The Mighty Papago

by Jon Burch Photography

Title

The Mighty Papago

Artist

Jon Burch Photography

Medium

Photograph - Digital Capture/faa Watermark Will Not Be On Your Finished Photograph.

Description

Arizona's Papago Park is a hilly desert park covering 1200 acres in its Phoenix extent and 296 acres in its Tempe extent. Tempe refers to its section of the park specifically as Tempe Papago Park.

Papago Park is notable for its many distinctive geological formations and its wide variety of typical desert plants, including the giant saguaro cactus. The park also features the Desert Botanical Garden, the Phoenix Zoo, picnic areas, several small lakes, hiking trails, bicycle paths, a fire museum, and Hunt's Tomb, the pyramidal tomb of Arizona's first governor, George W. P. Hunt. Tempe Papago Park includes baseball and softball fields, picnic areas, a small lake, and other features. Rolling Hills Golf Course is within the park between its Phoenix and Tempe extremities.

The distinctive red sandstone geological formations of Papago Park were formed some 6-15 million years ago. One such formation, Hole-in-the-Rock, is a major landmark, thanks to the openings eroded in the formation over time. There is some evidence that the Hohokam - a now-extinct aboriginal tribe that once lived in the Phoenix area - used the openings and sunlight to track the solstices.

Papago Park was designated a reservation for the local Maricopa and Pima tribes of aboriginal Americans in 1879. It became the Papago-Saguaro National Monument in 1914, but this status was recalled by Congress, April 7, 1930, because the area was not considered suitable for a national monument. It was divided throughout the state of Arizona, the city of Tempe and the Water Users Association, later known as the Salt River Project. Federal Government reserved all oil, coal or other mineral rights.

During World War II, the park housed a POW camp and contained as many as 3,100 prisoners from 1942 to 1944. It was also the site of the largest mass escape from any United States prison camp in World War II. The Great Papago Escape occurred on December 23, 1944 when 25 prisoners, including German U-boat commander J'rgen Wattenberg, escaped the camp using a 178-foot tunnel and made their way to the Arizona desert. Many prisoners quickly realized that they knew nothing about the landscape or climate and turned themselves back in. Wattenberg was the last to be captured, on January 28, 1945.

After the war Papago Park served as a VA hospital from 1947 to 1951, then an Army Reserve facility. The state owned portion of the park was sold to the city of Phoenix on February 25, 1959. A portion of the Tempe Park was conveyed to that city in 1935, and a parcel within that portion was conveyed to the Salt River Project in 1955. An 18-hole championship golf course was built by the city of Phoenix and completed in 1963.

Digital effects were applied to the original image after the photograph was made. No electrons were harmed during this process. Ordered images will not contain the FAA watermark.

Image copyright 2017 Jon Burch Photography all rights reserved.

Uploaded

December 29th, 2017

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