Question: How did the big crater-like hole on the north side of "A" Mountain form?
Answer:
How else do crater-like holes form - mysteriously, and without witnesses? Which leads me to my first question ... that is, I mean, my second question.
What is the history of UFO sightings around "A" Mountain?
"Oh, I don't know anything about that," said Lorry Stiles, science writer for University of Arizona News Services. I had to change my angle of attack, frame my question in a more innocuous way.
"Do you know how the big crater-like hole on the north side of "A" Mountain formed?" I asked.
"There's a myth that it was hit by a meteor," Stiles said. "But no, it's an old quarry."
And I verified that.
According to Tucsonan Gilbert Jimenez, born in 1926 in Barrio Anita, the crater in question was a quarry in the 1930s belonging to Griffith Construction. Jimenez used to visit the quarry as a boy with his father, a general contractor.
"Some of the fences you see at the university (are made of) quarry rock," Jimenez said.
The dark basalt rock that came from the "A" Mountain quarry can be seen in houses on the west side of town and around the west university district.
Interestingly, all of "A" Mountain was threatened by this quarry at one time. In the late 1920s, James R. Dodson and Christine Dodson claimed ownership of our beloved mountain by way of the Homestead Act. They wanted to quarry it to the ground. However, this riled up Tucsonans and probably pissed off UA students, primarily because of the threatened 70-by-106 foot "A" that was dug in and painted into the side of Sentinel Mountain in 1915, forever changing its name (except in some anal-retentive maps, freaking Rand McNally.)
Suffice it to say, good triumphed over evil, and "A" Mountain still stands today.
So I close this case with a renewed sense of UA pride, be it because of my slackening cynicism or weakened will. I think this rampant brainwashing is just starting to get to me.
- Detective Kris Cabulong
If you're got a UA-related mystery or conspiracy, e-mail the campus detective at catcalls@arizona.edu!