EARLY
YEARS OF THE SANTA RITA EXPERIMENTAL RANGE AND
W.B. Gillespie October 27, 2003
On April 11, 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt issued a proclamation creating
the Santa Rita Forest Reserve, the first major withdrawal of public lands in
southern
The inclusion of these lower desert grasslands and desert scrub areas was not
an accident. Robert H. Forbes, the Director of the
Soon after the Forest Reserve was created, the Bureau and the Experiment
Station, likely represented by Griffiths and Forbes respectively, drafted an
agreement for “cooperative range investigations.” Central to the
proposition was the selection of a suitable area that the Bureau would have
fenced. Early in 1903, Tucsonan Mark Walker surveyed a 49-square mile
area designated by Griffiths and a contract for fencing was awarded to local
rancher/miner William McCleary who had a camp near
the mouth of what is now known as Florida Canyon (at that time it was McCleary’s or Stone Cabin Canyon). By the end of May
the exclosure fence was nearly complete and
Fence-builder McCleary secured an appointment as the
on-site custodian and designated representative of the Bureau and the Station,
charged with maintaining fences, keeping weather observations, and reporting on
activities in and around the reserve. McCleary’s
ranch served as the de facto field headquarters for the range reserve.
The initial range reserve was laid out to exclude established and functioning
ranches at the foot of the mountains on the south and east, and the mining town
of
While grazing was nominally excluded from the large enclosure, it was not
untouched land. When conditions were right, local ranchers, with the
permission of the Bureau or Forbes, would cut hay within the exclosure. See planting experiments were also
conducted. In addition, cattle occasionally made their way into the exclosure, often with the apparent assistance of their
owners.
In 1905, administration of the Forest Reserves passed from the Department of
the Interior to the Department of Agriculture and the newly created Forest
Service. However, the Bureau of Plant Industry continued to oversee the
range reserve and its experimental program. The range exclosure
was still within the Santa Rita Forest Reserve, but the Forest Supervisor had
little direct involvement with the range reserve program. The Forest
Reserve was renamed the
On July 1, 1910, President William Taft issued a pair of executive orders
pertaining to the range reserve. First, the size of the
In 1915, the Department of Agriculture transferred the operation of its
non-forest reserves and research stations from the Bureau of Plant Industry to
the Forest Service. This meant significant changes for the Santa Rita
reserve. For one, it finally received a name: the “Santa Rita Range
Reserve.” Second, the Forest Service’s Branch of Grazing took over
administration and soon opened the original exclosure
to regulated grazing for the first time in 12
years. William McCleary, out of his job as
Bureau representative and now over 60 years of age, moved to
In 1921, the Forest Service drafted a new cooperative agreement with the
All of the major construction at Florida Station Administrative Site took place
between 1923 and 1934. A few small structures were added later in the
1930's, but the buildings present now were all in place by the end of the
1930's. Most of the building activity took place during the Great
Depression with funding coming from a variety of emergency relief
agencies. With 16 surviving buildings, the station is the largest
depression-era administrative site on the
Although records are spotty and sometimes give contradictory indications, there
appear to have been five recognizable periods of building activity after the
initial construction; the initial 1923-24, and additions in 1927, 1931-32,
1933-34, and 1935-36. The headquarters began modestly enough with a
three-room frame house serving as Culley’s home and
office. Eighty years later, this building is still in use as a
dwelling. Culley soon added a barn and corrals,
a garage and shop, and a water system.
In 1927, Culley reported that Forest Service funding
“made it possible to erect an extremely satisfactory office building.”
However, as with his building, the new office also served as the residence of
his assistant (Warren Turner) and his family. During the same summer of
1927, a small duplex bunkhouse with a shared bathroom in the middle was built:
one half was for the use of University and Biological Survey researchers; the
other was for Forest Service assistants. (This building no longer
exists).
In 1931 and 1932, emergency relief funds were used to build a larger, 6-bedroom
bunkhouse, a new dwelling for the Administrative Officer’s Assistant, and a new
office, one not also used as a residence. The Desert Grasslands Station
with an office, dwelling, and assorted out-buildings was built at the same time
about two miles to the north of the station.
In late 1933-early 1934, a major building project using laborers paid by the
Civilian Works Administration (CWA) was initiated. This project added
three more dwellings along the upper or
Contrary to several written accounts, the best known of the Depression relief
programs - the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and Works Progress
Administration (WPA) - had rather minor roles in the construction of Florida
Station. There was a long-lasting CCC camp in nearby
Since the late 1930's, only minor additions have been made to the camp. A
few buildings have been removed and others have been modified, but the facility
today is not substantially different than it was during the 1930's.
Sixteen buildings surviving from the 1930's include the office, six residences,
the bunkhouse, five storage buildings, a small barn, a workshop, and an
icehouse. All of the residential structures are rectangular wood frame
structures built on concrete foundations and typically with medium gable roofs,
clapboard siding, and one or more screened-in porches. Some of these
attributes have been modified through the years, but the overall architecture
and layout of the grounds conveys the feeling of a Depression-era facility.
Florida Station has been determined eligible for the National Register of
Historic Places, both for its association with Depression relief programs and
for the architectural qualities that reflect the construction methods and
styles characteristic of Forest Service Administrative facilities of the
1930's. In 1988, the lands of the
Additional Material: GVHC Library File 86