Why Ajo?

Long before you get to Ajo, you see the evidence of the massive pit mine. Phelps Dodge still maintains the torn up landscape of tailings dam, slag dump, and deep pit, which have lain quietly since the early ‘80s when mining was halted. The main drag (Highway 85) through Ajo zigzags through the town, peppered with Mexican automobile insurance offices among the other businesses, some open, others closed down. But there is activity as an attractive sidewalk is being carefully laid, curving around some of the larger desert plants. When you’re almost to the mine, a spacious Spanish-style plaza materializes on the east side of Hwy 85. It’s very nicely maintained and just doesn’t look as old as it is (built in 1917) attesting to the quality of its construction.

We drove through Ajo and decided to camp at Coyote Howls East at the Why Junction of Highways 85 and 86. Why is actually more than a junction and more than a question. . . and hard to Google. But more about Why later.

Just a few miles east of Why on the Tohono O’Odham Reservation you will find the Golden Ha:san Casino. For more information check this website: Golden Ha:san Casino

We returned to Ajo several times during the week we were camped at Coyote Howls. Twice we ate out. We did a huge laundry. We visited the Cabeza Prieta Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center but because of our lack of four-wheel drive vehicle, weren’t able to explore this backcountry. We visited the Ajo Historical Society Museum late one afternoon after it closed, but there was still lots to see in their outdoor exhibits. One highlight was our drive down to Organ Pipes National Monument with some friends to explore the 21-mile Ajo Mountain Drive, with a profusion of organ pipes and other cacti. On our last day, another highlight: the second annual Sonora Desert Shindig. Our last night in Why a greatly needed hard desert rain drummed down on our roof. As we drove north the next morning en route to our next destination, a big rainbow stretched across the desert in the cool rain-freshened air while the clouds roiled and promised more rain further north.

Quick Tips:

This is very hot country in the summer, so plan your visit between late fall and early spring. Any time of the year sun protection should be used. Wear a wide brimmed hat and apply sunscreen cream or lotion to any uncovered areas of skin. Wear light colored clothing to reflect heat, not absorb it.

This area is pretty remote cell phone wise. So do all your phoning and computering before you come. We also learned (the hard way) that at least from some pay phones, you can’t call mobile phones. In Why anyway, there are usually lines of people waiting to use the few and far between pay phones.

The museum is open daily during the good weather season, but only between noon and 4pm, so plan your visit during those hours. We hope to view the indoor displays next time.
For general and specific information about Ajo and vicinity, this is a good, comprehensive website: Ajo Copper News.

Best Way To Get Around:

This is your car or a rental, and at least a high clearance vehicles but preferably four-wheel drive for the dusty, bumpy backcountry roads. Ajo Transportation Company provides bus service to and from Tucson and points between on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. There are busses between Ajo and Why three times daily. Ajo Dial-a-Ride operates Monday through Friday within a six-mile radius of the Ajo Plaza using a handicapped accessible van.

Best Things Nearby:
The best nearby attractions are Organ Pipes National Monument, Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, and the town of Ajo.

Best Things About the Resort:
The best things about this campground are the very roomy spaces, the friendliness of the people who camp here, and the quiet open desert with plentiful Sonoran Desert plants and animals. There are also lots of activities during the winter season. I particularly enjoyed jogging the 2.5 miles around the circumference of the campground in the splendid desert scenery and great weather. They also have a good selection of books in their exchange library.

Resort Experience:
OK, now for the "Why" part. On the map the Why junction of state Highways 85 and 86 look like an inverted letter "Y". But mythology has it that the reason for the naming of Why was somebody asking, "Why would anyone want to come here?" It’s a unique sort of place. . . where else is a campground run by a utility company? There are 600 RV spaces on over 200 acres in Coyote Howls East, where we stayed for one week. We met quite a few folks who have been coming year after year for more than a decade to enjoy the warm southern Arizona winters. Spaces rent for the season, the month, the week, or the day. At $38.50 for one week, we felt the rates were pretty reasonable.

Turquoise laden rocks line many of the pathways in people’s spacious "yards". The sites are quite roomy, and although RVs can pretty much park how they want in their spaces, there is a rule they must be at least 50 feet away from their neighbor’s RV.

Coyote Howls East is dry camping, but there are numerous water spigots (the water is delicious). In addition, there are five dump stations and six restrooms, four of them with pay showers. Coyote Howls West, with 38 spaces is a full hookups campground a few miles north of the Why junction, also owned and operated by the Why Utility Company.

Countless activities take place during peak season (September to April). Among them, slides, pinochle, bowling, cribbage, dances, music, bingo, blood pressure checks, singles club, stitch and bitch, ping pong, pokeno, flea market, birthdays, anniversaries, movies, exercise, line dancing, sing-a-longs, pancake breakfasts, and Bible studies. While we were there, we missed a jam session that we heard was excellent, and went to a "hamburger feed"- potluck with way too many tempting dishes.

The Why junction includes 2 gas stations with convenience stores (one named, appropriately "Why Not?", a restaurant, 2 bars, post office, and small Laundromat. Golden Ha:san Casino is just a few miles south east on Highway 86 on the Tohono O’odham Reservation.

The only drawback to our stay this year (February 2004) was weekday noise from the road construction plant just to the south of the campground. In addition, one hillside on the other side of the campground was being excavated for some other road repair work, also within Organ Pipes National Monument to the south. We were told that this should be a thing of the past next season.

And do the coyotes howl more here than elsewhere? We weren’t disappointed; we heard them howling two of the seven nights we stayed, and that only meant they were howling loud enough to wake us up! Besides coyotes, the park is frequented by wild burros and javelinas.

• Campground Type: Private
• Campsite Type: RV
• Price Range: $0 - $10
• Cleanliness: Very Good
• Campground Facilities: Satisfactory
• Recreational Facilities: Very Good
• Campsite Satisfaction: Excellent
• Family Friendliness: Satisfactory
• Service: Excellent

Noting this restaurant locate kitty corner across Highway 85 from the Lemon-Bright Laundromat, we worked up a pretty good appetite while doing four loads of laundry. So when we got done folding and hanging up clothes, we went on over there to check out their menu.

The pre-meal chips and salsa were good, and for lunch we selected a beef tostada and chicken torta. The bolillo was very fresh. Both entrees were generous in portion, tasty, and the meats were tender and not fatty. The menu was pretty standard for Mexican fare, the décor as well. We took the only booth by the window, which afforded a view of the main thoroughfare, Highway 85.

We were lucky to be in Ajo the week of the second annual Sonora Shindig, which took place on February 21st, 2004. Shindig comes from the word "shindy", defined as "a large and noisy party of people" and often includes music and dancing. Well, this Shindig had music provided by Ted Ramirez and the Santa Cruz River Band, and dancing by the Ballet Folklorico de Sonoita. It was climaxed by a coyote-howling contest in which three youngsters participated. I was a little disappointed that there were only three brave enough to demonstrate their howling abilities, which when attempted by human children, can be quite entertaining and amusing, and yet, surprisingly coyote-like.

The Shindig was sponsored jointly by the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge and the Ajo District Chamber of Commerce. Its intention: to celebrate the desert, the people and the wildlife of the Sonoran Desert. A giant rubber saguaro was the centerpiece of the fair, surrounded by booths and displays of all kinds. Children were invited to participate in many of the exhibits, including creating posters and drawings, observing how arrowheads are made, and getting their faces painted. I was handed a packet of a variety of desert seeds, both of cacti and wildflowers, at a garden booth. The busiest booth was the Indian fry bread/ Navajo Taco booth, at least while we were there. I got some great maps and information at the BLM booth. The weather cooperated, providing a lovely display of clouds and sun. A good time seemed to be had by all.

Although Organ Pipes National Monument is only a short distance from Why, we were delayed half an hour by road construction on Highway 85. The first order of business when we arrived at the Visitor Center was to eat our picnic lunch, which we did under a saguaro shelter, one of several that are conveniently placed around the center. While eating, we enjoyed watching some brilliant red cardinals and their reddish-brown mates flying around and briefly landing before taking off again.

The Kris Eggle Visitor Center was buzzing with activity. I had learned that the visitor center was just recently renamed after the young park ranger who was killed in August 2002 while assisting the Border Patrol attempting to apprehend two men suspected of murder who had crossed the Mexico/ U.S. border through one of the many breaks in the fence. This is a "high intensity" area, as Border Patrol describes it, and their presence is very evident. We saw Border Patrol in a "cherry-picker" type device on Highway 85 north of Ajo, and in Organ Pipes, we met them at the end of our ride, heading out on horseback in early evening in search of "undocumented" people. This area is reportedly a favorite route used for drug smuggling as well as people smuggling. According to a NPS handout, over 200,000 undocumented migrants passed through Organ Pipes National Monument in 2001.

At the visitor center we learned that the longer 53 mile Puerto Blanco route around the park, including the abandoned Golden Bell Mine, and Quitobaquito oasis, had been closed indefinitely and that road construction was taking place along three portions of this graded dirt road. We were told that the first five miles of the road remained open, but we decided to take the 21-mile long Ajo Mountain Drive instead. This took us the whole afternoon, as there was plenty to see, learn, and photograph. We took along the Ajo Mountain Road Guide, which we bought for $.75 at the visitor center.

You get to see plenty of organ pipe cacti, for which the park is named, on this drive. These grow on the south facing slopes, where they can absorb the most sun. Besides the organ pipe cactus, 25 other species of cacti live in this harsh environment. Some of the more noticeable ones are saguaro, prickly pear and chain fruit cholla. The Ajo Mountains predominated the middle portion of our drive. These striated mountains are very colorful, being made up dark gray and lighter orange-tinged volcanic rocks and tuff. The rocks were formed from volcanic activity that took place between 15 and 25 million years ago, and also from earthquakes and erosion, creating a dramatic skyline.

On the way to the museum, stop at Mine Overlook to get a close view of the massive 1.5-mile wide pit that remains as a deep wound in the earth. The museum is located at the old St. Catherine’s Indian Mission. We arrived there after 4pm so the buildings were locked up, but the exhibits outside on the circumference of the large parking lot as well as a courtyard next to the old mission contained quite a bit of interesting historical relics, including old lawnmowers, disintegrating saddles, washers used in placer mining, bullet ridden horse skulls, wide wheelbarrows, and large hunks of turquoise.

What we missed inside the museum were two rooms, one in honor to General John Greenway, a founding father of Ajo, and the other containing historical items and tools from an old blacksmith’s shop, print shop, and dentist’s office.

The museum is open noon to 4pm fall, winter, and spring; by appointment during summer. Telephone: 520-387-7105.

The Tohono O’odham Indians had several names for this area. One was Mu’i Wawhia or Moivavi, meaning "many wells" for the natural potholes that often contained water. The other name, Au-auho, meant "red paint", and referred to the red pigment they used from the rocks here. This second name is most likely how Ajo got its name, although coincidentally, in Spanish ajo means "garlic", and another theory of naming is that Mexican settlers named the town after the wild garlic that grew in profusion.

The lust for mining was what drew more settlers to Ajo. In 1847, Tom Childs and his party stumbled on the ore-rich mountains of Ajo on their way to mine silver in Mexico. The Arizona Mining and Trading Company was soon mining the surface ores in this area and shipping it around Cape Horn to be smelted in Wales. But due to the scarcity of water, mining was not done on a large scale until John Greenway arrived.

Hailing from Alabama, he graduated from Yale after studying engineering. While working for U.S. Steel in Minnesota, Greenway was instrumental in helping to develop the techniques to transform raw iron ore into steel. After moving to Arizona in 1910, he was challenged by the situation in Ajo. He bought the New Cornelia Copper Company in Ajo in 1911. Greenway had mule teams haul a large oilrig through the desert to tap an ancient lava flow north of Ajo, which supplied water for the mine via a system of pumps and pipelines – at a cost of over one million dollars. He developed several new methods of processing copper more efficiently. He continued to manage the New Cornelia Copper Company until 1925. Eventually it was taken over by Phelps Dodge.

As mentioned before, mining activity ceased in the mid 1980’s, throwing Ajo into a bit of a crisis. Many of the mining families were transferred to Morenci, leaving tracts of vacant housing. City fathers began advertising Ajo as a great place to retire in the Sunbelt, and Snowbirds and retired people moved in.

We got a taste of what the future of Ajo might hold when we drove into Curley School. We were attracted to the elegant Spanish style of the building, similar to the plaza. Since there were no signs identifying the buildings, at first we thought it might be an old hospital. But a man we found on the grounds told us the buildings only recently functioned as the junior high school for Ajo; earlier it had been grades K though 12. The latest plans for the 114,000 square foot complex are developing it into an art and living space for low income artisans and their families. International Sonoran Desert Alliance of Ajo, in conjunction with ArtSpace Projects, received $400,000 of a total of $24.6 million in grants for rural communities to develop housing and economic development. They are still in the planning stages of this ambitious restoration and conversion. We’ll be interested to see how it develops as we return to Ajo.