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.