Archive for the ‘Sycamore Reservoir’ Tag
Sycamore Reservoir Under Construction (1939) — Source Unknown
(Note: Thimble Peak In The Distance Through The Pass)
Sycamore Reservoir was originally constructed to supply water to the Catalina Federal Honor Camp, or Tucson Federal Prison Camp, located in the Santa Catalina Mountains. The camp held men subject to the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans. It had no security fence, boundaries were marked with stones painted white. 45 of the 46 prisoners were draft resisters and objectors of conscience transferred from camps in Colorado, Arizona and Utah, although Gordon Hirabayashi, who had challenged the exclusion of Japanese Americans from the West Coast, was also held here.
This small lake has been made even smaller by flash floods which have washed huge amounts of rock and sand into the lake. Still, the reservoir and surrounding area remain a pleasant destination for a day or overnight trip.
The trail to where the dam is located. (October 2012)
Sycamore Dam (October 2012)
Above Sycamore Dam (October 2012) — Images by kenne
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1st SCVN Fall Hike, Sycamore Canyon/Reservoir Trail — iPhone Images by kenne
Today, we led a small group of ten hikers on the first Sabino Canyon Volunteer Naturalists (SCVN) fall Friday Hike. This hike is annually done in the fall and spring. The hike is about 5.5 miles, starting in the old Prison Camp (Gordon Hirabayashi Campgrounds) the trail leads to the reservoir that supplied water to the Prison Camp. Click here for more historical information on the Campgrounds.
— kenne
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Sycamore Canyon Panorama — Image by kenne
Sycamore Canyon Trail — Computer Painting by kenne
Yesterday’s (April 28, 2017) hike from the Gordon Hirabayashi Campgrounds (4,880′ elevation) to the Sycamore Reservoir was the last SCVN Friday hike on our Spring schedule. Eleven people, including three guides, took #39 trail out of the campgrounds to the Sycamore Reservoir, a somewhat out of the way riparian area in the Sycamore Canyon in the Pusch Ridge Wilderness. The trail is 3.25 miles one way with an accumulated gain of 821 feet. The trail is also a segment of the Arizona Trail, providing majestic views, including Thimble Pear and Cathedral Rock.
This is one of my favorite hikes at the mid-level elevation of the Santa Catalina Mountains, so I was pleased to be the lead guide for the eleven hikers, which included three women from Germany.
The SCVN guided hikes will start again in June on Mt. Lemmon.
kenne
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One of the most brilliant of Sonoran desert wildflowers, the Mariposa lily is one of two common lilies found here — the other is ajo lily (desert lily). Since this is the second recent posting on this desert wildflower, you might guess that I’m quite taken by this flower.
Although common to the desert southwest, they are scattered and do not bloom every year. These and those in the earlier posting were a few miles apart at about 4,000′ feet elevation.
Aren’t they beautiful!!
kenne
32.270209
-110.860703
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Hiking up the ridge the Sycamore Reservoir Trail from the Gordon Kiyoshi Hirabayashi Recreational Area to the Sycamore Reservoir.
The Sycamore Reservoir Trail is now part of the Arizona Trail.
Looking down from the ridge above the Sycamore Dam and riparian area.
Sycamore Reservoir Trail Gallery (Click on any of the thumbnail images for a larger view.)
Horse Corrals at the Prison Camp
Top Of The Dam
Hikers At The Dam Area
Sycamore Dam
The Sycamore Reservoir Trail Become Part Of The Arizona Trail
Nearing the Dam Area
There are some who complain about the long drive up the Catalina Highway to Mount Lemmon for summertime hiking at the cooler higher elevation temperatures. Being able to escape the desert heat in the summertime is a blessing, but it wasn’t till the middle of the last century that the journey became easy.
Work on the Catalina Highway began in 1933 in order to make it easier to get to the summit of Mount Lemmon. Starting at Tanque Verde Road in east Tucson, the highway goes several miles north before starting a 5,300-foot climb, passing through five of North America’s seven distinct life zones. Although a road up to Summerhaven was built in 1920, the road was on the north side of the Catalina’s, a good distance from the more populated Tucson area to the south of the mountain range. Prior to the early thirties, the route to the community of Summerhaven from the south was a trail from lower Sabino Canyon to soldier Camp on up to Mount Lemmon.
Efforts to build a highway from the south struggled for seven years until Frank Harris Hitchcock convinced federal prison authorities that a prison camp in the mountains could provide a cheap labor source. The facilities called the Catalina Federal Honor Camp were much like those in other western mountain campgrounds, i.e., barracks, a mess hall, a laundry, powerhouse and a small sawmill. As a tent camp, with no walls or fences, the prison camp was primarily made up of car thieves, bootleggers, tax evaders, draft dodgers, Mexicans entering the country illegally, and conscientious objectors, existed until 1951, when the road was finished. During that time period over 8,000 prisoners worked on the road, including 44 interned Japanese-Americans during World War II.
To supply water to the camp, Sycamore Reservoir was constructed several miles away, which included a pump-house to pump water through a six-inch pipe up over the ridge to the campgrounds. The pipeline was above ground placed on rock pilings, many of which can be seen from the trail from the honor camp to Sycamore Reservoir. Like many small mountain reservoirs, they become even smaller from mountain floods washing rock and sand into the reservoir. What remains of the dam and the lake area serves to maintain water levels for a riparian area that extends into the two canyons that form the dam site.
As mentioned above, during the war Japanese Americans were interned at the camp. Among those was Gordon Kiyoshi Hirabayashi, an American sociologist and religious pacifist who defied internment. In 1942 he turned himself in to the FBI, after which he was convicted of curfew violation and sentence to 90 days in prison. He appealed the verdict, which went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court ruled against him.
Given the wartime conditions, officials would not transport him from Seattle to the Prison Camp in the Catalina’s, nor would they pay for his train fare. After two weeks hitchhiking to Arizona, he arrived at the Prison Camp. Since it took him two weeks to arrive at the camp, his papers were not ready, causing the warden to suggest that he just leave. Hirabayashi thought that might look a little suspicious, so the story goes that he should go into town, have dinner and go to a movie — the papers were ready when he came back. One has to wonder how this took place given the camp location in relationship to the city, but then it could have involved days before arriving back to the camp.
Hirabayashi was to later spent one year in federal prison for refusing military induction. In 1999 the Prison Camp recreational area was renamed the Gordon Hirabayashi Recreational Area, where he had served 90 days during the war.
In April of this year, President Barack Obama announced that Hirabayashi would receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his principled stand against Japanese-American interment. The honor was present posthumously May 29, 2012.
kenne
32.270209
-110.860703
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Becoming is Superior to Being 