Pinnacle Peak

Three mountains in Phoenix/Scottsdale
and what they tell us
about trespassing and vandalism


Piestewa Peak and Camelback are the two most prominent natural landmarks within the Phoenix metropolitan area. Shortly after we first arrived in Scottsdale, Laurie and I climbed Piestewa. It was still Squaw Peak then. The trail was steep and crowded. I don't think we had ever hiked a trail with as many people on it, and there were all kinds of people: young and old, skinny and fat, slow and fast, seasoned hikers and greenhorns, runners and plodders. The summit was equally congested. Views were impressive, with mountains of various sizes rising like islands from a vast grid of streets and buildings. One man on the summit was using a cell phone (still noteworthy back in those days); another wore Arizona-state-flag running shorts with the rising sun on his butt (or is it a setting sun?); and a third was doing push-ups on the rocks.

Sometime later, I read Bruce Berger’s description: “Once a mere granite outcropping, Squaw Peak has become that contemporary urban phenomenon, an exercise mountain” [Berger 1990: 92]. Berger also notes that the peak is widely used as a training ground for more serious hiking: “Drilled into bone memory, it becomes a unit of measurement. The Grand Canyon is four Squaw Peaks. The Grand Teton is five and a half. Mt. Everest is twenty-two” [94].

On another occasion, Laurie and I returned to Piestewa Peak Park, but, instead of climbing to the summit, we followed the Circumference Trail around the peak. It was a very scenic hike with vastly fewer people than the Summit Trail. On still other occasions, especially when wildflowers were blooming, we walked additional trails in the park. Wherever the trails dipped into valleys and the surrounding city disappeared from view, we could have been out in the desert many miles from Phoenix. We had once lived in Tucson for a year and became smug about the superiority of Tucson to Phoenix. It was true that the Santa Catalinas, immediately north of Tucson, were more serious mountains than anything around Phoenix, but Tucson had nothing like Piestewa Peak Park smack in the middle of the city.


The trail to the summit of Camelback had the same steepness and the same popularity as the one to Piestewa Peak: Camelback was also an exercise mountain. Scenically, it was more interesting than Piestewa Peak. The main part of the mountain was granite, but other parts were composed of orange sandstone which eroded into interesting shapes, including the camel’s head and at least one natural arch. Camelback Park was much smaller, however, with little to do except climb to the top and come back down, or else continue down the other side and have a long walk on city streets back to your vehicle.

Another thing that was noticeable on Camelback was the houses, which not only surrounded the mountain in a way that was commonplace, but crept right up the slopes toward the summit. It was pretty obvious that there would have been houses on the summit itself if the city hadn’t managed to acquire it for a park. Even so, I found the houses on the slopes uncommonly irritating. It seemed to me that prominent features of the landscape like Camelback had a significant “public” quality regardless of their ownership. They were eye-catching. People noticed them, watched them, talked about them, pointed them out, and gave them names. They served as landmarks, helpful in finding your way around or in giving directions. They defined neighborhoods or regions. To build on such a landmark or otherwise alter its appearance or quality, even if you owned it, was a violation of the public interest. In the language of economics, it was a negative externality: a spillover that went way beyond one’s own property, diminishing the lives of many other people. In religious terms, it was a sin. The builders of the houses were trespassing—trespassing on something that rightfully belonged to the public.


Pinnacle Peak in North Scottsdale is another landmark of that type. More or less an outlier of the McDowell Mountains and not especially high, it’s entirely a jumble of big granite boulders with a slabby summit spire jutting upward at an angle only slightly short of vertical. Smaller hills around the peak are also dominated by big boulders. It’s the sort of landscape that attracts attention and prompts a person to ask, “What peak is that?" Any damn fool should know it deserved to be a park of some kind. Instead, we found that it was completely surrounded by housing developments. Big fake-adobe houses occupied the slopes of the peak as well as the bajada below it. Other lots were marked off and labeled “Available.” Laurie and I viewed the scene and shook our heads in amazement. Someone had looked at that graceful peak with its slabby summit tower and the equally bouldery mountains flanking it and said, “Damn, that would make a fine housing development.”

An article in the Scottsdale Tribune mentioned the “awesome” views from the peak back in the years before the houses were built and went on to say that developers bought the mountain in the early 1990s “as a backdrop for a subdivision of … multimillion-dollar homes” [Kullman 2001]. The city granted the necessary rezoning on condition that the developers donate the upper part of the mountain for a park. Even then, there was opposition from occupants of the new homes. They claimed that trails running near their houses would present too big a risk of “trespassing and vandalism.” In my opinion, it was trespassing and vandalism to build the houses.

In a more general reference to conflicts between parks and nearby residents, the Tribune article noted that problems often result from the disruption of long-term patterns in use of the land by the construction of new housing. Before the houses, if users of a park drift onto private land surrounding the park, landowners don’t mind or don’t even know about it. But laissez-faire ends abruptly once the houses are occupied. “People who have access to land for a long time develop a sense of ownership,” explained an Arizona State University professor of planning and landscape architecture. “Then development moves in and people feel like they’ve lost their land.” So who were the trespassers? I know what the law says. But who really were the trespassers? And who were the vandals?

The article noted that homeowners around Pinnacle Peak were worried about threats to their peace and security. But the writer, who seemed to have known the peak before the houses were built, concluded by saying: “Getting Pinnacle Peak back as a public park is encouraging. But, ringed with subdivisions, it will never provide the solitude it once did.” So who was disturbing whose peace and security?


SOURCES

Berger, Bruce. The Telling Distance. New York: Anchor, 1990.

Kullman, Joe. “Battle for Pinnacle Peak.” Scottsdale Tribune, March 4, 2001.