Arizona Rock Art, Ruins Safe from Development
By Margaret Foster | Online Only | Mar. 2, 2009
The Arizona Preservation Foundation named Tumamoc Hill's Desert Lab to its list of the state's most endangered historic places in 2006.
Credit: Pima County, Arizona
A hill known as the Acropolis of Tucson will now be preserved as open space.
Located west of downtown Tucson, Tumamoc Hill contains rock art, remnants of a mile-long rock wall built between 500 B.C. and 300 B.C., and hundreds of pit houses.
On Feb. 23, Pima County was the winning bidder at an auction of 320 acres of Tumamoc Hill for $4.7 million. The deed will be transferred from the state to the county in the next few weeks. Now the entire 870-acre Tumamoc Hill Carnegie Desert Laboratory National Historic Landmark is safe from development. (The rest of the land is owned and leased by the University of Arizona, which will continue using it for its Desert Lab, founded by the Carnegie Institute in 1903.)
Rock art on the now-preserved Tumamoc Hill, west of downtown Tucson, Arizona
Credit: Pima County, Arizona
"The 320 acres on the west slope were very vulnerable to development," says Linda Mayro, cultural Resources Manager for Pima County. Tumamoc Hill is "where Tucson started," Mayro says. "I like to think of it as our center place. It's important in many ways to the community—culturally, scientifically, and just as open space."
It's likely that the economic downturn kept developers away from the auction, enabling the county to be the only bidder.
"Had the real estate market been what it used to be, a year ago, we probably would not have bid. We were still nervous [that another buyer would surface]," Mayro says.
The county bought the land for its appraised value, with the help of a $2.35 million grant from the state and $2.35 million in bonds.
For more photos, stories, and tips, subscribe to the print edition of Preservation magazine.
Subscribe to the Today's News RSS feed
Comments
Submitted by Brian at: March 3, 2009
I live in Phoenix and during the past 20 years I've seen enormous areas of the desert wilderness bulldozed. Even mountains themselves are carved in half and their sides are scraped off. I have a terrible feeling that there has been a horrorific loss of the archaeological record.