A living museum of desert life

Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum is a zoo of a different color -- the colors of the Southwest. The facility was forged from pristine desert west of Tucson, housed in a "termite-ridden cluster of buildings" built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s. The zoo was the vision of former American Museum of Natural History employee William Carr.

Carr came to Arizona for his health, and couldn't believe his fellow Tucsonans knew so little about their surroundings. When the Pima County Park Commissioners finally gave him permission to build the museum, Carr and his supporters took just six months to be ready for opening day -- Labor Day, 1952.

Much more than a zoo, the Desert Museum is a slice of life in the Arizona-Sonora Desert -- a living natural history museum. Plant and animal life native to the region abound -- all in the kind of surroundings in which they live in the wild. Gila monsters, Mexican gray wolves, parrots, ocelots, coyotes, roadrunners and turkeys -- from the commonplace to the endangered -- are all represented. There's even a walk-in aviary filled with desert birds.

The park also features the ever-popular prairie dogs, bighorn sheep climbing sheer rock walls, and otters.

Photos by Jim Flynn Courtesy the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum

Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum

2021 N. Kinney Rd., Tucson, Arizona; (520) 883-1380 Web site:http://www.desert.net/museum/index.htmlx FAST FACT: Beavers once escaped the desert museum, dashing into the desert via the bighorn sheep exhibit. But when they came upon a set of coyote tracks in the wild, the bad beavers high-tailed it back to their pond, never to attempt escape again.