49 Fun Facts About Saguaro National Park

Which large mammal, unexpected in a desert park, lives in Saguaro National Park's high country?

Black bears keep to the park's highest slopes but come lower in very dry years to find food and water, which is why backcountry campers are told to store food out of reach.

Which 1906 law lets presidents proclaim national monuments, as happened at Saguaro in 1933?

The Antiquities Act, signed by Theodore Roosevelt, lets a president protect federal land by proclamation alone, a shortcut often taken in a term's final days, as it was here.

Which desert do both districts of Saguaro National Park preserve?

Sonoran Desert land fills both districts; it is the only desert where saguaros grow wild, helped by its two rainy seasons, one in winter and one in summer.

Which president proclaimed Saguaro National Monument three days before leaving office in 1933?

Herbert Hoover signed the proclamation on March 1, 1933, after Tucson newspaper publisher Frank Hitchcock hurried to Washington to lobby for it before the administration changed.

Which president added the Tucson Mountain District to Saguaro National Monument in 1961?

John F. Kennedy's proclamation of November 1961 carved the new district out of a county park, urged on by Tucson residents and his Arizonan Interior Secretary, Stewart Udall.

Who made Saguaro a national park in 1994?

The U.S. Congress made the change in 1994: a president can proclaim a national monument alone, but only Congress can create a national park.

About how many saguaros did Saguaro National Park's 2020 census estimate?

About 2 million: volunteers counted every saguaro on 45 study plots to reach the estimate, which has nearly doubled from 1.15 million in 1990.

In Saguaro National Park, a saguaro typically grows its first arm at about what age?

About 60 years here, and in drier places it can take a century; each arm adds new tips that can flower and fruit.

Which feature lets a saguaro swell after rain?

Accordion-like pleats flatten out as the roots drink in a downpour, then fold back as the cactus lives off its stored water through the dry months.

Roughly how tall do the tallest saguaros in Saguaro National Park grow?

About 50 feet, yet most of the roots beneath a giant that size lie only a few inches down, fanning out wide to catch the rain.

The saguaro's genus name honours which industrialist, whose institution ran a desert laboratory in Tucson?

Andrew Carnegie: botanists named the genus Carnegiea after his Carnegie Institution founded the Desert Laboratory in 1903 to study how plants survive heat and drought.

What colour is the saguaro blossom, Arizona's state flower?

White: each creamy, waxy blossom opens after dark and closes the next afternoon, so it has less than a day in which to be pollinated.

Which migratory bat, a summer visitor to Saguaro National Park, is the saguaro's main night-time pollinator?

The lesser long-nosed bat winters in Mexico and flies north each spring, following the blooming of cacti and agaves and feeding on their nectar as it goes.

Which birds excavate nest holes in saguaros that other species later move into?

Gila woodpeckers and gilded flickers chisel nest holes into living saguaros; the cactus seals each wound with hard callus tissue, and other birds move into the cavities later.

In which months do saguaros mainly bloom?

May and June are the peak of a bloom that starts in late April; the fruit then ripens in the dry heat of early summer, when desert animals most need its moisture.

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

The cactus's own woody ribs are lashed together into a pole long enough to knock fruit from the tops, a tool the Tohono O'odham still use for the summer harvest today.

Which culture, living in the area until about 1450, left petroglyphs and pottery in Saguaro National Park?

The Hohokam farmed corn, beans and squash and gathered saguaro fruit here; elsewhere in Arizona they dug vast irrigation canals, some since rebuilt to carry Phoenix's water.

Which short trail off Saguaro National Park's Bajada Loop Drive leads to dozens of ancient petroglyphs?

Signal Hill Trail climbs from a picnic area to a small boulder-covered hill, where the designs were pecked through the rocks' dark desert varnish to show the paler stone beneath.

Which desert tree often shelters young saguaros as a 'nurse tree'?

Palo verde, like mesquite and ironwood, shades seedlings from the summer sun; the slow-growing saguaro often outlives its nurse and may even hasten its death by taking its water.

What covers Saguaro National Park's highest slopes?

Pines and firs: the Rincons rise from 2,670 to 8,666 feet, so a climb from the desert floor passes through six plant communities and ends among mountain conifers.

The Rincons belong to a chain of isolated ranges between the Rockies and Sierra Madre known as what?

Sky Islands: each range rises like an island from a 'sea' of desert, and the chain works as stepping stones that let mountain species spread between the two great ranges.

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

Rincón is Spanish for corner or nook; the range's name is said to describe the angled shape of its footprint.

Saguaro National Park's Tucson Mountains are the remains of what?

A collapsed volcano: after explosive eruptions some 70 million years ago its roof caved in, leaving a huge caldera that filled with broken volcanic rock, the rugged bedrock of the range today.

Roughly how long can a saguaro live?

About 200 years at the extreme; a typical saguaro lasts 150 to 175, so the park's oldest giants were already growing before Arizona became a state in 1912.

Which invasive African grass, planted for cattle forage, is Saguaro National Park's most serious plant threat?

Buffelgrass fills the open ground between desert plants, giving wildfire a continuous path through a landscape whose plants normally stand apart.

Which Arizona state bird builds bulky nests among Saguaro National Park's chollas?

The cactus wren keeps building after the eggs are laid: while the female incubates, the male makes extra nests that the adults sleep in, sheltered from predators and weather.

Which venomous lizard is native to Saguaro National Park's desert lowlands?

The Gila monster, the only venomous lizard in the United States, escapes the desert heat by spending most of its life underground in burrows, which is why it is so rarely seen.

Which pig-like mammal, common in Saguaro National Park, is actually a peccary?

Javelina belong to a different family from true pigs; they use their short, sharp tusks to tear into prickly pear cactus, one of their favourite foods.

Which bright red bird, uncommon elsewhere in the U.S., is found in Saguaro National Park?

The vermilion flycatcher male shows off his colour in a courtship flight, puffing out his feathers and fluttering high into the air while singing.

Which Saguaro National Park amphibian's tadpoles can become toadlets in as little as nine days?

Couch's spadefoot spends most of the year dormant underground, surfaces when summer thunder and rain arrive, and breeds in puddles, so its tadpoles must grow up before the water dries.

Which federal programme built the stone ramadas of Saguaro's Tucson Mountain District in the 1930s?

The Civilian Conservation Corps built them of stone quarried nearby, and its crews also laid out the scenic loop drive on the park's east side later in the decade.

The Arizona Trail, which crosses Saguaro National Park, runs 800 miles from Mexico to which state's border?

Utah: the trail grew from the dream of Flagstaff schoolteacher Dale Shewalter, who walked from the Mexican border to the Utah line in 1985 to prove a route was possible.

Which hawk of Saguaro National Park is unusual among raptors for hunting in cooperative groups?

Harris's hawks live and hunt in family groups: some birds flush prey out of deep brush for the others to catch, and non-breeding helpers bring food to the young.

How must campers reach all six of Saguaro National Park's campgrounds?

On foot: every campground lies in the roadless Rincon backcountry and needs a permit, while the park's western district allows no overnight camping at all.

What did 19th-century settlers mine in Saguaro National Park to make mortar, leaving six kilns behind?

Limestone was burned in the kilns to turn it into lime, the binding ingredient of the mortar; two of the kilns still stand beside an east-side trail.

What mainly limits how far north and how high up saguaros can grow?

Winter frost: a long freeze can kill a saguaro, so above about 4,500 feet they survive mostly on warmer south-facing slopes.

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

The University of Arizona's Natural History Society proposed a saguaro preserve in 1920, and UA president Homer Shantz, a botanist, took up the cause in 1928.

The greater roadrunner, a famous resident of Saguaro National Park, belongs to which bird family?

Cuckoos: this one rarely flies, instead running down lizards and rodents on foot and steering with its long tail.

Which 8-mile paved loop drive gives access to many trails in Saguaro National Park's Rincon district?

Cactus Forest Loop Drive runs through the stand of giant saguaros the monument was created to protect; many of those old giants died over the following decades, and younger ones are now rising in their place.

Large parts of both districts of Saguaro National Park carry which federal land designation?

Wilderness area status keeps roads and vehicles out, and together with the national forest land next door it protects nearly 100,000 wild acres within sight of Tucson.

Which owl raises its young in old nest holes in saguaros?

Elf owls, the smallest owls in the world, slip into holes other birds abandon, and at that size they hunt mostly insects such as beetles and moths.

The coati, a long-nosed mammal of Saguaro National Park, is a relative of which familiar animal?

Raccoon: coatis belong to the raccoon family but keep different hours, foraging by day in bands of females and young.

A rare saguaro whose growing tip fans out into a wavy ridge is described by which word?

Crested, or cristate, saguaros are rare, and nobody has pinned down the cause; in other plants the same fan-shaped growth has been blamed on anything from genes to infection.

In Saguaro National Park, how tall is a typical saguaro after its first eight years?

About 1 inch: seedlings here grow only an inch or so in eight years, hidden beneath the trees and shrubs that shade them, which is why young saguaros are so hard to find.

A single saguaro fruit contains roughly how many seeds?

About 2,000 tiny black seeds fill each fruit, yet almost none become adult plants: drought and hungry animals destroy nearly all of them.

Which seasonal weather pattern brings Saguaro National Park its violent summer thunderstorms?

The monsoon breaks the dry heat of June, filling dry washes with sudden floods and waking toads that have spent most of the year underground.

The Tohono O'odham turn saguaro fruit into syrup, jam and which ceremonial drink?

Wine: after the harvest the fruit is boiled down to a syrup and fermented for a ceremony, and the O'odham regard the wine as sacred.

What feeds many of Saguaro National Park's desert springs well into early summer?

Mountain snowmelt: snow is common high in the Rincons each winter, and because it melts slowly it soaks into the ground instead of running off, keeping springs flowing into June.

How was an Arizona man killed in 1982 while shooting at a saguaro for fun?

A cactus arm fell on him: David Grundman was blasting away at a tall saguaro when a heavy arm broke off and crushed him, a death since retold in the Austin Lounge Lizards' song 'Saguaro'.