The Mission Trail

In most states counties are of a manageable size. However, in the west, counties are bigger than they are in the east due to the sparser population. In Arizona and Nevada, most counties are extremely large, larger than in the other western states. Arizona is the 6th largest state in the nation at 113,635 square miles. It trails only Alaska, Texas, California, Montana and New Mexico in size. Pima County (county seat Tucson) is no exception. It covers covers 9,186 square miles. It is roughly 160 miles long from east to west and 70 miles wide from north to south. It is the 14th biggest county in size in the United States. However, the population is highly concentrated in the eastern part of the county in the Tucson metropolitan area. The county has slightly more than one million people, but once you get out of Tucson and its surrounding area, it is very sparsely populated. The west end of the county, west of Ajo, has a population of 0. That area has absolutely no population in an area about 35 miles long and 20 miles wide.There is no evidence that this part of the county ever had any year round residents, not even Indians. Highly concentrated populations like this are typical of the western states and that is the reason for the larger size of the counties in the west. In Arizona there a 2 "normal-sized" counties, Santa Cruz and Greenlee. About 25 miles south of Tucson, I crossed into Santa Cruz County, which is the smallest county in Arizona. It is about 30 miles wide from north to south and 50 miles long from east to west. At 1,238 square miles, it is about the size of many Texas counties and it is apporoximately 300 square miles smaller than my home county in Texas. The county's capital, a.k.a the county seat, is Nogales on the southern edge of the county on the border with Mexico. It is the only county in Arizona that does not have any desert anywhere within its boundaries. The vegetation is mostly walnut trees (Nogales is Spanish for walnuts), oak trees, cottonwood trees and other types of deciduous trees along with alot of thorny plants such as catclaw, prickly pear cactus, tasajillo cactus and acacia trees. There is also a lush grass cover in the county which makes for prime grazing land. The higher elevations have lusher forests of pine, spruce and other high elevation trees. Approximately 70% of the county is part of Coronado National Forest. Santa Cruz County and part of Cochise and Pima Counties are called "Arizona's Brush Country," and remind me alot of South Texas where I grew up, with the exception of the high mountains. The highest point in Santa Cruz County is Mount Wrightson in the Santa Rita Mountains. It is 9,453 feet above sea level. Santa Cruz County, along with neighboring Cochise County, are my 2 favorite counties in Arizona because of their beauty, 4 season climate where the summers are hot, but not too hot and the winters are cold, but not too cold and the fascinating history of these two counties--a wild west and mining history in Cochise County and a Spanish exploration and missionary history in Santa Cruz County. Santa Cruz means "holy cross" in Spanish and the county was named for the Santa Cruz River, its principal stream. This river starts in eastern Santa Cruz County, flows south into Mexico and then turns north and flows back into the United States a short distance east of Nogales. It then flows north and "empties" into the Gila River southwest of Phoenix. The river is about 200 miles long, but shortly after entering Pima County, it dries up and flows only after big thunderstorms, so it doesn't actually empty in to the Gila River anymore, but the dry channels of those 2 rivers do intersect. The river is dry as it goes through Tucson. However, in Santa Cruz County, it is a perennial river that is the lifeblood of its namesake county.
It is with this introduction that I am about to embark on "The Mission Trail," which will describe my travels south of Tucson, a land once called "Pimeria Alta" by Spanish explorers more than 400 years ago.