Picturing Sabino: A Photographic History of a Southwestern Canyon [Paperback]

Sabino Canyon, a desert canyon in the American Southwest near Tucson, Arizona, is enjoyed yearly by thousands of city residents as well as visitors from around the world.Picturing Sabinotells the story of the canyon’s transformation from a barely known oasis, miles from a small nineteenth-century town, into an immensely popular recreation area on the edge of a modern metropolis. Covering a century of change, from 1885 to 1985, this work rejoices in the canyon’s natural beauty and also relates the ups and downs of its protection and enjoyment.

The story is vividly told through numerous historical photographs, lively anecdotes, and an engaging text, informed by decades of research by David Wentworth Lazaroff. Along the way the reader makes the acquaintance of ordinary picnickers as well as influential citizens who helped to reshape the canyon, while witnessing the canyon’s evolving relationship with its growing urban neighbor. The book will fascinate readers who are already familiar with Sabino Canyon, as well as anyone with an interest in local or regional history, or in historical photography.

This history of Sabino Canyon shows like never before why this mountain canyon near Tucson, Arizona, is such a beloved place. With more than two hundred images and engaging text, David Wentworth Lazaroff relays relates a hundred years of history, revealing how the canyon changed from a little-known oasis into an immensely popular recreation area on the edge of a modern metropolis.

David Wentworth Lazaroff is a Tucson writer and photographer. His most recent book isAmphibians, Reptiles, and Their Habitats at Sabino Canyon(with Philip C. Rosen and Charles H. Lowe Jr.).

“David Lazaroff has made a career of catching Sabino Canyon on film and its many stories on his pages. He probably bleeds creek water and knows each plant and bird by first name. No one knows Sabino like Lazaroff. Have but one day to spend outdoors? For nlc7