Tucson & Saguaro

Tucson and the desert around it: the two districts of Saguaro National Park, the Santa Cruz Valley missions and presidio to the south, and the organ pipe country of the far southwest.

This corner of Arizona is Sonoran Desert from end to end, and the plant that defines it is the saguaro, a cactus that can reach 50 feet and grows mostly between central Arizona and Sonora, Mexico. Tucson, a city of more than 540,000 people, sits between the two districts of Saguaro National Park, with the Rincon Mountains to the east and the Tucson Mountains to the west. It is also the first US city UNESCO named a Creative City of Gastronomy, an award made in 2015 that recognises the region's long farming history as well as its Mexican food. O'odham communities farmed along the Santa Cruz River long before Spanish missionaries arrived in the 1690s, and that river valley still holds the region's oldest European landmarks. Mission San Xavier del Bac, just south of Tucson on the Tohono O'odham Nation, is still an active church. Farther south, off Interstate 19, are Tumacácori's unfinished mission church and the presidio site at Tubac, the first European settlement in what became Arizona. Madera Canyon, in the Santa Rita Mountains above the valley, is one of the country's best-known birding areas. West of Tucson the road runs across the Tohono O'odham Nation to Ajo, a former copper town with a whitewashed Spanish-style plaza. It has the last grocery store before Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, on the Mexican border, and the headquarters of Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, one of the largest wilderness areas in the contiguous United States. Late autumn to spring is the time to come. Summer highs pass 100°F across the region, the monsoon brings thunderstorms and flash floods from about mid-July to mid-September, and Saguaro's rangers advise keeping summer outdoor activity to before 10 a.m. or after 4 p.m. Arizona does not observe daylight saving time, so the clock here stays on Mountain Standard Time all year.