Prior to an outing, birders may want to ensure they can differentiate between gnatcatcher calls, as both Blue-gray and Black-tailed are found here.

Likewise, birders should compare identification keys for Abert’s and Canyon Towhee, given that both have been documented for the hotspot.

There is a spotty record of coverage for this hotspot. Although the earliest lists date back to 2009, no lists are recorded again until the single entry for 2012. The hotspot was intensively surveyed over the period 2013 through mid-2015, but only 4 lists were subsequently submitted during the next 6 and a half years. Beginning in 2022, more frequent listing resumed, though coverage is almost exclusively for April-June. This lack of recent lists provides an opportunity for birders to contribute meaningful data outside the spring migration period.     

Among USFWS-designated Birds of Conservation Concern for the Sonoran Desert, Sierra Madre Occidental, and Chihuahuan Desert regions, species found in the hotspot include Olive-sided Flycatcher, Woodhouse’s Scrub Jay, Verdin, Cactus Wren, Curve-billed Thrasher, Phainopepla, Black-chinned Sparrow, Scott’s Oriole, Grace’s Warbler, Black-throated Gray Warbler, and Pyrrhuloxia.   

National Forest System Road 57, also known as Old Marijilda Ranch Road and Marijilda Canyon Road, runs approximately two miles north-northwest from its junction with AZ-366 (Swift Trail Parkway), about three and a third miles from that state road’s junction with US-191, to Marijilda Creek, which has a roughly east-west orientation.  

FR-57’s junction with AZ-366 (at 3800 fas) is not on Forest Service managed property, but the road soon crosses into Coronado National Forest for the remainder of its length, climbing 200 feet in the stretch to the Marijilda Creek hotspot. 

Mount Graham is the tallest of southeastern Arizona’s sky islands—mountain ranges that rise like forested islands out of a desert sea. Ascending this mountain is the ecological equivalent of traveling from Mexico to Canada. Varied biotic communities, layered in life zones, provide ideal habitat for a diverse array of plants and animals, including endemic species found nowhere else in the world.

Known as Dził Nchaa Si’an (or Big Seated Mountain) to the Western Apache, Mount Graham has been home to Indigenous people for thousands of years.

In the late 1800s, Apache tribes that lived here for generations were forced onto reservations, restricting their access to the natural resources and spiritual sites on this mountain. Mount Graham still holds profound cultural significance to tribes today, and many sites are considered sacred.

An influx of Mormon farmers and ranchers in the late 1800s, and mining ventures in the early 1900s, prompted a need for lumber from the pine-covered mountain. Numerous sawmills were built across the range; remnants of some mills are present today.

The Swift Trail follows the original wagon route used to transport lumber down the mountain. Place names along the parkway recall early pioneers, from the namesake Forest Supervisor T. T. Swift, to the families that tended orchards, planted crops, and grazed cattle along the mountain creeks and meadows.

The Civilian Conservation Corps, which employed young men in the 1930s during the Great Depression, had multiple camps on Mount Graham. They constructed roads and bridges, such as the original stone bridge that crossed Wet Canyon. They also developed recreation sites on the mountain, including many of the trails and campgrounds enjoyed by visitors today.