Tag Archives: Pima County

May21

Why

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It’s not a question. Why is actually the name of a place in southern Arizona.

IMG_6274According to Wikipedia,

Why (O’odham: Ban Hi:nk) is a tiny unincorporated rural community in Pima County, Arizona, United States. It lies near the western border of the Tohono O’Odham Indian Reservation and due north of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Southern Arizona. It is approximately thirty miles north of the Mexican border where Lukeville, Arizona, and Sonoita, Sonora, Mexico, border each other, and ten miles south of Ajo, Arizona.

The population in Why at the 2000 census was approximately 116.[1] Why Not Travel Store

There’s not much in Why. In addition to a few homes, there’s a restaurant called  Grannymacs Kitchen that boasts chicken decor, decent food, and a totally uninterested staff. There’s also a gas station/convenience store combo called The Why Not Travel Store.

Coyote Howls Campground and RV Park is also in Why.

According to the campground’s website,

Coyote Howls…is located in the heart of Arizona’s Great Sonoran Desert…surrounded by low mountains and plentiful in desert vegetation and wildlife…

Coyote Howls is a combination of two campgrounds to provide your ideal desert camping experience. The two campgrounds that make up Coyote Howls are simply Coyote Howls East and Coyote Howls [W]est.

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Coyote Howls East Campground consists of nearly 208 acres with 600 campsites. The sites are large, random in shape and placement. These are our “primitive camps”. There are no hookups, so your trailer or RV needs to be self-contained. There are, however, restrooms, showers, dump stations, and water faucets scattered throughout the park…

So why is Why called Why? In a January 2014 post, Arizona Oddities says,

Many years ago [in 1949, according to Coyote Howls history], Peggy and Jim Kater homesteaded at the base of  the Little Ajo Mountains near the junction of State Routes 85 and 86. Because the junction formed a Y-intersection, they simply called their place “the Y.” Eventually, the Y attracted so many other residents that the community needed a post office. When postal authorities asked for a town name, the Katers said it should be “Y,” like it always had been.

But Arizona law required all town and city names have at least three letters, so the name was changed to Why because (a) people were always asking why anybody would live in such a remote place and (b) because “Why” rhymes with “Y”.

The Arizona Department of Transportation later removed the old Y-intersection for safety reasons and replaced it with a conventional T-intersection. But Why is still Why, and most everybody who goes there still asks why.

Why no longer has a post office. Folks who need a post office box rent one in Ajo. But Why is still a community, if not quite a town. It’s a good place for folks traveling south on Highway 85 to get gasoline, and it’s a good place to get away from any sort of hustle and bustle and watch the sunset.

Why Sunset

The Arizona Oddities article says Why was established at the junction of highways 65 and 86. I took the liberty of correcting that, since I know highway 85 is the main route through the community.

I took all of the photos in this post.
Apr24

Ajo Copper News Mural

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I recently wrote about murals on the walls of an alley in Ajo, Arizona.  In the comments of that post, one of my readers asked me,

Did you happen to see the mural on the bookstore?

Why yes. Yes I did. You can see a photo I took of the mural at the top if this page.

The building with the mural on its side does not only house a bookstore. It’s an art gallery as well, and the home of the Ajo Copper News,

 …a weekly newspaper. It has been serving the communities of Ajo, Why, and Lukeville in Western Pima County since 1916.

Although I did browse in the bookstore (and bought fantastic, reasonably priced postcards with lovely color images of Ajo and Why), I didn’t really know anything about the mural. It was cool. I looked at it. I took a photo. I moved on.

While writing this post, I found more information about the mural on the website of Rocky Point Times newspaper (our of Puerto Peñasco, Mexico). The says,

When the current location of the newspaper and bookstore was purchased, it was the goal of Hop David, (the artist, also the publisher) to have a mural on the front of the building. That dream came to fruition, when in 2012, Hop completed the current mural with the help of another local artist, Mike “DaWolf” Baker as part of ASAP (Ajo Street Art Project).

My reader told me,

Someone saw me ogling and was kind enough to point me to the footprints on the sidewalk that give the oblique (and intended) view of the whole thing.

No kind person saw me ogling and pointed me to footprints! I had not idea. I never saw any footprints, so I guess I looked at the mural all wrong.

The aforementioned article in Rocky Point Times says the mural

is best viewed from the painted footprints on the corner of Pajaro [Street] and Highway 85 by the tiny park in order to get the complete effect of the trick-perspective mural.

I guess I am going to have to go back and take a better look.

I took the photo in this post.
Mar10

Ajo, Arizona

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This “Welcome to Ajo” tile mosaic is on Highway 85, just south of the Olsens Market Place grocery/hardware combo store. I don’t know who created this mosaic, but I like it a lot.

My friend Coyote Sue spends part of her year in Arizona, around the towns of Ajo and Why. She invited me to visit the next time I was in the area. When I left the 2016 RTR (the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous–read more about it here: http://www.rubbertrampartist.com/2016/01/23/report-on-the-2016-rubber-tramp-rendezvous/), I decided to drive down to Ajo to visit Coyote Sue and do a bit of exploring.

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This is “A” Mountain–official name, Camelback Mountain–in Ajo, AZ. The elevation of this mountain is 2,573 feet. I believe I was on Indian Village Road when I took this photo. I was definitely on my way to the history museum when I took it.

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajo,_Arizona, Ajo

 …is a census-designated place (CDP) in Pima County, Arizona… The population was 3,705 at the 2000 census. Ajo is located on State Route 85 just 43 miles (69 km) from the Mexican border. It is the closest community to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.

If you thought, as I did, that Ajo was named for the Spanish word for garlic, you would be, as I was, wrong. Although the DesertUSA website (http://www.desertusa.com/cities/az/ajo.html)–which doesn’t site any sources–says,

In Spanish, ajo means “garlic.”  Wild garlic plants (the Ajo lily or desert lily – an onion-like plant) that grew in the surrounding hills were responsible for the naming of the community…

I’m more inclined to believe the explanation on the Ajo Chamber of Commerce history webpage (http://www.ajochamber.com/explore/history-of-ajo/).

Before the community of Ajo was settled, the Tohono O’odham [the local indigenous people] used water from a series of potholes in the area they called Mu’i Wawhia or Moivavi (many wells). Mexican miners later called the site Ajo, perhaps influenced by another O’odham name for the area –-au-auho—for the pigment they obtained from the ore-rich rocks.

Ajo exists because of mining. The aforementioned Chamber of Commerce history webpage details the history of Ajo and mining. I’ll cover that information when I write about my visit to the New Cornelia Open Pit Mine Lookout.

Ajo has a lovely town plaza.

IMG_4704According to http://www.ajochamber.com/attractions/local-attractions/, the plaza

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This photo shows the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, which is west of the Ajo plaza.

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This photo shows the Ajo Federated Church, which is west of the Ajo plaza.

was built in 1917 under the direction of John Greenway’s wife Isabella. The Spanish Colonial Revival style town square features a center park surrounded by retail shops, a post office and restaurants accented with two mission-style churches. The [Immaculate Conception] Catholic Church was built in 1924 and the Federated Church in 1926…The plaza was purchased by the International Sonoran Desert Alliance in 2008 and is in the midst of a multi-year process of restoration and revitalization.

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This photo shows Immaculate Conception Catholic Church and mountains. I appreciate the crisp whiteness of the churches against the starkness of the mountains.

According to http://www.desertusa.com/cities/az/ajo.html, the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church

was designed by George Washington Smith, a Santa Barbara, California architect…The Protestant church [the Ajo Federated Church] was built in 1927 and influenced by the same architect. He died however before it was built and does not get full credit for it.

The Curley School is another historic building in Ajo. The Ajo Chamber of Commerce (http://www.ajochamber.com/attractions/local-attractions/) has the following to say about the Curley School:

Easily visible from the town plaza, Ajo’s Curley School is an architectural masterpiece of Spanish Colonial Revival style that harmonizes seamlessly with the rest of the historic downtown. The main building on the seven acre campus was built in 1919 with additional buildings added in 1926 and 1937. The Curley School has been renovated by the International Sonoran Desert Alliance into 30 affordable live/work rentals for artists…

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This is the Curley School, named, according to http://www.cunews.info/curley.html, for Michael (“Mike”) Curley, first mine manager of the New Cornelia mine in Ajo. Mike Curley died in 1945.

A good place to start a visit to Ajo is the visitor center in the Ajo train depot, on the plaza. I found information about IMG_4680the New Cornelia mine and the Ajo Scenic Loop, as well as a map for a self-guided walking tour, all in that one spot.

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This photo shows the building housing the Ajo Historical Society Museum. The building was originally St. Catherine’s Indian Mission.

Another place to learn about Ajo’s past is the Ajo Historical Society Museum, housed in the former St. Catherine’s Indian Mission. According to http://www.ajochamber.com/attractions/local-attractions/,

the museum houses many artifacts and mementos from Ajo’s past. The displays include a complete blacksmith shop, a dentist’s office and an early print shop.

I visited the Ajo Historical Society museum. No admission fee is charged, but donations are accepted. The first few displays, including the print shop, the dentist’s office, and blacksmith shop, are well organized and clearly labeled. However, the further back I went in the museum, the more the displays took on an elementary school social studies fair feel. Many of the displays seemed cluttered with items that were certainly old (by the standards of the Southwest) but didn’t seem necessarily significant.

Overall, I enjoyed my time in Ajo and would be pleased to visit again in the winter, when the weather in the desert is perfect.

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I took all of the photos in this post.