Kitt Peak ( ood, Ioligam) is a mountain in the U.S. state of Arizona, and at is the highest point in the

Quinlan Mountains The Quinlan Mountains is a mountain range in the U.S. state of Arizona. Its highest point is Kitt Peak at , which is also the second-highest peak on the Tohono O'odham Indian Reservation, after Baboquivari Peak. The range lies on the eastern e ...

. It is the location of the

Kitt Peak National Observatory The Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) is a United States astronomical observatory located on Kitt Peak of the Quinlan Mountains in the Arizona-Sonoran Desert on the Tohono Oʼodham Nation, west-southwest of Tucson, Arizona. With more than ...

. The

radio telescope A radio telescope is a specialized antenna and radio receiver used to detect radio waves from astronomical radio sources in the sky. Radio telescopes are the main observing instrument used in radio astronomy, which studies the radio frequency ...

at the observatory is one of ten dishes comprising the

Very Long Baseline Array The Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) is a system of ten radio telescopes which are operated remotely from their Array Operations Center located in Socorro, New Mexico, as a part of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). These ten radi ...

. The peak was named in English by

county surveyor A county surveyor is a public official in the United Kingdom and the United States. United Kingdom Webb & Webb describe the increasing chaos that began to prevail within this same period in field of county surveying in England and Wales, with c ...

George J. Roskruge for his sister, Phillippa, who was the wife of William F. Kitt. On his 1893 Pima County Survey map, Roskruge spelled the name 'Kits'. At the request of the wife of George F. Kitt, the spelling was changed by decision in 1930. Kitt Peak is the second-highest peak on the Tohono O'odham Indian Reservation, and as such is the second-most sacred after

Baboquivari Peak The Baboquivari Peak Wilderness or La Bestia is a wilderness area in the U.S. state of Arizona. It is located in the Baboquivari Mountains southwest of Tucson, Arizona. It is administered by the Bureau of Land Management. The United States Cong ...

. Near the summit is

I'itoi Iʼitoi or Iʼithi is, in the cosmology of the O'odham peoples of Arizona, the creator and God who resides in a cave below the peak of Baboquivari Mountain, a sacred place within the territory of the Tohono O'odham Nation. O'odham oral histor ...

's Garden, the summer residence of the nation's elder brother deity. The name Ioligam means "red stick" in reference to the abundance of

manzanita Manzanita is a common name for many species of the genus ''Arctostaphylos''. They are evergreen shrubs or small trees present in the chaparral biome of western North America, where they occur from Southern British Columbia and Washington to Or ...

bushes on and around the mountain.

References

{{authority control Landforms of Pima County, Arizona Mountains of Arizona Religious places of the indigenous peoples of North America Sacred mountains Sonoran Desert Tohono O'odham Nation Mountains of Pima County, Arizona North American 2000 m summits