And then there were 64 — This post welcomes Chiricahua National Monument’s promotion to become America’s 64th national park on October 20th, 2026!
It was my father who first introduced me to Chiricahua National Monument in the year 2000. He’d traveled throughout the United States and internationally during his working years and fallen in love with the southwest. So he and his wife, Mary, decided to retire to the desert in New Mexico after spending most of their lifetime in Iowa.
But retirement didn’t slow their interest in travel and exploration and they invited my sister, Anne, and me to join them on a camping and sightseeing vacation in southern Arizona. While there, we: 1) visited everything from the chain of old Spanish missions to the mines in Bisbee, 2) briefly stepped illegally across the border into Mexico (by a few feet) in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and, of course, 3) spent time hiking through and marveling at the wonders that are Chiricahua.
The photo that leads this post was taken on the Massai Point trail during a 2015 visit with my wife Nancy. It shows only a small sample of the water and wind sculpted forms know as “hoodoos” that are the park’s iconic landforms.
A few additional photos from that trip follow (Nancy is the one taking a photo for the hikers).
Sadly, Dad passed away in 2016, but his love of the grandeur and beauty of our world’s natural wonders lives on in family, friends, and anyone who knew him. I know he would be pleased in this moment . Of the “new” park’s upgrade I can hear him saying in his sly way, “Well, it’s about time.”
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