Southeast Arizona's Natural Beauty

Saguaro National Park and Texas Canyon, Two Scenes of the Desert

Mar 7, 2008 Kat Long

Southeastern Arizona's remarkable natural habitats create a unique desert environment for visitors to explore.

Southeastern Arizona is a study in nature’s contrasts. This desert habitat receives only a few inches of rain per year, but nonetheless explodes with succulent plants and colorful wildflowers in spring. Desert grasslands seem barren, only to reveal flocks of birds and herds of antelope. Many assume the Arizona desert to be a hot, unbearably dry place, but its high elevation—up to 7,000 feet—and mountainous sky islands cool the land. Two natural sites—Saguaro National Park, in Tucson, and Texas Canyon, 65 miles to the southeast in Cochise County, offer a look at Southeastern Arizona’s contrasting scenery.

Saguaro National Park

Saguaro National Park is divided in two sections, with Tucson’s city center in the middle. The western section, the Tucson Mountain District, is the smaller of the two and features a living Sonoran Desert landscape against the Tucson Mountains. The much larger eastern portion, the Rincon Mountain District, is famous for its mature forests of saguaro cacti, as well as topographic variety including mountains, lowland desert, pine woodlands, and a riparian (stream-fed) valley. Together, the parks cover 91,327 acres of federally-protected land and wildlife.

For a visitor with limited time to explore the park, the Rincon Mountain District provides the most scenic bang for your buck (the park admission fee, incidentally, is ten dollars per car, five dollars for pedestrians, cyclists and on horseback). The comprehensive visitor center offers books, brochures, and ranger-led programs about desert life. From there, Cactus Forest Drive is a paved, eight-mile loop that brings the beauty of the park, and its namesake cactus, into view. Plenty of pull-outs along the loop offer opportunities for photography—or simply gazing at the wide-open splendor of this unique environment.

Texas Canyon

Nearer to the Arizona's border with Mexico, Texas Canyon seems like a prehistoric amusement park for early man. Located along Interstate 10 in Southeastern Arizona, visitors can tell they’ve entered the canyon when they see enormous, rounded boulders piled on top of one another in gigantic drifts. At some points, it seems possible that the slightest tremor could cause the mountain to crumble, though these formations have been essentially sedentary for thousands of years.

The rocks are comprised of many different minerals, some softer than others, and the crazy formations were created by the process of weathering. Wind and rain eroded these softer minerals faster, leaving behind fantastic shapes, especially “balancing rocks”—huge stones that appear to have been placed upon rock “pedestals” by a giant’s hand.

Texas Canyon is not a state or federal land, so there is no visitor center with information about the area’s geology. Fortunately, there is a rest stop off Interstate 10 at the head of the canyon, with ample parking and great views of the boulder formations, the Dragoon Mountain range in the near distance, and Sulfur Springs Valley below. This is the best opportunity for taking some dramatic photos. Though not as famous or officially recognized as Saguaro National Park, Texas Canyon provides a unique contrast to the well-known symbols of the Southwest.

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