Just 22 miles southeast of Tucson in the Sonoran Desert sits the town of Vail, colloquially known as "The Town between the Tracks," which refers to the two train tracks running through its tiny business center. The area is named for Walter L. Vail, who, with his partners, formed the sprawling Empire Ranch in 1876. Vail is also the home of Colossal Cave, a "dry cave" where visitors can view stunning formations and hear stories of Native Americans, bandits, and moviemakers. The cave served as the site of a Civilian Conservation Corps camp in the mid-1930s, when workers installed trails and lighting in the cave, constructed administration buildings, and built roads and picnic spots in the surrounding area. Colossal Cave is now united with the La Posta Quemada Ranch, a working cattle ranch since the 1870s, to form the 2,400-acre Colossal Cave Mountain Park.
About the Author :
In this volume, author Sharon E. Hunt, the librarian and archivist at Colossal Cave Mountain Park, has gathered together nearly 200 images from the park's archives, as well as from the Arizona Historical Society and privately held collections, to illustrate the remarkable story of this unique place.
Review :
Title: Images of America
Author: Staff Writer
Publisher: National Speleological Society News
Date: September 2009 Arcadia Publishing's Images of America series is a diverse collection of several thousand books celebrating the colorful history of neighborhoods, towns, and cities across the nation. Each volume provides a detailed history--as told in a stunning collection of annotated archival photographs--of the development, culture, and heritage of a particular location. Several books in the series are devoted to caves, since the discovery of a spectacular local cave system has often had a profound influence on shaping the future growth of an area. This is an outstanding collection of books that will be of interest to anyone who enjoys reading about speleohistory, commercial cave operations, the national park system, or Americana in general.
VAIL AND COLOSSAL CAVE MOUNTAIN PARK - Images of America (2007) by Sharon E. Hunt. Arcadia Publishing, Chicago. Paperback, 128 pages, 61/2" x 91/4" format, ISBN 978-0-7385-4882-1. Available for $19.99. Reviewed by Danny A. Brass.
Almost a century before beautifully decorated Kartchner Caverns had been discovered in the southern Arizona desert, tours were being offered in nearby Colossal Cave. The fortunes of Vail, Arizona have risen and fallen over the past hundred years. However, the fate of this small town has always been closely tied to the presence of both Colossal Cave and the railroad. Although "discovered" in 1879, the cave is known to have been widely used by Native Americans for centuries earlier. From the turn of the onward, the cave has been a popular tourist destination. As with many eligible sites that required significant physical improvements to make them more accessible to the general public, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) played an important role in construction of facilities at Colossal Cave during the 1930s. Today, the cave is part of the 2,400-acre Colossal Cave Mountain Park. It attracts thousands of visitors annually and offers a number of tours.
Broadly speaking, the vintage photographs in this collection tell four separate, but related, stories: 1) the men of the CCC, 2) the era of local cowboys and cowgirls, 3) the past and present history of Vail, AZ, and, of course, 4) that of the cave itself.
The story of Colossal Cave includes that of the underground environment as well as of the various people who have played an important role in the early management and development of the cave and surrounding area as a tourist attraction. Also included is a descriptive set of images of the annual professional photo competition that had been held at the cave for several years. Photographers chose their own themes--often involving attractive women posing near formations or the use of the cave as a bandit hideout in the good old days--and typically brought their own models. Several photographs depict scenes from notably forgettable Hollywood films that had been shot in the cave.
