Saguaro National Park United States

Legendary

The Sonoran Desert landscape provides for a unique opportunity to see giant saguaro cacti.

Photo by Desert LCC

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A saguaro cactus can take 50 to 75 years to grow its first arm. Some never grow one at all.

The ones with arms are the old-timers. A saguaro with several arms reaching up like a candelabra has probably been standing there for well over a century.

Saguaro National Park sits on both sides of Tucson, Arizona, in the Sonoran Desert. The saguaro grows naturally nowhere else on Earth except this desert, in southern Arizona, a corner of California, and northern Mexico.

The cactus is the largest in the United States. A mature one stands about 40 feet tall, and the tallest ever recorded reached 78 feet before it toppled in 1986.

They grow slowly. In the first eight years, a saguaro might reach only an inch and a half, and it can live 150 to 200 years.

Birds love them. Gila woodpeckers drill nest holes in the trunks, and when they move out, tiny elf owls move in.

In late spring, white flowers bloom on the tips of the arms, opening at night and closing by the next afternoon. They're the state flower of Arizona.

By the early 1900s, cattle were trampling young cacti and thieves were digging up saguaros to sell. President Herbert Hoover set the eastern forest aside as a national monument on March 1, 1933.

President John F. Kennedy added the western section in 1961. Congress made the whole thing a national park on October 14, 1994.

The two districts are very different. The Tucson Mountains to the west are volcanic and low, with a dense forest of younger saguaros.

The Rincon Mountains to the east are taller and wetter. Their peaks rise above 8,000 feet, high enough for pine and oak forests where black bears live, far above the cactus below.

Drive the eight-mile Cactus Forest Loop in the east district and stop at Javelina Rocks for the view. Walk the short Valley View Overlook Trail in the west district at sunset, when the saguaros turn into silhouettes against the sky. Visit in May or June to see the white blossoms, and watch for the woodpeckers and owls that nest inside the trunks.