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Occasionally circumstances bring together people from opposite walks of life who join forces and create a masterpiece. Such was the case when Arthur Newton Pack met William H. Carr in 1951.

But first some background. William H. Carr was born in New York in 1902. His was a modest family headed by his father who was a school principal. Early in life his mother encouraged his interest in nature. His father’s early death forced William into the workforce at the age of 17. As the only child, Carr dropped out of high school to help support his mother.

Carr’s Boy Scout career (he eventually achieved the esteemed rank of Eagle Scout) led to an encounter with Benjamin Talbot Babbitt Hyde who worked for the American Museum of Natural History. After a brief stint of volunteer work with the organization, Carr found himself in their employ. A hard worker and curious man, Carr soon moved up to the position of Associate Curator of Education.

In 1926 Carr was offered the opportunity to establish a revolutionary nature trail-side museum at Bear Mountain Park in New York. Carr devoted the next 18 years of his life to that endeavor before health issues forced him to seek a new home in drier climes. In 1944 a magazine article enticed him to Tucson; he arrived in Arizona with little more than “four suitcases and $400.”

Carr fell in love with the Sonoran Desert of southern Arizona (indeed, who wouldn’t) and was dismayed by the locals’ complete disregard for, and ignorance of, their environs. The fragile landscape around Tucson was being trampled, mined, plowed under, and trashed to death. Carr’s sentiments were shared by another newcomer to Tucson, Arthur Newton Pack.

Pack was born in 1893 in Cleveland, Ohio. Pack’s father, Charles Lathrop Pack, was a very wealthy man who made his millions in the timber industry. Ironically, the man who amassed a fortune by clear-cutting forests became a leader in the conservation movement. In 1907 Charles was appointed to the Conservation Commission by none other than the great conservationist, President Theodore Roosevelt. The elder Pack went on to found the Charles Lathrop Pack Forestry Foundation, the American Tree Association, and head the World Court League.

After graduating from Harvard in 1915, Arthur Pack, also a conservationist, founded the American Nature Association with his father and became editor of the association’s Nature Magazine. In the 1930s Arthur Pack fell in love with the high desert of northern New Mexico which led him to purchase the storied Ghost Ranch. Pack moved out the ranch and devoted his time and energy to opening a dude ranch for guests from the east.

One of his visitors who eventually lived in a cottage on the ranch was the rising artist Georgia O’Keeffe. At Pack’s wedding in 1936 to Phoebe Finley, O’Keeffe presented the couple with a cow-skull design. When the Packs opened the Ghost Ranch Lodge on the outskirts of Tucson in 1941, O’Keeffe’s cow-skull design was incorporated in the entrance sign. By 1946 the Packs had permanently moved to Tucson, only visiting their land in New Mexico on vacations.

Pack’s love affair with the Sonoran Desert translated into action. Pack was soon a member of the Pima County Park Commission working on issues of protection and conservation in the Tucson area. In 1951 Carr and Pack met and realized that they shared a vision for helping people love the Sonoran Desert. They immediately combined their talents and resources and the Arizona-Sonora Desert Trailside Museum was born.

Working with the Pima County Park Commission the men secured land around the Mountain House on the west side of the Tucson Mountains. The Mountain House was built in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps but had lain idle since WWII. The location was ideal since it bordered both the Saguaro National Monument (now a National Park) and the Tucson Mountain Park.

The museum opened on Labor Day 1952, and even though there were no paved roads in the area, over 1,000 people visited that day. Though the name has changed (“Trailside” was dropped within the first few years), the museum’s mission to conserve the Sonoran Desert by helping people understand and appreciate it, has not. It is quite a mission since the Sonoran Desert stretches across southern Arizona into California and through the Mexican states of Sonora and Baja California. The non-profit museum is much more than just a museum, it is also part zoo and part arboretum.

We recently toured the museum with family and as always we had a wonderful time. There is quite a bit to explore and since the exhibits are designed to resemble the natural environment, the experience is one of a kind. There are over two miles of trails that lead the visitor past reptiles, birds, mammals, rocks, fossils, and plants—all of them native to the Sonoran Desert. The museum showcases over 300 animals and 1,200 species of plants, truly a remarkable collection. In keeping with its mission the museum continually seeks to improve and expand not just its collections but its research and education efforts too.

Though the two men came from entirely different backgrounds, they shared a passion for the Sonoran Desert and for conservation. Pack and Carr continued to work together on other projects, including founding the Ghost Ranch Museum in New Mexico with a similar goal. They made a good team since Carr had the know-how and Pack had the money. In describing Pack, Carr once said, “Having been born with a silver spoon, he used it to feed others as well as himself.” The world renowned Desert Museum is an important part of Tucson’s cultural legacy and is a testament to the foresight of both Pack and Carr.

Photos: View our photographs from the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.

Notes: We visited the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum with family on 02/23/2008.