12 miles away
Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge
A 117,107-acre US Fish and Wildlife Service refuge in Pima County, created for the reintroduction of masked bobwhite quail and pronghorn.
Baboquivari Peak Wilderness
The smallest designated wilderness in Arizona, 2,065 acres around Baboquivari Peak, a technical summit sacred to the Tohono O'odham.
- Rank in Arizona
- #182of 727 ranked
- Overall score
- Score 46.7 out of 100medium confidence
- Category
- Natural Landmark
The Baboquivari Peak Wilderness, also called La Bestia, is a 2,065-acre wilderness area in the Baboquivari Mountains, about 50 miles south-west of Tucson, Arizona. Congress designated it in 1990, and it is the smallest designated wilderness in the state. It is administered by the Bureau of Land Management and co-stewarded by the Tohono O'odham Nation, whose 2,900,000-acre reservation lies to the west. Baboquivari Peak itself reaches 7,730 feet, is sacred to the Tohono O'odham and can be seen from the Kitt Peak National Observatory in the Quinlan Mountains. The summit is technical, reachable only by class 5 rock climbing on the Yosemite Decimal System. Visitors who are not members of the nation must obtain a permit before entering the reservation. Summer afternoons are usually too hot for walking, and snow falls occasionally at the higher elevations in winter. Jaguars have been sighted in the Baboquivaris in recent decades.
Where it is
Baboquivari Peak Wilderness is a natural landmark near Altar Valley, in Pima County. It is one of the natural landmarks in this database, and appears in the statewide ranking of Arizona attractions.
How this ranking was reached
No official visitor count is published for Baboquivari Peak Wilderness, so its score rests on public interest and tourism significance, and is capped below the level a measured attraction can reach. That is why the medium confidence above is not higher. The weighting is explained in full on the methodology page, and every axis is broken out under Facts and sources at the foot of this page.
Note on the data: No official visitor count is published for this attraction.
Sources
- Public interest: Wikimedia pageviews (en.wikipedia, human traffic), 2024
- Coordinates and designations: Wikivoyage(opens in a new tab)
- County: U.S. Census geography via FCC Area API, resolved from coordinates
- Official site: http://www.blm.gov/az/st/en/prog/blm_special_areas/wildareas/baboquivari.html(opens in a new tab)
Record last verified 2026-08-12.
More photographs
Public domain · source(opens in a new tab) 
BenBench, CC BY-SA 3.0 · licence(opens in a new tab) · source(opens in a new tab)
Nearby attractions
12 miles away
McMath–Pierce Solar Telescope
A 1.6-metre solar telescope of 1962 at Kitt Peak, once the largest solar telescope and the largest unobstructed-aperture optical telescope in the world.
12 miles away
Kitt Peak National Observatory
An observatory west of Tucson holding more than twenty optical telescopes, one of the largest such gatherings in the northern hemisphere.
13 miles away
Nicholas U. Mayall Telescope
A four-metre reflector at Kitt Peak, second-largest in the world at first light in 1973 and now host to the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument.
29 miles away
Ruby
A ghost town in the Pajarita Wilderness near the Mexican border, founded as a mining camp in 1877 under the name Montana Camp.31 miles away
Agua Linda Farm
A privately owned farm near Tubac that opens to the public for seasonal events such as a Garlic and Onion Festival.
Facts and sources
Place
- Category
- Natural Landmark
- Destination
- Altar Valley
- County
- Pima County
- State
- Arizona
Visitation
- Annual visits
- Not published
Ranking
- Overall score
- 46.7 / 100
- Visitation score
- No published count
- Popularity score
- 33.2
- Significance score
- 58.0
- Confidence
- medium
Visiting
- Official website
- blm.gov(opens in a new tab)
- Coordinates
- 31.7833, -111.5655
- Last verified
- 2026-08-12