Born during the Great Depression, the park began as a National Monument that raised few eyebrows. But the train was on the track, and the history of Saguaro National Park was in the making.
Guide to Saguaro
History of Saguaro
The land that comprises the park today lay virtually undisturbed until the mid 1800s. Small amounts of silver and copper were mined in the mountains and ranching efforts in the area brought cattle grazing to the lands that would eventually enjoy protection as the nation’s 52nd national park.
As civilization slowly crept into the Tucson area, the idea to designate a preserve where the Saguaro could live free from threats leveled by mining, the trampling hooves of cattle and by the blades of bulldozers and imminent development was obvious to concerned observers.
In 1933, while the nation struggled in the throws of the Great Depression, at the urging of activists from the University of Arizona, whose president, Homer Shantz had long attempted to create a sanctuary for the giant cactus, along with influential newspaper man and politically connected Republican, Frank Hitchcock, President Herbert Hoover took action during his last days in office, using the Antiquities Act to create Saguaro National Monument.
The beginnings of the park were modest, as the monument only included areas of the eastern Rincon Mountain District. Over the coming decades however, the protected landscape would increase in size. A substantial addition was made in 1961, when with the encouragement of the Secretary of the Interior, Arizona native Stewart Udall, President John F Kennedy added more than 16,000 cactus-covered acres to the monument with the addition of the western Tucson Mountain District.
The Tucson Mountain District was enlarged in 1976 and again in 1994, when it was combined with the Rincon Mountain District to form the Congressionally approved Saguaro National Park.
Guide to Saguaro
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