50 Fun Facts About Saguaro National Park

Saguaro National Park is in which U.S. state?

Its two districts flank the city of Tucson.

Roughly how far is each of the park's two districts from the centre of Tucson, the city between them?

The city's name comes from Papago-Piman words meaning 'dark spring' or 'brown spring'.

Which desert do both districts of the park preserve?

The giant cactus grows naturally nowhere else on Earth.

Which president created Saguaro National Monument by proclamation on March 1, 1933?

Tucson Citizen publisher and former Postmaster General Frank Hitchcock talked him into it days before he left office.

Which president added the Tucson Mountain District to the monument in 1961?

Interior Secretary Stewart Udall, an Arizonan, pushed for the 16,000-acre addition carved from a county park.

In what year did Congress make Saguaro a national park?

A 2021 spending bill added another 1,232 acres.

Roughly how many saguaros are estimated to grow in the park?

Twenty-four other cactus species also thrive there, including fishhook barrel, teddybear cholla and jumping cholla.

A saguaro typically grows its first arm at roughly what age?

In the driest spots it can take closer to a century, and some never grow arms at all.

A fully hydrated mature saguaro can weigh up to about how much?

It soaks up rain and visibly swells, then lives off the stored water through drought.

Roughly how tall can a mature saguaro grow?

It is the largest cactus in the United States, considered mature at about 125 and able to live 200 years.

The saguaro's genus name, Carnegiea, honours which industrialist?

His institution founded the Desert Botanical Laboratory in Tucson in 1903; the species name gigantea just means giant.

What official title does the saguaro blossom hold in the place where the park sits?

The white, waxy flowers open after sunset and close by mid-afternoon, each lasting less than a day.

Which endangered bat is the saguaro's main nighttime pollinator and spends part of the year in the park?

Claw marks on a flower are the sign a bat has been at the nectar; by day honey bees and white-winged doves take over.

Which birds excavate nest holes in saguaros that later shelter elf owls and other species?

The cactus seals the wound with callus; when the plant dies the hardened cavity survives as a 'saguaro boot' once used as a container.

What did native peoples call the hardened nest cavity left behind after a saguaro dies and rots away?

They doubled as water containers in the wood-poor desert.

The Tohono O'odham harvest saguaro fruit with a long pole made from what?

The tool is called a kuibit, and the June harvest is boiled down into syrup, jam and ceremonial wine.

Which culture, living here between AD 200 and 1450, left petroglyphs and pottery in the park?

They gathered cholla buds, prickly pears and saguaro fruit and farmed corn, beans and squash.

Which short trail off the Bajada Loop Drive leads to dozens of 800-year-old petroglyphs?

The petroglyphs are pecked into large boulders in the Tucson Mountain District.

Which of the park's two ranges is higher, wetter and part of the Madrean Sky Islands?

It climbs to 8,666 feet and holds pine and mixed conifer forest above the cactus.

What is the highest point in the park, at 8,666 feet?

Wasson Peak, at 4,687 feet, is the top of the Tucson Mountains.

Roughly how many Madrean Sky Island ranges step between the Rockies and Mexico's Sierra Madre?

They act as stepping stones across seas of low desert, which is why the higher range holds species the Tucson Mountains lack.

'Rincon', as in the Rincon Mountains, is Spanish for what?

It refers to the shape of the range and its footprint.

Eruptions that formed the Tucson Mountains left a collapsed caldera roughly how wide?

A granite remnant of the old magma chamber can be seen from the Sus Picnic Area.

Which low-angle fault carried rock from under the Tucson Mountains up to 22 miles east to form the park's eastern range?

That is why the volcanic rocks of the west side never appear on the east side, which is mostly banded Catalina gneiss.

Which invasive African grass, first detected in the park in 1989, is its most serious plant threat?

Imported in the 1930s as cattle forage, it is considered impossible to eliminate and is hand-pulled by volunteers.

Roughly how many vertebrates die on the park's roads each year?

Picture Rocks Road, a commuter route across the Tucson Mountain District, is the worst; a 2002 plan to close it failed.

Which venomous lizard is among the park's 36 reptile species?

Diamondback rattlesnakes are the most commonly seen snakes.

Which pig-like mammal, common in the park, is actually a peccary?

A 1999-2008 inventory confirmed 30 medium and large mammal species, 29 of them in the Rincon district.

Which strikingly red bird, uncommon elsewhere in the U.S., breeds in the park?

The park lists 107 bird species, including one threatened one, the Mexican spotted owl.

Which amphibian survives the desert by living in burrows and emerging only to breed in summer rains?

Only three amphibians live in the park at all; the lowland leopard frog is a species of special concern.

Which federal programme built the stone ramadas of Saguaro's Tucson Mountain District from 1933 to 1941?

Its crews also built the east side's loop drive between 1936 and 1939.

Which 800-mile National Scenic route crosses the Rincon Mountain District on its way from Mexico to Utah?

Congress named it a National Scenic Trail in 2009.

How much hiking trail does the park have?

Hazards listed by the park include heat, flash floods, cactus spines, cougars, bears and Africanized bees.

Where in the park is overnight camping banned entirely?

The eastern district allows wilderness camping by permit, with Manning Camp as its high base.

Manning Cabin, a 1905 retreat in the park's eastern range, was built for Levi Manning, who had served a term as what?

Pack mules still haul supplies up to Manning Camp for fire crews and scientists.

What did 19th-century settlers mine in the park to make mortar, leaving six kilns behind?

Three of the kilns can still be visited along two east-side trails.

Which Tucson Mountains mine, later renamed the Mile Wide Mine, was the district's most successful before 1942?

Igneous rock was mined at 149 sites in the Tucson Mountain District, mostly for modest returns.

Which institution's Natural History Society first pushed in 1920 for a protected saguaro area?

University president Homer Shantz, a plant scientist, joined the campaign in 1928.

Which non-profit zoo-and-botanical-garden sits just south of the Tucson Mountain District on Kinney Road?

It occupies 98 acres rented from Pima County and shows only plants and animals native to the region.

Which loop drive in the Rincon district, 8.3 miles long, gives access to many of its trails?

The Tucson-side equivalent is a 5-mile unpaved loop.

Roughly how much of the 92,000-acre park is designated wilderness?

The eastern district alone is about 67,000 acres, nearly three times the size of the western one.

Which generally dry, north-flowing river's watershed holds the park?

Rincon Creek, flowing at least part of the year, has the park's largest riparian zone.

Spanish soldiers built which fort in 1775 to guard the Tucson area against Apache raids?

San Xavier Mission, founded in 1692 along the river, was the first non-native settlement in the area.

Which crested growth deformity is found in roughly one in 10,000 saguaros?

Fasciation causes a seam of abnormal growth to fan across the top of the plant or an arm.

A saguaro grows from seed so slowly that after two years it may be only how tall?

Plants around Tucson grow about twice as fast as those in the drier deserts to the west.

A single saguaro fruit contains roughly how many seeds?

They ripen in June, and one 1929 harvest brought in 45,000 kilograms of fruit among 600 families.

Between 1900 and 2010, the park's annual mean temperature rose by roughly how much?

Brief violent summer rains still bring lightning, dust storms and flash floods.

What is the Tohono O'odham name for the long harvesting pole made from bundled saguaro ribs?

The fruit harvest begins in June, and the freshly picked pulp is traditionally boiled down into syrup.

Which 1540s Spanish expedition left the earliest reports of the saguaro, noting its use in winemaking?

The species itself was not formally described until William H. Emory's 1848 border survey, with George Engelmann naming it in 1859.

What is the nickname for shooting at saguaros, an act illegal under Arizona state law?

Even builders of houses and highways need special permits to move or destroy any saguaro in their way.