Biosphere 2 - 4 Things to Know Before Visiting

This is a 4,000 acre wildlife refuge in the northern foothills of the Catalina Mountains. The park offers day-use picnic areas and over 15 miles of trails for use by hikers, mountain bikers and equestrians. The most common plants in Oracle State Park are prickly pear and cholla cactus, scrub oak, mesquite, many wildflowers, and the occasional piñon and juniper. Bird species include red-tailed hawks, golden eagles, prairie falcons, black-throated sparrows and so more.

The Historic Kannally Ranch House in Oracle State Park was built in the later 1920s and early 1930s in Oracle, AZ.The original 160-acre ranch was purchased by Neil and Lee Kannally in 1903. The two brothers were later joined by three other family members and the ranch grew to almost 50,000 acres.The present Kannally Ranch House was built in 1929Ð1932 and is of Mediterranean Revival Style with Moorish influences, patterned on Italianate villas of the 1920s.

Peppersauce Cave is a limestone cave found in the Santa Catalina Mountains approximately ten miles south of Oracle, Arizona. Peppersauce is frequented by about 23,000 visitors every year and contains approximately one mile of mapped passages. The cave has been subject to vandalism and heavy littering for over fifty years.

Mount Lemmon Ski Valley is a recreational ski area in the U.S. state of Arizona, and the southernmost ski destination in the continental United States. Mount Lemmon Ski Valley is located on the slopes of Mount Lemmon in the Santa Catalina Mountains just north of Tucson, Arizona. It is part of the Coronado National Forest, located near the mountaintop village of Summerhaven.

It is the highest point in the Santa Catalina Mountains. It is located in the Coronado National Forest north of Tucson, Arizona, United States. Mount Lemmon was named for botanist Sara Plummer Lemmon, who trekked to the top of the mountain with her husband and E. O. Stratton, a local rancher, by horse and foot in 1881.

Also known as the Mount Lemmon Infrared Observatory, is an astronomical observatory located on Mount Lemmon in the Santa Catalina Mountains approximately 28 kilometers northeast of Tucson, Arizona . The site in the Coronado National Forest is used with special permission from the U.S. Forest Service by the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory, and contains a number of independently managed telescopes.