The Santa Rita Mountains (O'odham: To:wa Kuswo Doʼag), located about 40 miles (60 km) southeast of Tucson, Arizona, extend 26 miles (42 km) from north to south, then trending southeast. They merge again southeastwards into the Patagonia Mountains, trending northwest by southeast. The highest point in the range, and the highest point in the Tucson area, is Mount Wrightson, with an elevation of 9,453 feet (2,881 m), The range contains Madera Canyon, one of the world's premier birding areas.
The Patagonia Mountains are a 15-mile-long (24 km) mountain range within the Coronado National Forest, and in Santa Cruz County, Arizona, United States.
Ruby is a ghost town in Santa Cruz County, Arizona, United States. It is situated near the base of Montana Peak in the Pajarita Wilderness, roughly 25 miles west of Rio Rico, and 7 miles north of the Mexico–United States border. Originally named Montana Camp, the town was founded in 1877 as a mining camp.
Mount Wrightson (O'odham: Ce:wi Duag) is a 9,456-foot (2,882 m) peak in the Santa Rita Mountains within the Coronado National Forest, in southern Arizona, United States. It was renamed from its original O'odham name: Ce:wi Duag for William Wrightson, a miner and entrepreneur in the region killed by Apaches in the 1865 Battle of Fort Buchanan.
La Misión de San Gabriel de Guevavi was founded by Jesuit missionary priests Eusebio Kino and Juan María de Salvatierra in 1691. Subsequent missionaries called it San Rafael and San Miguel, resulting in the common historical name of Mission Los Santos Ángeles de Guevavi (O'odham: Geʼe Wawhia Big Well/Spring). Located in what is now Arizona, near Tumacácori, the mission served as a district headquarters for the Jesuits.
The San Rafael Ranch, formerly known as the Greene Ranch, is a historic cattle ranch located in the San Rafael Valley about a mile and a half north of Lochiel, Arizona, United States near the international border with Sonora, Mexico.
The Pete Kitchen Ranch was established on Potrero Creek near Nogales, Arizona Territory, about 1862, reputedly the first permanent American ranch in Arizona. The site, which had good access to water, had been inhabited in prehistory and had been visited by Juan Bautista de Anza in October 1774, who called it Las Lagunas, a name also used by Kitchen. By the 1870s, the ranch was producing substantial crops and livestock that yielded an income of $10,000 a year.
Fort Buchanan was a US Army post founded in 1856 three miles southwest of present-day Sonoita in Santa Cruz County, Arizona, on the east slope of what is now called Hog Canyon. At the time, the area was under constant threat from hostile Apaches. Full-scale war with the local Chiricahua Apache was initiated by the Bascom affair in early 1861, during which Lieutenant George Nicholas Bascom and his patrol were based at Fort Buchanan.
Mission San Cayetano de Calabazas, also known as Calabasas, is a Spanish Mission in the Sonoran Desert, located near present-day Tumacacori, Arizona, United States.
It has a Visitor and Science Center that showcases astrophysics exhibits, views of the surrounding Santa Rita Mountains and has guided tours of the MMT Observatory. Tours mid-Mar to Nov: M W F begin at 9AM and return at 3PM. $10 for adults and children aged 13+, $5 for children aged 6-12. Advance reservations are required. Tours are suspended due to COVID19 as of Dec 2021.
VERITAS (Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System) is a major ground-based gamma-ray observatory with an array of four 12 meter optical reflectors for gamma-ray astronomy in the GeV – TeV photon energy range. VERITAS uses the Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescope technique to observe gamma rays that cause particle showers in Earth's atmosphere that are known as extensive air showers. The VERITAS array is located at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory, in southern Arizona, United States.
Lochiel is a populated place and former border crossing in southern Santa Cruz County, Arizona, United States, approximately 25 miles east of Nogales. Basically a ghost town, the townsite is located in the southwestern part of the San Rafael Valley on Washington Gulch, about 1.5 miles west of the Santa Cruz River. It was first settled in the late-1870s and mostly abandoned by 1986.
Harshaw is a ghost town in Santa Cruz County in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of Arizona. The town was settled in the 1870s, in what was then Arizona Territory.
Calabasas (Spanish for "pumpkins") is a former populated place or ghost town, within the census-designated place of Rio Rico, a suburb of Nogales in Santa Cruz County, Arizona, United States.
The Canelo Hills Cienega Reserve, is a nature preserve southeast of Sonoita, Arizona on the east side of the Canelo Hills. The area's 260 acres (110 ha) are a mix of rare cienega wetland and black oak and Arizona fescue fields. The preserve is notable for the extremely rare Canelo ladies tresses orchid (Spiranthes delitescens) and the Gila chub and Gila sucker that grow along its alkaline banks.
Onyx Cave is a solutional cave system with about 0.5 miles (0.8 km) of passages formed in Permian limestone in the Santa Rita Mountains of Arizona. It is part of the Coronado National Forest. It was designated a National Natural Landmark in 1974.
A historic row of shops in buildings dating from the early 1900s. Many stores, including Kory's Company, Cinderella, and Bracker's Department Store are still run by the descendents of the original merchants.
On the National Register of Historic Places, the courthouse was built in 1904 from stone quarried in Nogales itself. The building now houses the Nogales branch of Cochise College as well as the Arizona Ranger Museum, which displays artifacts from the Territorial Arizona Rangers and the modern Arizona Rangers.
This museum is housed in the former City Hall, built in 1914 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Rotating displays focus on the history of the region, and include artifacts as well as documents and photographs.
A privately owned farm/ranch which opens to the public for seasonal events, including the Easter Egg Hunt, Garlic and Onion Festival, and the Fall Festival.
County is resolved from each attraction's coordinates against U.S. Census geography rather than entered by hand, so a place near a county line is filed where it actually sits.
