Rancho Fundoshi Above Bear Canyon Creek — Images by kenne
“Where I was born and where and
how I have lived is unimportant.
It is what I have done with where I
have been that should be of interest.”
— Georgia O’Keeffe
In Sabino Canyon Recreation Area, if you hike to Seven Falls, you walk the Bear Canyon road to Bear Canyon trail,
which crosses the Bear Canyon creek seven times. South of the trailhead sets a house on a cliff above the creek
outside the Sabino Canyon Recreation Area. Since 2010, I have hiked to Seven Falls several times and may
have noticed the house but was more focused on the hike.
Yesterday, a group of us older, now slow hikers hiked the newly paved Bear Canyon road to the Bear Canyon trailhead,
taking a trail south to get a better view of the house on the cliff, where I took a few images of the house.
After discussing the possible owners, I decided to do a Google search once I got home. I first did a drag & drop
in Google Images with no match. So, started a Google search using a few descriptors. I learned that
about 65 years ago, Jack Segurson, a local high school wrestling, and swimming coach and teacher from the 1950s
into the late 1980s, bought the 151-acre property that he lived on, cherished, and mold into a
naturalist’s paradise — it became become his legacy.
Segurson died at age 90 in 2011, and soon afterward, an appraiser valued his land at $3.9 million.
He left the property to The Nature Conservancy with restrictions that it never be sold or developed.
The Nature Conservancy donated the property, which Segurson named “Rancho Fundoshi,” a fundoshi
is a Sumo wrestler’s loincloth to Pima County. The Pima County Regional Flood Control District
manages the property as open space and owns and manages other lands along Bear Canyon
and Sabino Canyon as part of its riparian habitat and upper watershed preservation program.
— kenne
Becoming is Superior to Being 