Madera Canyon
Landmark · Tucson & the Sky Islands
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Canyon in the Santa Rita Mountains, 25 miles southeast of Tucson, with hiking trails, picnic areas, and campsites. Over 250 bird species have been recorded here, making it a premier birdwatching spot along migration routes.
The canyon wasn't always called Madera Canyon: it was first known as White House Canyon, after a white adobe house a sheepherder named Walden built here in the late 1870s or early 1880s, home to the Morales family from 1911 to 1940. The name changed sometime in the early 1900s, though some locals still use the old one. Prospectors filled the Santa Rita Mountains in the same period, and more than a dozen mines worked this one canyon alone. Ben Daniels, once a marshal in Dodge City and Tombstone, built a home here and later served as Pima County sheriff. Madera Canyon and the Santa Ritas around it became part of the new National Forest System in 1905. Only a single wall fragment of the old White House was still standing when archaeologists surveyed the site in 2002.
What you see
The canyon climbs through four distinct life zones in just a few miles, desert scrub near the mouth giving way to oak, then pine, then aspen and fir stands near the high ridge.
birdwatchingnaturehistoryhiking