned the Vail Ranch, his brother Walter Vail owned the nearby Empire Ranch, now part of the Las Cienegas National Conservation Area. An attempt to incorporate the town was defeated in 2013.Town of Vail Incorporation, Proposition 403 (November ...
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Empire Ranch
Empire Ranch is a working cattle ranch in southeastern Pima County, Arizona, that was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. In its heyday, Empire Ranch was one of the largest in Arizona, with a range spanning over , and its owner, Walter L. Vail, was an important figure in the establishment of southern Arizona's cattle industry. History Establishment Empire Ranch is located on the eastern slope of the Santa Rita Mountains in Cienega Valley, fifty-two miles southeast of Tucson and about north of Sonoita. The property overlooks a shallow depression called Empire Gulch, through which a spring-fed rivlet bordered by cottonwoods courses eastward to Cienega Creek. The surrounding meadows are "thickly covered" with sacaton and salt grass. Tucson businessman Edward Nye Fish first occupied the site of the ranch in 1871, but it is uncertain whether or not he built the original four-room adobe house and corral, which may have already been there when he arrived. O ...
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Landforms Of Pima County, Arizona
A landform is a natural or anthropogenic land feature on the solid surface of the Earth or other planetary body. Landforms together make up a given terrain, and their arrangement in the landscape is known as topography. Landforms include hills, mountains, canyons, and valleys, as well as shoreline features such as bays, peninsulas, and seas, including submerged features such as mid-ocean ridges, volcanoes, and the great ocean basins. Physical characteristics Landforms are categorized by characteristic physical attributes such as elevation, slope, orientation, stratification, rock exposure and soil type. Gross physical features or landforms include intuitive elements such as berms, mounds, hills, ridges, cliffs, valleys, rivers, peninsulas, volcanoes, and numerous other structural and size-scaled (e.g. ponds vs. lakes, hills vs. mountains) elements including various kinds of inland and oceanic waterbodies and sub-surface features. Mountains, hills, plateaux, and plains are the fo ...
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Valleys Of Arizona
A valley is an elongated low area often running between Hill, hills or Mountain, mountains, which will typically contain a river or stream running from one end to the other. Most valleys are formed by erosion of the land surface by rivers or streams over a very long period. Some valleys are formed through erosion by glacier, glacial ice. These glaciers may remain present in valleys in high mountains or polar areas. At lower latitudes and altitudes, these glaciation, glacially formed valleys may have been created or enlarged during ice ages but now are ice-free and occupied by streams or rivers. In desert areas, valleys may be entirely dry or carry a watercourse only rarely. In karst, areas of limestone bedrock, dry valleys may also result from drainage now taking place cave, underground rather than at the surface. Rift valleys arise principally from tectonics, earth movements, rather than erosion. Many different types of valleys are described by geographers, using terms th ...
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Coronado National Forest
The Coronado National Forest is a United States National Forest that includes an area of about 1.78 million acres (7,200 km2) spread throughout mountain ranges in southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico. It is located in parts of Cochise, Graham, Santa Cruz, Pima, and Pinal Counties in Arizona, and Hidalgo County in New Mexico. History During a party in 2017, the Sawmill Fire broke out and went out control. The fire went on for many days. Approximately were burnt. The person behind the fire was an off duty US Border Patrol agent. He was fined and given probation. The Arizona Department of Emergency and Military Affairs constructed a length of wall in 2022 on federal and tribal lands near Yuma, without federal permission. The National Forest Supervisor told the state to refrain from placing more shipping containers along the Arizona border with Mexico without obtaining proper authorization. Governor Doug Ducey filed a lawsuit in October against federal agenc ...
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San Rafael Valley
The San Rafael Valley is a high intermontane grass valley in eastern Santa Cruz County, Arizona. The valley is bounded to the west by the Patagonia Mountains, to the north and northeast by the Canelo Hills and to the east by the Huachuca Mountains in Cochise County. The valley forms the headwaters of the Santa Cruz River which flows south into Sonora, Mexico just east of the historic Lochiel townsite. The San Rafael de la Zanja Land Grant lies in the valley center just north of Lochiel. The Nature Conservancy purchased the former land grant ranch in 1998 and Arizona established the "San Rafael State Natural Area" in the valley in 1999 on the southern part of that property. The protected areas are not open to the public. The land grant is privately owned. The State Natural Area is south of the land grant, and borders Mexico. In 2008, the San Rafael Ranch headquarters was added to the National Register of Historic Places as the "San Rafael Ranch Historic District". Huachuca ...
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North American Monsoon
The North American monsoon, variously known as the Southwest monsoon, the Mexican monsoon, the New Mexican monsoon, or the Arizona monsoon is a pattern of pronounced increase in thunderstorms and rainfall over large areas of the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, typically occurring between June and mid-September. During the monsoon, thunderstorms are fueled by daytime heating and build up during the late afternoon and early evening. Typically, these storms dissipate by late night, and the next day starts out fair, with the cycle repeating daily. The monsoon typically loses its energy by mid-September when much drier conditions are reestablished over the region. Geographically, the North American monsoon precipitation region is centered over the Sierra Madre Occidental in the Mexican states of Sinaloa, Durango, Sonora and Chihuahua. Mechanism The North American monsoon is a complex weather process that brings moisture from the Gulf of California (and to le ...
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Pronghorn Antelope
The pronghorn (, ) (''Antilocapra americana'') is a species of artiodactyl (even-toed, hoofed) mammal indigenous to interior western and central North America. Though not an antelope, it is known colloquially in North America as the American antelope, prong buck, pronghorn antelope and prairie antelope, because it closely resembles the antelopes of the Old World and fills a similar ecological niche due to parallel evolution. It is the only surviving member of the family Antilocapridae. During the Pleistocene epoch, about 11 other antilocaprid species existed in North America.Smithsonian Institution. North American MammalsPronghorn ''Antilocapra americana''/ref> Three other genera (''Capromeryx'', ''Stockoceros'' and ''Tetrameryx'') existed when humans entered North America but are now extinct. As a member of the superfamily Giraffoidea, the pronghorn's closest living relatives are the giraffe and okapi. See Fig. S10 in Supplementary Information. The Giraffoidea are in turn membe ...
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Pantano, Arizona
Pantano is a ghost town located in eastern Pima County, Arizona, between Benson and Vail. Access is via the Marsh Station Road interchange on I-10. It was established as a small railroad town with the arrival of the Southern Pacific in 1880, supplanting the earlier Ciénega station that was located to the west of Pantano. History Ciénega Station was established by the Butterfield Overland Mail company in 1858. Built over the site of a Hohokam village, the station and later town went by many names over the years, including Pantano Station, Marsh Station, Tulleyville, and Empire. In the early days, hostile Apaches were a constant problem. The wife of Granville Henderson Oury described her journey through the area in 1861: "We are traveling through country which has always been infested by Indians, and very recently they have committed depredations and horrible atrocities on this very road. Our party is very small and there would be no escape for us if a party of Apaches were to ...
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Total Wreck, Arizona
Total Wreck is a ghost town in Pima County, Arizona. The town was built from Pantano, Arizona, whence "an excellent road" led from the Southern Pacific Railroad line and on to the Empire Ranch. It lay on the mail route to and from Harshaw. Mining Silver was discovered in the Richmond lode of the Empire mining district in the eastern Empire Mountains in 1879. By 1884 mines of the area had produced some $5,000,000 in silver bullion. Mining declined through the 1890s and early 1900s. Naming There are two stories about the naming of the town. * John L. Dillon, the owner of the claims, named the townsite Total Wreck because he thought that the mine was on a ledge that looked like "a Total Wreck" because it was below a quartzite ledge with large boulders of quartzite strewn all over.Houser, B. B., et al., ''Historic Mining Camps of Southeastern Arizona: a Road Log with Geologic and Historic Highlights,'' in ''USGS Researches on Mineral Resources – 1994 Part B Guidebook for Field Tr ...
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Kentucky Camp, Arizona
Kentucky Camp is a ghost town and former mining camp along the Arizona Trail in Pima County, Arizona, United States, near the community of Sonoita. The Kentucky Camp Historic District is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and has been since 1995. As it is located within Coronado National Forest, the United States Forest Service is responsible for the upkeep of the remaining buildings within the Kentucky Camp Historic District. History A freak accident that killed a mining engineer allowed Kentucky Camp to persist as it is today, a scenic canyon dotted with mesquites, oaks, tall grasses and cacti. The plans for the Kentucky Camp area in the realm of gold mining were ambitious but never really came to fruition. Early days In 1874 gold was discovered on the eastern slope of the Santa Rita Mountains. The area became known as the Greaterville mining district and proved to be one of the richest placer deposits in southern Arizona. Placer deposits consist of a mixture o ...
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List Of Ghost Towns In Arizona
This is a partial list of ghost towns in Arizona in the United States. Most ghost towns in Arizona are former mining boomtowns that were abandoned when the mines closed. Those not set up as mining camps often became mills or supply points supporting nearby mining operations. Conditions Ghost towns can include sites in various states of disrepair and abandonment. Some sites no longer have any trace of buildings or civilization and have reverted to empty land. Other sites are unpopulated but still have standing buildings. Still others may support full-time residents, though usually far less than at their historical peak, while others may now be museums or historical sites. For ease of reference, the sites listed here are placed into one of the following general categories. ;Barren site * Site is no longer in existence * Site has been destroyed, covered with water, or reverted to empty land * May have a few difficult to find foundations/footings at most ;Neglected site * Little mo ...
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