(Tom) Hello, and welcome to Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara.

You know, we are so lucky to live here in southern Arizona.

We're surrounded by scenic national parks, forest, open land.

There is so much to explore.

And today on the program, we're gonna take you on a tour of places that you can drive to within 90 minutes of the center of Tucson.

So come along for the ride.

(upbeat music) We'll take you to an oasis in the desert near Patagonia, Arizona.

(Corey) It's just quiet, you know, and it's relaxing.

It's usually a little bit cooler.

(Tom) The show never ends at this Westside gem.

(Ron) We try to get the most incredible things, the most wonderful things you can imagine for people to see as they come in.

(Tom) Rich history, zip lines, and arts in Oracle, Arizona.

(Judith) Surrounded by nature, it's very beautiful, quiet, but increasingly rich community.

(Tom) The inspiring story of a man behind the name of a local campground.

(Narrator) Gordon Hirabayashi was one of three Japanese-Americans to resist being interned during World War II.

(Tom) And get wet at the Sabino Dam.

(Chris) Just the sound of it when we started walking up to it was enough to draw us in.

[MUSIC PLAYING] (Tom) People who want a dependable source of water to cool off in southern Arizona don't have to travel to Mexico or to another state.

Patagonia State Park in Santa Cruz County offers fishing and boating, hiking, camping, and more.

And it's only about an hour and a half from where I'm sitting right here.

[MUSIC PLAYING] (inspiring music) - My name's Chris Coniaris and I'm here to have a fun day kayaking on the lake.

I'm thrilled.

The one thing we don't have in Tucson is water.

So water sports, you often have to travel, and to have something less than 90 minutes away from Tucson makes it very accessible.

(baby babbles) - This is our first trip to the lake and we had heard about it from a few friends.

You know, they said if you need water in Arizona, that this is the place to come.

So it's pretty close to Sierra Vista, so it was an easy drive for us today.

I love it, I'm actually really surprised.

The pictures online don't do this place justice.

It's very pretty.

The slope from the hill down to the lake makes it very easy for us to sit up here as parents and you know, enjoy the shade while the kids can go crazy in the water, and it feels very safe.

You know, they're not too far.

I've got a good view of everything around me, good view of the beach.

It's very well set up.

(baby babbles) (water splashes) (engine hums) (Colt) The lake itself sits 265 acres of actual surface water.

The park itself is not too much bigger.

It's with the campgrounds.

It's almost 600 acres.

The park itself, we also manage the state trust land, which surrounds the park.

That's over 2,000 acres.

And then the Sonoita Creek State Natural Area is several thousand acres.

We have camping.

We have 13 campsites out on the lake, the real popular ones.

We have a big island and a smaller island that people like to use, obviously, skiing, wakeboarding.

We have several different species of fish.

We have largemouth bass.

We have channel cat and flathead cat.

We also have bluegill, crappie.

In the wintertime, we stock with trout.

There's a lot of wildlife.

We have everything from the big predator, the mountain lion, to the little ring-tailed cats, raccoons, skunk, all your normal stuff.

One of the biggest draws we have here at the lake is our birding program.

People come from miles and miles in other states and countries to see the elegant trogan.

It's one of our favorite birds and most famous birds, along with the Kingfisher, Gnatcatchers.

Over 200 different species of birds are found here at Patagonia Lake.

So one of the interesting things about the park is that it was built over top of the New Mexico Patagonia Railroad.

The railroad was constructed in the late 1800s and abandoned in the mid 1900s.

It started in Benson, Arizona, traveled through Sonoita, down through Patagonia into Mexico all the way to Guaymas.

The railroad was used for transport of cattle for the local ranchers and also the local mines transported their ore to market.

(Bob) I'm a Bob Bergier, and my family's had the ranch about 100 years.

And I've lived here about 40 years, full time now.

Patagonia State Park was formed by these men, one of them my father, and they built a recreational lake.

These are the documents to get the loan.

They had to prove that the people in the area wanted to do this.

So this is signatures of people.

I mean, done in 1966.

It's very interesting who lived here then and all of them signing these documents.

I was about 20.

I was at NAU.

I didn't pay attention now.

Later, I was overwhelmed that they did that.

But all these men got together and did that.

Something like that would never happen now.

I don't know what they were thinking.

I mean, really, they had a different attitude.

They just, let's build it.

We can do it.

One of the big problems they had, that road was dirt.

And they realized they could never probably afford to pave that whole road.

And that's one of the reasons I think they made the deal with the state to have a state park.

I got this little boat a few months ago.

And it's just quiet, and it's relaxing.

And it's close to Tucson.

It's not that far away.

And it's definitely a totally different climate.

It's usually a little bit cooler.

This is a fun place to escape for a while and feel like you're maybe not in a desert.

(Tom) Southern Arizona hosts the world's largest gem and mineral show each February.

But there's a store west of the Tucson Mountains that keeps tradition going 365 days a year.

Tucson Mineral and Gem World has been selling delightful oddities for 60 years and counting, even during the hottest time of the year and on holidays.

[MUSIC PLAYING] (mysterious music) (Ron) We've been in the business here 57 years.

And we've been closed two days in 57 years.

(murmuring) We never really planned on opening 365 days a year, sort of fell into it, it became a habit.

This was part of a cluster.

- Oh, like the-- - Arizona and Tucson's not your destination spot in the summer time, but we have people that actually are coming in, they've heard about us and they come in from all parts of the country.

They brave the heat.

(mysterious music) My dad started this in the 1960s.

He was a motion picture editor from back east.

This was his pride and joy, he loved minerals and so he built this basically for my brother and I.

We've got over 10,000 different items on display and we have a warehouse full of about the same amount or more.

We try to get the most incredible things, the most wonderful things you could imagine for people to see as they come in.

Let me show you this, this is a human skull up here and it's a medical skull but it's really a great item.

These are vampire bats, you can see on top here.

This is something we sell a fair amount of, these are gold-plated pack rats that my brother puts together.

They mummify in our buildings in the back and people buy these.

You've got something for someone who has everything.

Pretty bizarre but we do have them.

This is called spirit quartz or cactus quartz.

This is gypsum.

This is one that the holistic folks buy a lot, for them it has very special properties, then it's pretty for just a collector.

(door rattling) In these cases in our back gallery, we have things like mammoth hair, this is hair from the wooly mammoth, that's from the last ice age.

We have artifacts from ancient Greece like this lion's head.

Saber-tooth tiger skull up here.

These are ancient Egyptian artifacts.

These are called ushabtis or mummy helpers.

My field is in vertebrate paleontology, I studied the ancient mammals that lived during the age of the dinosaurs.

I did that all of my career and ended up being the paleontologist at the Desert Museum.

So having been both an archeologist and a paleontologist in my profession, I only accept things that are both legal and morally right to have to own.

- It's a go-to place.

I knew you'd have it.

I wanted to get some stones to do the chakras and to balance the thing, whether it works or not who knows?

But there's vibrations in everything, Einstein proved that.

They helped me get the different stones I wanted and, well, this is what you need.

And just weird stuff like that.

I always bring family here and they're wonderful with children.

They spark their imagination.

- We treat the kids like royalty here.

It's a hoot being here, mostly because of the people that we get to meet from all over the world, celebrities.

Had Vincent Price come in.

Early on we had John Wayne come in.

Kris Kristofferson filmed a movie here, they rented our building, changed the front of the building.

Richard Gere came in and he invited me to have breakfast with him across the street.

(beeping) I'm just fascinated by artifacts because they fill in the blanks for what we know about ancient history.

(mysterious music) These are the threads in the fabric of time.

Sometimes if you hold these you can actually feel like you're pulled back into ancient times.

What was it like, who was he, what did he see?

This is part of his world and now it's part of my world.

Thank you.

- Thank you.

- [Ron] And passing it along will become part of somebody else's world.

(mysterious music) (Tom) Oracle is a small community north of Tucson that's full of character and history, yet people in many parts of Arizona haven't taken time to visit there.

It's known for its artist, for Arizona's longest zipline eco tour, its active historical society, and a growing number of restaurants and other attractions.

If people have driven up Highway 77 and really thought there was nothing here, I think all they have to do is veer off the highway a little.

There's a little bit of something for everyone.

Well, we started out doing yard sales when we were younger, and we loved it.

We made like $500 one weekend, and so we thought, wow.

So we came in, opened all the boxes, sold, and it was junk.

It was junk junk.

It started out as just a little junk shop, and it's evolved in the last 31 years to an antique store, an art gallery, and a consignment shop.

Oh my gosh.

It's like for a European type pillow.

I came here in 1970.

I was very young.

And I've lived here all my life.

I've raised two boys here.

Me and my husband Jerry have been married 43 years.

Oracle is unique.

It's very eclectic.

Here we go.

One, two, three, two, one.

Woo hoo.

All began when my business partner Brandon Lucey approached my father and I with the idea of building something amazing out here to bring people outside to experience this area.

All right, all you got to do is take a seat and lift those feet.

Go get rolling.

Have fun.

All right.

Woo.

And with my history in the ropes course industry, father's land, we all just kind of came together and made it happen.

Kind of exciting, exhilarating.

It was fun.

It was definitely an adventure.

The way that everyone comes together is pretty incredible.

And when we were building this, we felt a ton of support from our town and our community.

And that's something that drove us to building this business, kind of reignite our community and bring a little bit more life into it.

Wonderful.

It's a really a symbiotic relationship between us and the community.

We're there to support anything that the community is doing.

And in return, the community's really supported us.

I have two small kids and I'm home with them with dinner every night.

And I'm involved in their lives and I have the opportunity to practice my art the way I want to and still have a good family life.

This building came into the picture.

They homesteaded in 1880 and this was probably built out around 1885 as a boarding house either for people that came out from Tucson to escape the heat or for people that were working in the mines.

The mining was what brought people up here originally.

And then at just about the same time, some people just went into cattle ranching.

And then the health resort industry started around 1890.

And then around 1900 is when the cattle ranching became much larger.

It is a gas ranch that was built between 1917 and 1930.

And it was always meant for rest and relaxation.

It was never a working cattle ranch.

In fact, the man who built it had fruit fields where Scottsdale and Arcadia are now.

And this was built as this high mountain getaway for him and his wife and all of his friends from back east to come and enjoy horses and laze around in the sun.

I've had a lot of different spiritual people come through here-- Buddhists, shamanic order, Christians.

And they all say that it has a real positive feeling.

This is Rancho Linda Vista in Oracle, Arizona.

And it has been a long history, first as a cattle ranch and a guest ranch.

And in 1968, it was bought by a group of artists, mostly from the University of Arizona Art Department.

And set up as a trust and a corporation, people could become part of it and live here and do art here and enjoy a community of like-minded people.

[MUSIC PLAYING] We can see the back of Mount Lemmon from here.

And we can judge the snow by the ski slope.

We can see it from here.

So we feel very surrounded by nature.

It's very beautiful, quiet, but increasingly rich community.

I think the biggest draw for me being an Arizona native is that it rarely gets above 100 degrees.

At 4,700 feet, 37 miles away from where I grew up in Tucson, I can invite my family to get up and out of that heat and come here on the backside of the Santa Catalina's and almost be a world away.

We couldn't ask for a better staff.

And the people that come out are just as amazing as they are.

Everyone that comes out is excited to try something new and have fun and really push themselves.

And that's why we continue to do this.

One person told me early on that Oracle chooses its residents.

And there seems to be some little fate that works in that regard.

I would tell people explore a little.

Don't be afraid to explore, because there's more that meets the eye when you come to Oracle.

Today, we see acts of civil disobedience, along with all kinds of protests calling for justice and equality.

But back in 1942, when the US government forcibly interned nearly 70,000 American citizens of Japanese descent, along with about 50,000 Japanese immigrants into harsh and isolated detention centers, there were very few cries for justice.

One American losing his freedom did fight for it.

Next, we take you to a campground named in his honor, a short drive up the Mount Lemmon Highway.

(loud horn music begins) (water flowing) - [David] Driving up the Mount lemon highway, just outside of Tucson, I had seen the sign that reads Gordon Hirabayashi several times.

It always peaked my curiosity and I finally looked up the name.

I learned there was a prison camp on that spot and how Gordon Hirabayashi story intersected with that prison.

(loud horn music continues) - [Female interviewer] You know, I read an article that when you first arrived at the camp, that the Hopi, it was Hopi Indians that invited you to their-- - Yeah, ramada.

They built the Ramada on the side of the Hill.

And I didn't know anything about them, just new in the camp and there was a group of Hopis there.

And they said, "Well, we know you guys "are engaged in a white man's war, Europe and so on.

"We have no interest in fighting in your war."

So they were a category of objectors that were sent to prison.

Anyway, they took a real warm interest.

Gave me a hair wash with the soap weeds, they brewed some tea and gave it to me and just treated me like a brother.

(water flowing) (soft music begins) - When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, our West Coast became a potential combat zone.

Living in that zone were more than 100,000 persons of Japanese ancestry.

2/3 of them, American citizens, 1/3 aliens.

We knew that some among them were potentially dangerous.

Most were loyal, but no one knew what would happen among this concentrated population if Japanese forces should try to invade our shores.

Military authorities therefore determined that all of them citizens and aliens alike would have to move.

(loud horn music) - [Gordon] They expected injustice and discrimination one way or another.

So when this order came, this was another thing that they had to cope with.

Even though they felt it was totally unnecessary and totally wrong and it's a discrimination, it wasn't their first line of thought to you know, "I'm going to confront this, battle it".

You ever review the story of Columbus?

Columbus and his men came ashore.

Dark skin people hovered around with curiosity and later brought them food and so on.

Columbus discovered America 'cause they weren't humans that counted.

And so they're ignored.

And this viewpoint sort of psychologically continues.

(sharp horn music) - [David] Gordon Hirabayashi was one of three Japanese Americans to resist being interned during World War II.

He lost his 1943 Supreme Court case, Hirabayashi vs the United States and was sent to that prison camp on Mount Lemmon.

- [Gordon] For a while I thought the constitution failed me.

Then it occurred to me that it wasn't necessarily the constitution that failed me.

It was the people who were placed in the responsibility of upholding the constitution.

(loud horn music continues) - [David] Prisoners at the camp helped build what would become the Catalina Highway.

The camp was closed when the road was completed in 1951.

In 1999, the area where the camp stood was renamed to honor Gordon Hirabayashi.

In 2012, he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

(Tom) Water is a precious resource in the desert.

And though it's rare, there are occasional oases that attract both people and animals.

And you can find one of them, Sabino Dam, by walking just a mile from the visitor center at Sabino Canyon Recreation Area.

[MUSIC PLAYING] [WATER FLAPPING] [water flowing] [upbeat music] (David) I come to Sabino Canyon area because it's just one of the nicest places, I think in the United States.

[music] I was visiting Tucson since the late eighties, where I have an aunt who's passed away, but I would come every winter and she lived just about a mile from here.

And I'd walk here almost every day and do Seven Falls and just go up the trail, and it's just there's so many different spots with so many different kinds of terrain and environment, and it's so peaceful.

It's just a remarkable, remarkable place.

[soft music] (Chris) We live in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and we love Tucson because it's a beautiful area.

So we're always trying to explore and find new places in Tucson.

And then we discovered the trail.

They said to go out to the dam and here we are, and it is spectacular.

[music, water flowing] (Sara) I've been coming here since before I was literally like before off the womb.

My dad used to always take us when we were little.

And so I just always came here.

So like now they know the trail by myself.

I can take myself.

So it's kind of nice, but I always love this place I like.

I was just, I love the water.

(Chrys) I think everybody should check this place out.

It's worth the experience coming out of anywhere in Arizona, and it's something different for sure.

And I will remember this moment with you guys and with her ten out of ten experience.

(Sara) This is my boyfriend and he lives in California, and I just sold him on hiking.

We're going to take him here, so now he's here, he's with me, I took him.

[soft music] (Chrys) A lot of stuff, a lot of trails to go to, a lot of people always in a good mood and just a lot of stuff to like, look at and everything to really good experience, pretty cool, something we don't have out there.

And it's a really good.

It's really different.

(Chris) We do have the Rio Grande but I'm sorry to say that this spends a large portion of the year actually dry.

So we're south of where the control of the water flow is up in northern New Mexico, so we don't really get a lot of water down there.

So this is a great pleasure to see this flowing water.

It was just the sound of it when we started walking up to it was enough to draw us in.

(flowing water) (David) It's just such a unique environment in the Sonoran Desert is just so beautiful.

There's something so powerful about the saguaro cactus that you just don't see anywhere else in the Midwest or something.

You got lots of trees and you can't see the distances.

Here is just you can just see forever.

Birds and, of course, the many different species of cactus and the people are very friendly here too, I should mention that I never met unfriendly people here, so another reason I keep coming back.

(music fades to flowing water) Thank you for joining us here on Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara.

We'll see you again next week.

[MUSIC PLAYING]