When I was a senior in college, a few of us rented a house in Paradise Valley, a short bike ride from the Cholla Trail on the east side of Camelback Mountain. I don’t remember what we paid for rent, but because of the housing market collapse, it was easily affordable. In today’s market, the monthly rent for that same house would be over $5,000, according to Zillow.
I’m grateful we took full advantage of the location. I remember hiking the mountain at least twice a week, timing how long it would take to the summit and back, trying to beat the record. One time we hiked from the Cholla Trailhead to the Echo Canyon Trailhead and back again. Another time we hiked the summit before dawn to watch the sun rise over Four Peaks.
Camelback Mountain might have been swallowed by private development, if it were not for the preservation efforts of Barry Goldwater in the 1960s.
The first chance of preservation was the late 1870s. President Rutherford B. Hayes originally designated the mountain as residing within Native American territory, but Arizona’s territorial legislature quickly overpowered the decision. Even back in those days, the economic value of the area was obvious. And so Camelback Mountain was excluded from the Salt River Pima–Maricopa Indian Community.
In the post-World War II era of the 1950s, with the advent of air conditioning, the city of Phoenix was growing fast. Most of this growth was toward the outskirts of town, forever expanding into new suburbs. But there were also pressures to expand upwards — specifically to grow upwards onto Camelback Mountain. Developers started scheming up plans. Maybe a hotel bar on the summit?
While South Mountain had been, from the beginning, under the administrative control of the City of Phoenix, Camelback Mountain remained up for grabs for private development into the 1960s. There was a rule that nothing could be built on the mountain higher than 1,600 feet above sea level, but this rule wasn’t legally enforceable.
Fresh off his loss in the 1964 presidential campaign, Barry Goldwater was looking for a rewarding political opportunity.
“This old mountain is worth the fight. A Camelback cluttered with roads and utility poles and and bulldozed scars and houses would be the shame of the state. If we ruin Camelback, ever afterward people will think of Phoenix as the city that made something ugly of the most beautiful thing we had.”
— Goldwater, quoted in a Don Dedera article, “Embattled Campaigner Takes on Tough Chore,” Arizona Republic, May 30, 1965.
Goldwater pulled out all the stops, organizing wealthy friends to join the ordinary Phoenicians who had already been fighting for the mountain. Goldwater even went so far as to seek assistance from the federal government. Eventually, the Save Camelback Mountain Foundation raised enough cash to purchase plots and preserve the upper sections of this iconic mountain.
By 1973, both the Cholla and Echo Canyon trails were accessible for public hiking.
If you want to get technical, the real beginning of Camelback Mountain was 1.7 billion years ago, due to plate tectonics. With time and pressure, the mountain peak grew to 2,704 feet.
Camelback Mountain was once sacred grounds to the Hohokam people, who vanished before the arrival of European settlers.
It remains sacred, in the sense that anything is still sacred, to many Phoenicians and visitors who love the natural beauty of the desert.
Sources:
Peter Iverson. “‘THIS OLD MOUNTAIN IS WORTH THE FIGHT’: Barry Goldwater and the Campaign to Save Camelback Mountain.” The Journal of Arizona History 38, no. 1 (1997).
Ray Stern. “Camelback Mountain Combines Beauty, History, and Adventure in One Fragile Phoenix Park.” The Phoenix New Times, January 15, 2014.
Nick Di Taranto. “A MOUNTAIN IN A SEA OF SPRAWL: Preserving Phoenix’s Camelback Mountain, 1954-1973.” The Journal of Arizona History 57, no. 1 (2016).
So interesting! That’s amazing Goldwater had the forethought. Doesn’t seem like many politicians care about that any more.