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I can practically sit on my back porch and spit into TMP, so I spend many an afternoon and early evening there. In the Starr Pass area, the landforms and trails are just as interesting as Saguaro West, and there's less people. Nothing much else to say, I guess. It's just nice having a reasonably wild place so near.

Let's hope it stays that way for a long time!!

I know, Jeff! There's a lot of prime real estate out there ... I cringe at the thought of backroom land swap deals being made out of "economic necessity" or whatever. You could say the same about Saguaro East. It's surrounded now on three sides by development that pushes right up against the Park boundary ... can you really see politicians having the backbone to resist for all eternity the developers who salivate over that land?

I dunno. Maybe they can. But political winds shift pretty easily sometimes. When the population of Tucson doubles again and property tax revenue is dangled in front of our eyes, and heaven forbid but we elect another George Bush, what's gonna happen then?

I worry about all of these same issues.

The fact that a private company has the right to keep me from accessing a certain area of a NATIONAL PARK, (Madrona Trailhead), is apalling, a developer should not have the authority to close access to a National Park, the American People own that land, not the homebuilders.
I also found it amazing last time in Saguaro West, how close the development actually is to the park boundary, literally right on the park boundary.

Yea, it reminds me of many of the other trailheads around here, Finger Rock and Agua Calliente Hill come immediately to mind.. where there's a house right next to the trailhead..

An earlier thread suggested that Madrona was closed because of hantavirus.

http://www.hikearizona.com/dex2/viewtop ... rus#p34836

that'd be the station, there hasn't been access via road to the trailhead since before then as far as I know

dysfunction wrote:Yea, it reminds me of many of the other trailheads around here, Finger Rock and Agua Calliente Hill come immediately to mind.. where there's a house right next to the trailhead..

Same situation with Petroglyph National Monument in Albuquerque. See a couple of the photosets for the trails out there to see how close the houses come.

Also some of the westernmost trailheads in the Superstitions, Broadway Trailhead and Lost Dutchman trailhead come to mind as ones with houses within feet of the trail or trailhead.

Been to Pima Canyon lately? There's a gaudy McMansion now "gracing" the one marvelous view as you walked in to the old trailhead. The ring on the tub keeps rising in Tucson.

Madrona the picnic destination was closed because of shenanigans by visitors to the area in the 1960's. There is no legal easement into the station, right now the NPS folks get in due to negotiation with the local land owners. Visitors back in the day harassed the local rancher's stock and generally made a nuisance of themselves so he locked gate to the road cutting across his ranch into the station. Later, that ranch was sold to developers who had absolutely no intention of giving the county or NPS an easement out of the goodness of their hearts.

There is a wonderful set of pools back in there that were once quite the day trip destination, much like Sabino. Today, if the local Bourgeoisie see anyone back in there they call NPS and the sheriff's even though they readily access the Park through that area, themselves. I've heard rumors about an eye surgeon that owns a McMansion back in there who routinely takes his much younger male love interests back into the pools to frolic. NPS is trying to close those pools off for habitat restoration; in fact, the AZ Trail is now being redirected away from Madrona for that very purpose...but don't expect that to stop these people.

BTW...Expect the same kind of thing to happen to La Milagrosa in the next few years, as well.

Much like the people building higher and higher up Catalina Highway and into Soldier Canyon, they believe they have a right to own that land and keep everyone else away. I laugh when I see them belting out of that disgusting development just there at the Pontatoc/Finger trailhead in their huge, lifted diesel trucks and high-end imports like they are something to aspire to. They live right there but don't look like they could hack the first mile of hiking along either of those trails, let alone the ascents that follow. The size of their waists must be commensurate with their incomes, or something. To add insult to injury, the one Mediterranean-esque mansion there positioned above and west the trailhead parking now sports two loud-mouth dogs that bark all day long at anyone below on the trail. So much for getting away from it all…

The people building, buying, and wanting after houses like these believe they can do anything they want without consequence and could not care less what kind of damage and destruction they leave in their wake. Lesser still do they care that they are robbing from the common right to experience these places unmolested by man; in fact, many of them secretly want to see us never have access through their "backyards" again. They are also banking on the notion that the conservation movement is largely fueled by people that are so far removed from power as to be basically considered trivial and harmless. They think we will all go smoke ganja and beat on bongos and complain while they raise entire swathes of pristine desert and chaparral that will never be restored; and, in large part, they are right.

I couldn't have said it better.

Jeeze, Jeff. You and me must be drinking from the same cup of tea.

What kills me is that these people will buy a pristine piece of desert hillside, build a disgusting structure and roadway which requries moving twice as much earth as is even present on the site, then fight with every fiber of their being the rights of people to build above them or in their view shed because the desert should be "preserved". They don't view it as a living, breathing thing but as a backdrop for their personal wilderness living vision. Someone's got to draw the line - and I think we need to beat our bongos really really hard over the heads of politicians until they listen.

I'd personally like to see the city council put a moratorium on growth until sections of the city are revitalized and a sincere, honest study is made of our groundwater and desert conservation situation.

writelots wrote:I think we need to beat our bongos really really hard over the heads of politicians until they listen.

Unfortunately, I think that we are in the minority, as sad as that sounds. Polls last year showed that 57 percent of people supported drilling in Wilderness Areas. And what are politicians doing right now? Introducing legislation to get those poor homebuilders back to work, even after they brought this downturn upon themselves by overdevelopment, too much supply not enough demand.

I'd agree, I had a conversation yesterday with someone who was convinced that the warnings of continued water availability from the Colorado and local ground water dropping were 'greenie propaganda'.

Jeff MacE wrote:I'd personally like to see the city council put a moratorium on growth until sections of the city are revitalized and a sincere, honest study is made of our groundwater and desert conservation situation.

I sure don't disagree, Jeff. But I think the only way it will happen is if it becomes more costly or undesirable to move to Tucson (or any other Arizona city) than not to. In other words, if Tucson somehow becomes "Detroit Southwest".

It won't happen through legislation because development-related interests are too firmly entrenched in bed with the politicians.