We moved from Yuma to Casa
Grande, Arizona the
first of December. We stopped in Casa
Grande to check it out as a potential future snow bird site and stayed in Eloy,
just outside of Casa Grande. The area
was nice but the town of Casa Grande
had the smell of cattle from large feedlots. It’s not something we would want
to live with when the wind blows from that direction.
We had lunch at
the BeDillon’s Restaurant Cactus Garden & Museum. It is a 93 year old adobe home with a garden
collected from around the world with over 85 different varieties of cacti and a
museum with over 3,000 artifacts.
The other site
we visited in the area was the Casa
Grande Ruins
National Monument in
Coolidge. An Ancient Sonoran
Desert people's farming
community and "Great House" are preserved at Casa Grande Ruins.
Whether the Casa Grande was a gathering place for the Desert People or simply a
waypoint marker in an extensive system of water canals and trading partners is
but part of the mystique of the Ruins.
The Casa Grande is 700 years old and in remarkable shape.
We moved to Tucson, Arizona
on December 1st. There are a
lot of sites to see here and unfortunately we won’t get to them all during the
week we are here so already planning to come back the next time we travel
through this area.
Our first stop
was the Arizona-Sonora
Desert Museum. It is not a traditional museum but
incorporates one of the lushest deserts on earth with 56,000 plants in 16
individual gardens, 230 animals with 3 animal demonstrations including raptor
flights, bird aviary, hummingbird aviary and an aquarium. It took the whole day to see everything.
Our second day
included the Titan
Missile Museum
and Biosphere 2.
The Titan II Missile is the largest missile ever built by the U.S. The museum has the last missile in existence. The tour included a walk through the launch control room with a simulated launch and a visit to the underground silo to see the missile up close. Above ground are the communication towers and missile silo opening. For 20 years the silo was manned 24/7 just waiting for the call from the President to launch. It was built as a deterrent to World War III that worked well.
We spent the
afternoon at Biosphere 2. Biosphere 2 is
an Earth systems science research facility located in Oracle, Arizona. It has been owned by the University of Arizona since 2011. Its mission is to serve as a center for
research, outreach, teaching, and life long learning about Earth, its living
systems, and its place in the universe. It is a 3.14-acre (1.27-hectare)
structure originally built to be an artificial, materially closed ecological system. It remains the largest closed
system ever created. Biosphere 2 was originally meant to explore the web of
interactions within life systems in a structure with five areas based on biomes, and an agricultural area and human
living and working space to study the interactions between humans, farming, and
technology with the rest of nature. It also explored the use of closed
biospheres in space colonization,
and allowed the study and manipulation of a biosphere without harming Earth's
environment. Its five biome areas were a 1,900 square meter rainforest, an 850 square meter ocean with a coral reef, a 450 square meter mangrove wetlands, a 1,300 square meter savannah grassland, a 1,400 square meter fog desert, a 2,500 square meter agricultural system, a human habitat, and a below-ground infrastructure.
Heating and cooling water circulated through independent piping systems and passive solar input through the glass space frame panels covering most of the
facility, and electrical power was
supplied into Biosphere 2 from an onsite natural gas energy center. Biosphere 2 was only used twice for its
original intended purposes as a closed-system experiment: once from 1991 to
1993, and the second time from March to September 1994. Both attempts, though
heavily publicized, ran into problems including low amounts of food and oxygen,
die-offs of many animal and plant species, squabbling among the resident
scientists and management issues. For those that are wondering they refer to Biosphere
1 as Earth.
We had dinner
at the Cheesecake Factory. We don’t come across one of these very often so it was
a special treat.
Our next stop
in the Tucson
area was the Mission San Xavier and the ASARCO Copper Mine.
A National Historic Landmark, San Xavier Mission was founded as a
Catholic mission by Father Eusebio Kino in 1692. Construction of the current church
began in 1783 and was completed in 1797. The oldest intact European structure
in Arizona,
the church's interior is filled with marvelous original statuary and mural
paintings. It is a place where visitors can truly step back in time and enter
an authentic 18th Century space. The
church retains its original purpose of ministering to the religious needs of
its parishioners.
The ASARCO Mineral Discovery Center
offers the only public tour of a modern working copper mine in all of Southern
Arizona; which features a free exhibit center, video theater, cactus garden,
and The Company Store gift shop. The tour of the ASARCO Mission mine took us to
the rim of the open pit mine and into the heart of the grinding mill
building. It was fascinating to see a
working copper mine. The equipment was
huge as you can see by the size of the dump truck tires below. Each dump truck was $5,000,000, one tire cost
$80,000 and only last 6 months. The mine
runs 24/7.
We took the afternoon off after so
much sightseeing. It felt good to put
our feet up.
The next day we hit the PIMA Air
& Space Museum,
the largest privately owned air museum in the country. There were 5 hangers with 150+ planes plus
150+ planes on the grounds outside. We
also did the “Boneyard” Tour this was very fascinating. There are 4000+ stored aircraft on 2,600
acres at the AMARG (Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group) on the
Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson. The AMARG is a one-of-a-kind specialized
facility within the Air Force Material Command structure. AMARG provides
critical aerospace maintenance and regeneration capabilities for Joint and
Allied/Coalition warfighters in support of global operations and agile combat
support for a wide range of military operations. You may have seen the “Boneyard” on one of
the television specials over the years.
It was a once in a lifetime experience to see up close.
The
next day we took the Street Car through downtown Tucson
and the University
of Arizona Campus then
stopped at the 4th
Avenue District.
It is 6 blocks of unique shops
and restaurants. They closed the street
off at 1pm for the annual street fair over the weekend. We had lunch and enjoyed watching all the
vendors set up.
Our
last tourist stop was Old Tucson. Old Tucson is a movie studio
and theme park
built in 1939 for the western movie Arizona. It has been used for the filming of more
than 300 movies and television westerns such as Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and Little House on the Prairie.
It was opened to the public in 1960.
John Wayne filmed many of his famous films here including Rio Bravo and McLintock.
Many modern westerns have also been filmed here including The Three
Amigos and Tombstone. The late 1960's series High Chaparral series was
also filmed here. We enjoyed a few good
stunt shows and Dance Hall shows.
We
moved to Tombstone
to experience and learn about western history. The Tombstone Historic District is a National
Historic Landmark. Tombstone is a
historic western city in Cochise County, Arizona
founded in 1879 by Ed Schieffelin in what was then Pima County, Arizona Territory. It was one of the last wide-open frontier boomtowns
in the American Old West. The town prospered from
about 1877 to 1890, during which time the town's mines produced US $40 to $85
million in silver bullion, the largest productive silver district in Arizona. Its population
grew from 100 to around 14,000 in less than seven years. It is best known as
the site of the Gunfight at the OK Corral and now draws
most of its revenue from tourism.
We
started our visit to the area with a drive to Bisbee, about 20 miles south of Tombstone. Bisbee was founded as a copper, gold and silver mining town
in 1880, and named in honor of Judge DeWitt Bisbee, one of the financial
backers of the adjacent Copper Queen Mine. In 1929, the county
seat was moved from Tombstone to Bisbee, where it remains. Today Bisbee is an artsy community with lots
of shops and restaurants. The physical
layout of Bisbee reminded us of the mining towns in Pennsylvania
and West Virginia. We had a wonderful dinner at Café Roka.
We
toured the Queen Mine, it was one of the most productive cooper mines in the 20th
century. It was very interesting to
compare the historical cooper mining process to the open cooper mining done
today that we saw at the Asarco Cooper Mine south of Tucson.
Our
first stop in Tombstone
was Brenda’s Chuckwagon Restaurant, famous for their awesome bacon. It was the best bacon we have had across the
country. Brenda gets it from Montana. The bacon is well worth the visit, in fact we
had it 2 morning’s in a row.
We visited the Boothill Cemetery, lots of history there.
After Boothill we took the Stagecoach tour around Tombstone, so much history in one small town.
Next stop was the OK Corral. The Gunfight at the OK Corral is arguably the single most famous incident in the Old West. On Oct. 26, 1881, four men met at the corner of Fifth and Allen Streets in the bustling silver mining town of Tombstone, Arizona. They walked north on Fifth, turned left on Fremont Street and headed toward a vacant lot next to the OK Corral. Minutes later, three men would be dead. The four men who had walked to the corral and killed them – Tombstone marshal Virgil Earp, his brothers Wyatt and Morgan, and Wyatt’s friend Doc Holiday – had unknowingly secured their places in history.
We had lunch at the Crystal Palace
Saloon, one of the historic saloons with a great wooden bar.
After lunch we visited The Tombstone
Epitaph, an old west newspaper office and received a copy of the original 1881
newspaper report of the actual OK Corral gunfight.
The next day we started out at the Tombstone Courthouse State
Historic Park. Built in 1882 in the shape of a Roman cross,
the two-story Victorian structure once housed the offices of the sheriff,
recorder, and treasurer, board of supervisors, jail and courtrooms of Cochise County. The gallows is still present on
site.
Our next stop was the Bird Cage
Theatre. The Bird Cage Theatre was a
combination theatre, saloon, gambling
parlor and brothel
that operated from 1881 to 1889 in Tombstone during the height of the silver boom. It is one of the remaining original buildings
through two major fires during the late 1800’s.
Legend has it that 26 people were killed in the Bird Cage during its
reputed eight years as one of the wildest and meanest places in Tombstone. Over a hundred and twenty bullet holes remain
in the building. The ladies of the night
(soiled doves) plied their trade in cribs suspended from the ceiling in the
building. There are 14 cribs which line
the sides of the gambling hall in the Bird Cage Theatre, 7 on each side of the
room. The ladies would close the drapes
to entertain their clients. In the
basement, a poker
room was the site of the longest-running poker game in history. Played continuously twenty-four hours a day
for eight years, five months, and three days, legend has it that as much as $10,000,000 changed hands
during the marathon game, with the house retaining 10 percent. Some of the
participants were Doc Holiday, Bat Masterson, Diamond Jim Brady, and George Hearst. We really felt like we were living history as
we walked through the building.
We spent the afternoon at Big Nose
Kate’s Saloon listening to great music and enjoying a few brewskies. Many years ago in the 1880's, Big Nose Kate's
Saloon was once "The Grand Hotel". This great hotel hosted such
infamous personalities as Wyatt and Virgil Earp, Doc Holliday, as well as the
Clanton's and the McLaury's. In this
hotel was the janitor and odd job man, known as "The Swamper". He was a trusted and honest helper who was
given his accommodations as part of his hard earned pay. "The Swamper" had his own special
bedroom which was located in the dark basement of The Grand Hotel. This was his
own special and private haven where he could enjoy peace and solitude away from
the hustle and bustle of the hotel's many guests. Within his private domain
where no guest was invited, he also kept secret his passion for silver. The basement was deep enough below the
surface of the ground to afford entrance into one of the catacombing mine shafts
which ran underground beneath the hotel as well as most of Tombstone. "The Swamper" spent many
painstaking hours over a period of years tunneling an entrance into the shaft.
When the digging was completed, he could gain access to a thick vein of silver
where he extracted ounce by ounce of the glorious silver nuggets. This mine
entrance is still a prominent feature of the bar's basement that is accessible
by a spiral staircase in the middle of the saloon.
We
really enjoyed Tombstone
and all the wild west history but it was time to move on. Our next stop was Las Cruces, New Mexico
for two nights. We went to the La Posta
Restaurant in Mesilla. Earliest
records indicate the La Posta Compound was originally constructed in the
1840's. Sam Bean and his brother Roy Bean, operated a freight and passenger
service line to Pinos Altos from this building in the 1850's. After the Civil War, The La Posta Compound
became an important stop on the Butterfield Stagecoach Line. During the 1870's
and 1880's, the Corn Exchange Hotel, one of the finest lodges in the Southwest,
operated from the building. John Davis, the proprietor of the hotel, died in
the late 1870's, however, his wife Augustina continued to operate the hotel, a
restaurant and other businesses in the building until the early 1900's. La Posta de Mesilla Restaurant originated in
the northwest corner of the building in 1939 by Katy Griggs Camunez. The
business has grown to become one of the most famous restaurants in the
Southwest, occupying 10,000 square feet of the La Posta Compound which now
included several shops. This was one of
our repeat travel stops to enjoy the food and atmosphere of the La Posta
Restaurant.
We stopped in Kerrville, Texas
for a week to enjoy some of our Hill Country favorites. We had lunch at Mamacita’s, their green
creamy salsa was awesome. We enjoyed an
afternoon in Luckenbach drinking beer and listening to some awesome country
music. The park had a Christmas potluck
with lots of homemade food.
We headed to Harlingen, our winter
home for January and February. New
Year’s Eve was lots of fun with great food, music and dancing. We made it up well past midnight, amazing.
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