McFarland State Historical Park

All but one Arizona state park in Pinal County will close

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[Source: Florence Reminder, Bonnie Bariola 1-21-2010] — Of the five Arizona State Parks located in Pinal County, only one is slated to remain open.  The reason being that in 1976 the Arizona State Parks Board entered into an agreement with the Boyce Thompson Arboretum Board and the University of Arizona to cooperatively manage the park.  All funding for the Arboretum from the Arizona State Parks Board will stop, leaving the Arboretum to be funded through the University of Arizona and the Boyce Thompson Foundation.

Boyce Thompson Arboretum State Park: Located just west of Superior on US 60, the Arboretum was founded in the 1920s by mining magnate Col. William Boyce Thompson.  In 1917 Col. Thompson served as co-leader of a Red Cross mercy mission to Russia, where he came to understand the importance of plants as the ultimate source of a large portion of mankind’s food, clothing, and shelter.  It was then that he determined to use his great wealth to improve the use of plant resources.  The Arboretum is one of his legacies.

Encompassing 323 acres, the Arboretum is Arizona’s oldest and largest botanical garden.  It was the first purely botanical institution in the intermountain states.  Boyce Thompson Arboretum State Park is the place to discover the intricate beauty and many faces of Arizona’s oldest and largest botanical garden.  Featured are plants from the world’s deserts, towering trees, captivating cacti, sheer mountain cliffs, a streamside forest, panoramic vistas, many natural habitats with varied wildlife, a desert lake, a hidden canyon, specialty gardens and more.  [Note: To read the full article, click here.]

Community rallies to keep Oracle State Park open

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State Sen. Al Melvin (seated at left) listens as docent Mary Bast gives a tour of Oracle State Park's Kannally Ranch House (Photo: Ty Bowers, The Explorer)

[Source: Ty Bowers, The Explorer] — Given the nearly $22 million in immediate budget cuts the Arizona Legislature has proposed for the state park system, keeping Oracle State Park open could prove difficult, Sen. Al Melvin (R-26) told a handful of park supporters Saturday.  “Time is of the essence here,” Melvin said after a tour of the Kannally Ranch House at the park.  On Friday, Feb. 20, the Arizona State Parks Board will vote on whether to close up to eight state parks, the 4,000-acre park in Oracle among them.

A letter-writing campaign could work, especially one featuring a detailed proposal for how the park’s support group, the Friends of Oracle State Park, could help defray operating costs, Melvin strategized.  He would write the parks board, too, the senator said.  “I promise you I will do everything I can … to keep it up and running,” Melvin told a small cadre of some of the park’s most loyal volunteers, many of whom live near Melvin in SaddleBrooke.

Two days earlier, on Feb. 5, more than 100 people had packed the Oracle Community Center to discuss the park’s potential closure.  At that meeting, the Friends of Oracle State Park proposed spending some of $40,000 they had in the bank to keep the park open for the rest of the fiscal year, which ends June 30.  It would cost about $1,500 a month to run the park with a shoestring staff — hardly a long-term solution, many volunteers said.

In fiscal 2008, it cost $278,398 to operate the park in Oracle, according to state officials.  The 9,898 recorded visitors to the park brought in $14,492.  When contemplating which parks it might close, the state looked at how much it cost per visitor to operate each park.  It costs $26/visitor to operate Oracle State Park — second highest only to McFarland State Park in Florence.  Numerous people attending the meeting in Oracle last Thursday questioned using cost per visitor as the only metric for deciding which parks to close. “Is that the best way to value a park?” asked Jim Walsh, the Pinal County attorney.  [Note: To read the full article, click here.]