Pearce Arizona any thoughts??????? (Douglas, Bisbee: homes, landscaping, school district)

[Valley Native]

My question is: what's the difference between Pearce and Sunsites? I drove through there last month when I went to see Chiracahua National Monument. Pearce was nothing more than a spot in the road if I remember correctly ... but Sunsites, just a mile or so up the highway, reminded me of a small suburban town, only not attached to any large city. Still, people are referring to Sunsites as if it were called Pearce. So is Sunsites really in the "town" of Pearce, or are they truly separate?

I guess it would be considered high desert or plains, but I know it can get pretty cold in that area during the winter. It's in the SE section of the state where the summer monsoon brings plenty of rain during July & August, but there's probably not much snow in the winter.

[DesertZone]

Hi,
I owen property south of Pearce and hope to live there one day, I do alot of desert landscaping in my yard and was wondering if any one have pics of their desert gardens? Anyone able to grow saguaros in thier yards? In this area?
Thanks!

[LordBalfor]

Originally Posted by DesertZone

Hi,
I owen property south of Pearce and hope to live there one day, I do alot of desert landscaping in my yard and was wondering if any one have pics of their desert gardens? Anyone able to grow saguaros in thier yards? In this area?
Thanks!

Pearce/Sunsites is at a bit over 4,000 feet - too high for saguaros (which will grow only to about 3,500 feet or so - too chilly in the winter any higher than that). A few varieties of Barrel type cactus grow OK at that elevation as will prickly pear cactus (we have both on our J-6 land at almost the exact same elevation as Pearce) but for the most part you are moving away from cactusland and more into grassland with scattered mesquite trees etc.

Ken

[ArizonaBear]

About 10-15 years ago in the Arizona Republic (Phx newspaper) in the pre Internet days I read a story about a homeless woman who put her life back together----she wrote the piece.

Apparently; she was down on her luck (do not remember the specifics) living I guess in the Van Buren St area. Somehow she was able to secure a little job, bought a car at one of those 'pay by the week' used car lots then moved on down to the Pearce area.

[DesertZone]

Originally Posted by LordBalfor

Pearce/Sunsites is at a bit over 4,000 feet - too high for saguaros (which will grow only to about 3,500 feet or so - too chilly in the winter any higher than that). A few varieties of Barrel type cactus grow OK at that elevation as will prickly pear cactus (we have both on our J-6 land at almost the exact same elevation as Pearce) but for the most part you are moving away from cactusland and more into grassland with scattered mesquite trees etc.

Ken

Thanks for the info,
I know that they don't grow naturally in the area, but have seen one in a yard of a house that was for sale in the sunsites area, if it was not one it sure look like it. I am familiar with most barrel catcus (ferocactus) sp and it did not look like the one, but was hard to see in the pic. I was hopping to find out what kind of cool garden plants people are growing down in that area? Any palm growers in the area, big agave, palo verda, ocotillo...etc...
Thanks for the info on the barrels, do you have any pics Ken?
Here is some pics from my garden here in Idaho.
Joshua tree grown from seed


Last winter

[LordBalfor]

Pretty neat - except for the snow photo (brrrrrrrr).
Looks like a nice manufactured home.

Well it may have been that the saguaro you saw at Sunsites was in a particularly protected spot. Here's a couple of cactus shots from down by our land. The first one is on our land, the second one is of my sister-in-law alongside a cactus by the road about 1/4 mile away.

Ken

[LordBalfor]

PS - how long did it take to grow the Joshua Tree?

Ken

[DesertZone]

Originally Posted by LordBalfor

PS - how long did it take to grow the Joshua Tree?

Ken

It was 9-10 years of age in that pic, just over 4 feet then. They are some of the faster growing yucca once they get going.

Thanks for the pics of the cactus and yucca elatas, that is awesome That big pricklypear is quit the sight also.

The snow and below 0 temps will be nice to get away from one day. What is the coldest temp you have seen in that area?

Thanks for your help Ken, it is nice to hear about the area, I never been to that part of Arizona. So you are very helpful.

[LordBalfor]

Originally Posted by DesertZone

It was 9-10 years of age in that pic, just over 4 feet then. They are some of the faster growing yucca once they get going.

Thanks for the pics of the cactus and yucca elatas, that is awesome That big pricklypear is quit the sight also.

The snow and below 0 temps will be nice to get away from one day. What is the coldest temp you have seen in that area?

Thanks for your help Ken, it is nice to hear about the area, I never been to that part of Arizona. So you are very helpful.

You are quite welcome.

Well, according to the online weather station near our land, it looks like January of last year was the coldest we've experienced in the last 4 years (as far back as the weather station has been active) and that was on the early morning of January 22 2007 (when we were there scouting out the land actually). It dropped to 17 early that morning before climbing to a high 38. I remember the locals in Tucson (where our hotel was) were complaining bitterly about it being so cold (I think it was a record - or pretty close to it). Normal highs on the land that time of year is 59-60 and normal lows are 37.

Here's a link you may find useful. It's another online personal weather station like the one I've found on J-6, only this is for Pearce. It looks like it only came on line back on Dec 5th of last year so the data is a bit limited, but you do have a full winter's worth of data to examine. From examining the data it looks to me like last winter the coldest overnight temp was 19 on Dec 26th (Our land dropped to 22 that night).

In any event you may want to bookmark the site and examine the data at your leasure. Note that you can use the "Custom" tab at the top right to select your own date range. Note also that you can download the data into an Excel formatted file (which is what I've done) then slice and dice the data as you desire. That makes it VERY useful and informative:

Weather Station History : Weather Underground

Here's a few other weather-related sites you may find useful:
MAPS:The University of Arizona Cooperative Extension - Yavapai County Horticulture - Arizona Climate Map - Map (http://ag.arizona.edu/yavapai/anr/hort/climate/azclimatezonemap.html - broken link)

http://www.ocs.oregonstate.edu/pub/maps/Precipitation/Total/States/AZ/az.gif (broken link)

Arizona State Map - Cities, Roads, Counties, Rivers, Lakes, Topo

http://www.thepepper.com/map_arizona_county.gif

US Drought Monitor

This site is very useful as you can select online raingauge locations and the site can e-mail you when there has been rainfall at any selected raingauges. Unfortunately there seems to be no site for either Pierce or Sunsites but perhaps someone will add one in the future:

Rainlog.org - A Cooperative Rainfall Monitoring Network

Ken

[LordBalfor]

PS to DesertZone:

Note that on the link to the Wunderground.com private weather station I posted for you that you can scroll around on the map on the right side (and also zoom in and out). If you pull back a bit you will see that there are actually 2 private weather stations in the SunSites area: KAZCOCHI2 at an elevation of 4296 and MC1704 at an elevation of 4667 (note the "View Interactive WunderMap "link).

Ken