Ajo

  Hello everyone, sorry I haven't written in awhile. Since I had previously been writing about 
the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument area, I now want to write about the major town in that area, at least on the American side of the border. That town is Ajo.  "Ajo" is the Spanish word for garlic and there is a plant in the surrounding desert that does smell like garlic, but, most likely, "Ajo" is a corruption of o'oho, which is the Tohono O'odham Indian word for paint and the Tohono O'odham had long gathered red pigments from the area around what became Ajo to use in painting pottery and making pictographs.
  Even though Ajo is the major town of this area, it only has about 5,000 people. That is testament to how sparsely populated this area is. There is some debate about Ajo's population. In 1960, the population peaked at 7,049, but, in 1990, after the mines closed, it plummeted to 2,919. The 2000 Census had the population at 3,705 and then 3,304 in 2010. The most recent estimates put the population at roughly 3,500. Yet, there are very few abandoned residences in town and the town has seen significant growth since the population reached its nadir of 2,919. Alot  of retirees have moved in and the town is now a regional headquarters for the Border Patrol. Quite a few Border Patrol employees and their families have moved in. 5,000 seems to be a more accurate figure. The majority of the houses that were occupied when the town had over 7,000 people are occupied again, but there are now alot of retirees, without children, living in town, in addition to the Border Patrol families, thus significantly changing the demographics of the town.
  Ajo was built as a company town, owned by the Phelps-Dodge Company. it was built on the site of two former towns, Gibson and Rowood and, when Ajo was built, it was designed to resemble Tyrone, New Mexico, another Phelps-Dodge owned town that only lasted a few years before being abandoned to the elements. Tyrone was once called "the most beautiful mining town in the world" or "the million dollar mining town ." Ajo was designed to resemble Tyrone. As a result, Ajo has one of the most beautiful downtown plazas I have ever seen!

Looking for a new blog site

I may be transferring this blog, In My Travels and The Cactus Patch to another blog site if these problems continue in which I cannot access my own blogs. As it stands now, I can write in the blogs, by taking a roundabout way to get there, but I cannot view past blogs. There is also a possibility that I may delete all 3 of these blogs and create new ones through another site.

Organ Pipe

 Five miles north of Lukeville, on the border with Mexico, is the visitor center and administrative center of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. It is a great place to visit and there are lots of great books pertaining to the Sonoran Desert. There is also a short film called "Where Edges Meet" that is about this area.
  Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument covers 330,688 acres. So it is a large park. The park was officially declared a national monument in 1937. The town of Lukeville already existed before then and this is why the townsite is not actually in the park even though maps make it appear that it is. The State of Arizona already owned this land before then and donated it to the federal government during Prohibition to try to stem the tide of illegal liquor being brought in from Mexico. 
  About one mile southwest of the Visitors Center, on a narrow park road, is the Twin Peaks Campground. It has 208 campsites.  I have camped here twice in the past. From my campsite those two nights, I was able to see the lights of Sonoyta, Mexico, in the state of Sonora, plus two other small towns in Mexico. Sonoyta has about 12,000 people and is located directly across the border wall from Lukeville. There is one other formal campground in the park and that is Alamo Canyon, at the end of Alamo Canyon Road. That campground only has only four sites and the road leading to it is a dirt road. It is primitive camping only and there is a maximum of 20 people that can be in the campground at any one time.
  In the winter months, when the weather is pleasant, there are some great ranger programs that take place in the amphitheater at the Twin Peaks Campground and I attended quite a few of those ranger programs during the 18 years that I lived in Arizona.

Lukeville

  There is a small town within the boundaries of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument called Lukeville, but the property within Lukeville is not National Park Service land. Lukeville, population 35, is basically a small commercial and service area that is located on the border with Mexico. It is mainly known as the place where people cross the border to go to
"Rocky Point." The town is officially called Puerto Penasco in Spanish and that name actually means "Rocky Port," but that doesn't change the fact that everyone calls it Rocky Point.
Puerto Penasco is a popular beach resort at the head of the Sea of Cortes and is only 62 miles south of the United States border. It is a very popular Spring Break destination.
  Anyway, Lukeville is the place where people who visit Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument load up on supplies if they are staying for an extended period of time.
  Lukeville is commonly called Gringo Pass and that is even the name that appears on the post office, but no one likes that name except for the one person who owns most of the property in town.
  "Downtown" Lukeville is a shopping center next to the border wall that contains a restaurant, the post office, laundromat, Mexican car insurance, duty free shop and a supermarket, but that supermarket closed about 3 years ago. I noticed that the last time I was in Lukeville in March of 2013. I was stunned to learn that the store had gone out of business. Since the store closed, that means the local gas station/convenience store has filled in the void and is now the busiest place in Lukeville.
  The aforementioned shopping center is directly across State Highway 85 from the Customs Station at the border. Across the highway and slightly to the north is the abandoned motel, the Gringo Pass Motel. I believe it closed around 2005 or 2006. I stayed there once, in the 1990s, and I remember the TV reception being terrible.
  With the store and motel both closing, it may sound like Lukeville is dying off, but it really isn't. The population remains the same, but the businesses are closing mostly due to an absentee landlord who lives in Florida and is difficult to deal with. 
 Until a few days ago, I could not figure out why there are approximately 1,200 mail boxes in the Lukeville post office. The population is only 35 and there are some national park employees that live in a residential compound five miles north, but there aren't that many rangers in the park. No one else lives in the area. As it turns out, many business owners in Puerto Penasco, Mexico, 62 miles south, have post office boxes in Lukeville. I am not sure why, though.  However, there are rumors that the post office will closed and be replaced with a FedEx or UPS delivery store. Again, due to renting from the landlord.
  Lukeville is a tiny town of 35 people that is surrounded on three sides by a national park and on the other side by Mexico. It predates the establishment of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. The park was established in 1937 in a very remote part of the Sonoran Desert.
  Directly across the border from Lukeville is Sonoyta, Mexico, in the state of Sonora.

 



 

Organ Pipe Cactus

   In southwestern Arizona, on the border with Mexico, is one of my favorite places on earth. It is Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. The park was named for the organ pipe cactus,
which mostly grows in Mexico, but ventures into Arizona in a limited area. The great bulk of the organ pipe cacti grow within the boundaries of this national park, but they do continue north to the area around Ajo, a town that is 40 miles from the border and about a dozen miles from the national monument's northern boundary.  For decades the organ pipe cacti were constricted to this area, north of the international border, but, lately they have been expanding their range. They also grow on the slopes of the Slate Mountains, on the
Tohono O'odham Indian Reservation, which borders the national monument on the east; there is a "loner" or isolated specimen, growing in the Sand Tank Mountains in the newly christened
Sonoran Desert National Monument, a park that is bisected by Interstate 8; there is a solitary individual growing on a bajada slope in Picacho Peak State Park, near Eloy, between Tucson and Phoenix and one growing on Desert Peak, near Marana, which is a northern suburb of Tucson. These organ pipe specimens have somehow managed to grow and thrive even though they are well removed from their traditional range and they are located at least 40 miles or more from the nearest organ pipe. The seeds from which they sprouted most likely were deposited by a bird dropping or blown about by the wind and managed to take root. In addition, there are other organ pipes that were planted and they are doing quite well in their new location, such as one next to the Desert Laboratory atop Tumamoc Hill on the west side of Tucson, those that are in the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix and those that are in
Boyce Thompson Arboretum State Park near Superior.
  The fact that they have expanded beyond their traditional range offers hope that the organ pipe cactus will occupy a much bigger range in the future, though I doubt it will ever become as numerous as the more familiar saguaro.
  Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument is a place that I daydream about and it is a place I visited as much as possible when I lived in Arizona, but it is a very isolated place that requires preparation if you want to visit. It is accessible by a good paved highway, but services are very limited in the immediate area and, even in the nearby town of Ajo, which is the economic center for a wide area, services still are not very plentiful.

A New Perspective?

  Well, I stopped writing about Carlsbad, New Mexico briefly because I was planning a trip there and I wanted to write about it from a fresh perspective.
  Well, I did go through Carlsbad, but my ability to sightsee was severely limited by the flooding that was going on at the time. This flooding in a desert town was caused by the remnants of
Hurricane Odile, which hit the Baja Peninsula of Mexico with full force. This hurricane wreaked havoc on southern New Mexico, southern Arizona and large portions of northern Texas.
  When I was in Carlsbad, I arrived during a lull in the flooding, but there was still plenty of flooding around. I was able to see where waters had receded, however. This was indicated by mud and debris on the streets that proved that water had once flowed across the streets. When I arrived in Carlsbad on Sunday afternoon, September 21, the outside lanes of the major streets were completely flooded, forcing people to drive the inside lanes. This reduced the traffic to one lane each direction plus the turning lane and alot of traffic congestion ensued as a result. To turn onto side streets, drivers had to either drive in the flooded lanes to make the turn or make the turn from the inside lane and drive through the flooded area. Some intersections on secondary streets were completely flooded, probably most of them, but I did not see that many of them. The street in front of Walmart, on the south side of town, was completely flooded for a short distance.
  I have heard varying reports on the amount of rainfall that fell on the Carlsbad area, but it was at least 15 inches. This is in a town that averages about 11 inches for the year!
  The access road into Carlsbad Caverns National Park, State Highway 7, was closed due to 
alot of debris that had washed across the road and blocked it. One oil field worker was swept away and killed by floodwaters and there was a group of 42 oil field workers that were stranded by flood waters and had to be rescued by helicopter. I heard about two different areas in which this happened, one near Artesia, which is 36 miles north of Carlsbad and one near Whites City, which is the town that is adjacent to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. So I don't know if one of the stories was in error or if it happened in two different areas. I don't know if the 42 figure represents one area or both areas.
  So, I will have to resume my Carlsbad series with a stitched together series about my brief visit last a week and a half ago and my previous visits to this area.
 The lull in the flooding that I saw when I arrived was brief. It poured down rain all night and the already saturated ground could not hold it anymore, so more flooding ensued the next morning. When I went through Artesia late Sunday morning, there was little evidence of the recent flooding, unlike Carlsbad, but, as I saw on the news that night, Eagle Draw, a normally dry watercourse that bisects Artesia, was raging out of control. It happened that quickly!!

Silver City

  The economy of Silver City has relied mostly on the mining industry and on the presence of
Western New Mexico University for most of its history. Today, those two components are still a big force in the economy, but it is a little more diversified now. Silver City is located close to the Gila Wilderness, which was the first federally designated wilderness in the country. There are plenty of opportunities for hiking, fishing and camping in the Gila Wilderness. Also in the area is Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument, which are located at the northern end of
State Highway 15, which is a very slow, twisting mountain road. Silver City also has a nearly completely intact and very historic downtown area with most of the buildings dating from the 1800s or early 1900s. The downtown area of Silver City is one of my favorite downtown areas anywhere! Now this is not the adobe construction you might expect to find in a small
New Mexico town. Adobe is an anomaly around here. The principal downtown street is
Bullard Street, but it was originally Main Street, one block to the east. You see, Main Street
disappeared in a flash flood in 1896. Several more floods in the next decade carved the newly created canyon even deeper. Now it is a greenbelt called Big Ditch Park and the canyon is 55 feet deep and the series of floods washed it down to bedrock. There are buildings lining the  
west side of Big Ditch Park that once lined Main Street and they have elaborate front entrances that now face a greenbelt park. When the town plat for Silver City was first drawn up, it was laid out directly in the path of storm water runoff and Main Street wound up paying the ultimate price for the bad design. There are still about four blocks of Main Street left, north of the downtown area. It begins at 14th Street and then dead-ends at approximately the point where it once would have intersected with 10th Street. A glance at an aerial map will show a straight stretch of San Vicente Arroyo going past the downtown area. This was once
Main Street.