Endangered them by shooting a mountain lion, wounding it, letting it roam then shooting it with a shotgun. “The man who arranged to shoot the mountain lion in the parking lot endangered visitors, taxpayers as well as tourists. “Baiting and poaching wildlife is a very serious offense in our county,” said Carroll, who represents Pima County District 4, which includes Colossal Cave Mountain Park. Carroll called the shooting a “travesty” and held Maierhauser’s management company responsible. The second reason he cited in his memorandum to the Board of Supervisors was the illegal shooting of a mountain lion on CCMP land, which happened in June of last year. Low attendance was one reason Pima County Supervisor Ray Carroll called for a performance audit last summer to assess Maierhauser’s management of the park. In 2010, there were 50,000 visitors in 2012, there were fewer than 38,000. Since the 2008 economic downturn, attendance at Colossal Cave Mountain Park has been falling. Maierhauser said she doesn’t believe there’s any unrecovered train robbery loot in Colossal Cave, “but it’s really fun to think about it,” she said with a laugh.Īctually, that train loot would come in handy right now. The park also offers visitors trail rides, and there are two museums and a train car that commemorates the train robberies for which the cave is famous, according to Maierhauser.Ĭave tour guides like to tell visitors about a train robber named Kid Smith who holed up in the cave with his gang and possibly left behind some of the loot. “If you continue down the road a little way we have beautiful picnic areas and further down you’ll get to the Posta Quemada Ranch, which has been a working ranch since 1878," she said. Maierhauser said Colossal Cave Mountain Park is more than just the cave. The ocean’s sediment compressed into limestone and, over time, water seeped up through fault lines and slowly carved out the cave. Colossal Cave is actually the fossil remains of an ocean that covered this area around 320 million years ago. “This is all what we were trying to protect." Maierhauser said it’s also a plant treasure trove, with more than 1,000 species, “which is actually more than the entire Tucson Mountains,” she added. It’s part of the Pima County Mountain Park system. It gives us another level of protection and recognition.”Ĭolossal Cave Mountain Park is a wildlife corridor that stretches from Mexico to the Mogollon Rim and beyond. We are very proud of the fact that Colossal Cave Mountain Park is on the National Register of Historical Places and the entire park is a national historical district. Development was starting to feel pretty close to us, starting to encroach. “We became alarmed by what we were seeing in the neighborhood. “It was just our om the beginning to protect as much of this area as we possibly could," Maierhauser said. Maierhauser said the biggest change in her 52 years at Colossal Cave is that the park has gone from 495 acres to 2,400 acres. The Maierhauser's ran the park together until Joe's death in 2007. “I said, ‘Yes, I’d love to do it.’ I was already working in the tourist industry. “The following summer Joe asked me if I’d be willing to come down and go to work for him,” she remembered. She spent a few days exploring the area with the director. The park is set in the Rincon Mountains in the town of Vail. In the spring of 1962, Martie Keen was heading back to South Dakota from Mexico when she stopped off at Colossal Cave Park. After 52 years managing Colossal Cave Mountain Park, park director Martie Maierhauser is proud of what she and her husband accomplished, but it's uncertain if her management lease will be renewed by Pima County.
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