Willcox Playa
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Willcox Playa
The Willcox Playa is a large endorheic dry lake or sink (playa) adjacent to Willcox, Arizona in Cochise County, in the southeast corner of the state. It is part of the Sonoran Desert ecoregion and is the remnant of a Pleistocene era pluvial Lake Cochise. Portions of the dry lake bed have been used as a bombing range by the US military. Most of this area is currently used by the Electronic Proving Ground, based at Fort Huachuca. It was designated a National Natural Landmark in 1966 for its fossil pollen captured underground, the thousands of sandhill cranes that roost in the area and the largest diversity of tiger beetles in the United States. The playa itself is roughly 8 miles wide by 10 miles long, with an area of approximately 40 square miles. Location The Willcox Playa is located in the northern region of Sulphur Springs Valley; drainage to the playa from the east is from the connected Dos Cabezas–Chiricahua Mountains; drainage from the southwest is from the Dragoon Mo ...
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Cochise, Arizona
Cochise is an unincorporated community located in Cochise County, Arizona, Cochise County, Arizona, United States. The city was created alongside the Southern Pacific Railroad in the 1880s. The city was primarily a stop for coal and water which were needed for trains at the time. At its peak, the town had a population of approximately 3,000 people. Today, only 50 people still live in Cochise. The town is also home to several historic locations. In 1899, Big Nose Kate, the famed sidekick of Doc Holliday, lived in Cochise while she was working at the Cochise Hotel after Holliday's death. Cochise has the ZIP Code of 85606; in 2000, the population of the 85606 ZIP Code Tabulation Area, ZCTA was 1,592. Climate According to the Köppen Climate Classification system, Cochise has a semi-arid climate, abbreviated "BSk" on climate maps. Photo gallery Post Office Cochise Arizona 2014.JPG, The post office. Schoolhouse Cochise Arizona 2014.JPG, Schoolhouse Hotel Cochise Arizona 2014.JPG ...
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Sulphur Springs Valley
The Sulphur Springs Valley is a valley in the eastern half of Cochise County, Arizona. The valley covers an approximated vertical rectangle west of the Chiricahua Mountains–Dos Cabezas Mountains complex. The Sulphur Springs Valley is the large flatland to the west. Geography The valley gets its name from two sulfur springs located there. Drainage is from north to south, with a moderately sized endorheic basin, named the Willcox Playa, occupying the northern area. The southern portion of the valley drains into Mexico through Douglas, Arizona through Agua Prieta, Sonora, and into the Yaqui River. During plentiful rain the mountain foothills contain plentiful grasslands. The region is otherwise an arid part of the northeastern Sonoran Desert, influenced by the Chihuahuan Desert just southeast in New Mexico and northwest Chihuahua. The highest mountain areas of this southeast Arizona section contains Madrean Sky Islands of mountain sky islands. Sulphur Springs Valley is one ...
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Endorheic Basins Of The United States
An endorheic basin (; also spelled endoreic basin or endorreic basin) is a drainage basin that normally retains water and allows no outflow to other external bodies of water, such as rivers or oceans, but drainage converges instead into lakes or swamps, permanent or seasonal, that equilibrate through evaporation. They are also called closed or terminal basins, internal drainage systems, or simply basins. Endorheic regions contrast with exorheic regions. Endorheic water bodies include some of the largest lakes in the world, such as the Caspian Sea, the world's largest inland body of water. Basins with subsurface outflows which eventually lead to the ocean are generally not considered endorheic; they are cryptorheic. Endorheic basins constitute local base levels, defining a limit of erosion and deposition processes of nearby areas. Etymology The term was borrowed from French ''endor(rh)éisme'', coined from the combining form ''endo-'' (from grc, ἔνδον ''éndon'' 'withi ...
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Landforms Of Cochise 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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Protected Areas Of The Sonoran Desert
The Sonoran Desert ( es, Desierto de Sonora) is a desert in North America and ecoregion that covers the northwestern Mexican states of Sonora, Baja California, and Baja California Sur, as well as part of the southwestern United States (in Arizona and California). It is the hottest desert in both Mexico and the United States. It has an area of . In phytogeography, the Sonoran Desert is within the Sonoran Floristic province of the Madrean Region of southwestern North America, part of the Holarctic realm of the northern Western Hemisphere. The desert contains a variety of unique endemic plants and animals, notably, the saguaro (''Carnegiea gigantea'') and organ pipe cactus (''Stenocereus thurberi''). The Sonoran Desert is clearly distinct from nearby deserts (e.g., the Great Basin, Mojave, and Chihuahuan deserts) because it provides subtropical warmth in winter and two seasons of rainfall (in contrast, for example, to the Mojave's dry summers and cold winters). This creates an ext ...
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Wildlife Areas Of Arizona
Wildlife refers to undomesticated animal species, but has come to include all organisms that grow or live wild in an area without being introduced by humans. Wildlife was also synonymous to game: those birds and mammals that were hunted for sport. Wildlife can be found in all ecosystems. Deserts, plains, grasslands, woodlands, forests, and other areas, including the most developed urban areas, all have distinct forms of wildlife. While the term in popular culture usually refers to animals that are untouched by human factors, most scientists agree that much wildlife is affected by human activities. Some wildlife threaten human safety, health, property, and quality of life. However, many wild animals, even the dangerous ones, have value to human beings. This value might be economic, educational, or emotional in nature. Humans have historically tended to separate civilization from wildlife in a number of ways, including the legal, social, and moral senses. Some animals, ho ...
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Arizona Game And Fish Department
The Arizona Game and Fish Department is a state agency of Arizona, headquartered in Phoenix. The agency is tasked with conserving, enhancing, and restoring Arizona's diverse wildlife resources and habitats through protection and management programs. Operations The Arizona Game and Fish Department is funded primarily by revenues generated through the sale of hunting and fishing licenses, tags, and stamps, as well as the discretionary purchases of hunters and anglers; it does not receive tax funding through the Arizona State General Fund. Wildlife conservation The Arizona Game and Fish Department has developed a "Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Strategy" (CWCS)—a 10-year vision for managing Arizona’s fish, wildlife and natural habitats, input and partnerships with various agency cooperators, sportsman and recreational groups, conservation organizations, special interest groups, Native American tribes, county and municipal governments, and the general public. Watchable wil ...
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Interstate 10
Interstate 10 (I-10) is the southernmost cross-country highway in the American Interstate Highway System. I-10 is the fourth-longest Interstate in the United States at , following I-90, I-80, and I-40. This freeway is part of the originally planned network that was laid out in 1956, and its last section was completed in 1990. I-10 stretches from the Pacific Ocean at State Route 1 (SR 1, Pacific Coast Highway) in Santa Monica, California, to I-95 in Jacksonville, Florida Jacksonville is a city located on the Atlantic coast of northeast Florida, the most populous city proper in the state and is the List of United States cities by area, largest city by area in the contiguous United States as of 2020. It is the co .... Major cities connected by I-10 include (from west to east) Los Angeles, Phoenix, Arizona, Phoenix, Tucson, Arizona, Tucson, Las Cruces, New Mexico, Las Cruces, El Paso, Texas, El Paso, San Antonio, Houston, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Baton Rouge, New Orl ...
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Dust Storms
A dust storm, also called a sandstorm, is a meteorological phenomenon common in arid and semi-arid regions. Dust storms arise when a gust front or other strong wind blows loose sand and dirt from a dry surface. Fine particles are transported by saltation and suspension, a process that moves soil from one place and deposits it in another. The arid regions of North Africa, the Arabian peninsula, Central Asia and China are the main terrestrial sources of airborne dust. It has been argued that poor management of Earth's drylands, such as neglecting the fallow system, are increasing the size and frequency of dust storms from desert margins and changing both the local and global climate, as well as impacting local economies. The term ''sandstorm'' is used most often in the context of desert dust storms, especially in the Sahara Desert, or places where sand is a more prevalent soil type than dirt or rock, when, in addition to fine particles obscuring visibility, a considerabl ...
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Dust Devils
A dust devil is a strong, well-formed, and relatively short-lived whirlwind. Its size ranges from small (half a metre wide and a few metres tall) to large (more than 10 m wide and more than 1 km tall). The primary vertical motion is upward. Dust devils are usually harmless, but can on rare occasions grow large enough to pose a threat to both people and property. They are comparable to tornadoes in that both are a weather phenomenon involving a vertically oriented rotating column of wind. Most tornadoes are associated with a larger parent circulation, the mesocyclone on the back of a supercell thunderstorm. Dust devils form as a swirling updraft under sunny conditions during fair weather, rarely coming close to the intensity of a tornado. Formation Dust devils form when a pocket of hot air near the surface rises quickly through cooler air above it, forming an updraft. If conditions are just right, the updraft may begin to rotate. As the air rapidly rises, the column ...
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Dragoon Mountains
The Dragoon Mountains are a range of mountains located in Cochise County, Arizona. The range is about 25 mi (40 km) long, running on an axis extending south-south east through Willcox. The name originates from the 3rd U.S. Cavalry Dragoons who battled the Chiricahua, including Cochise, during the Apache Wars. The Dragoons established posts around 1856 after the Gadsden Purchase made it a U.S. territory. Geography The range is south of Interstate 10, between the Whetstone Mountains to the west, and Chiricahua Mountains to the east. Higher elevations of the major ranges in the region are in the Madrean Sky Islands ecoregion, with sky island habitats. Mount Glenn (7,520 ft/2,292 m) is the highest point in the range. The Little Dragoon Mountains are the continuation of the Dragoon Mountains north of Texas Canyon. The mountains were included in the short-lived Dragoon National Forest, which was established in 1907 and combined into Coronado National Forest in 1908 ...
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Chiricahua Mountains
The Chiricahua Mountains massif is a large mountain range in southeastern Arizona which is part of the Basin and Range province of the west and southwestern United States and northwest Mexico; the range is part of the Coronado National Forest. The highest point, Chiricahua Peak, rises above sea level, approximately above the surrounding valleys. The range takes its name from the Chiricahua Apaches native to the region. The Chiricahua Mountains and other associated ranges, along with Sulphur Springs Valley on the west and the San Simon Valley on the east, form the eastern half of Cochise County in southeast Arizona. The Pedregosa Mountains are found at the southern end of the Chiricahua Mountains, while the Swisshelm Mountains are located to the southwest. The northwest end of the Chiricahua mountains continue as the Dos Cabezas Mountains beyond Apache Pass and the Fort Bowie National Historic Site. Access to the Chiricahua Mountains and Coronado National Forest is through W ...
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