One-day highway cleanup project promises the most fun you can have while picking up trash

In 2016, Owen launched an ambitious effort to clean the entire length of Arizona 286 — all 47-odd miles from Three Points to Sasabe — in a single day.

With enough help, this could be the year she finally gets it done.

The Southern Arizona rancher is the mastermind behind “All the Way to the Border,” an annual roadside cleanup along 286.

In 2018, her event drew 60 volunteers and removed 80 bags worth of trash from 25 miles of roadway. Last year, 70 people showed up to collect 210 bags of trash and cover 31 miles of highway.

On Saturday, Jan. 25, Owen and company will try to make it “All the Way to the Border” for the first time.

“Every year we do more and more,” she said.

Owen has been ranching in the Altar Valley about 4 miles north of Sasabe for the past 16 years. She said Highway 286 is the main route in and out of the area for her and her neighbors.

The southern half of the highway cuts through the western edge of Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, where Owen worked for about six years and organized dozens of cleanups.

She said she launched the highway cleanup four years ago when she noticed the road getting junked up.

“It’s kind of like our driveway, and it just seemed to me that we should all get together and spruce it up once a year,” she said.

Since then, the event has grown to include longtime local ranchers and people who travel in from out of state; game wardens and Sierra Club members; migrant aid workers and future Border Patrol agents, Owen said.

“Last year, I had someone tell me that he never paid much attention to the trash on the roadway, it was just part of the visual landscape. Then, a few days after he took part in the cleanup, he saw a box or bottle on his mile, was incensed and got out of his truck and picked it up,” she said. “We laughed about it, but that’s kind of what I would like to accomplish: a sense of taking care of a community together.”

Owen said as far as she knows, theirs is the only Adopt a Highway event that covers an entire highway — or tries to, anyway.

Mary Currie, communications manager for the Arizona Department of Transportation’s Adopt a Highway program, said there are thousands of volunteers who tend to roughly 1,600 miles of roads in Arizona every year, but this effort by Owen certainly stands out.

“We’re proud of what she and her volunteers accomplish during these ambitious cleanups and hope their dedication inspires even more people to take part in the Adopt a Highway program,” Currie said in an email.

Owen chose this time of year for the cleanup because the weather is cool “and we don’t have to worry about snakes or bees.”

The first time she organized the event, fewer than 25 people showed up. Now the cleanup has sponsors, catering, of sorts, and even its own mascot, a “regionally famous” stuffed animal Owen calls Javier, the Highway Cleanup Javelina.

Tucson Recycling and Waste Services provides a roll-away trash bin for all the garbage that is collected. Trico Electric Cooperative chips in money for food and other necessities. The Altar Valley Conservation Alliance provides volunteers and help with permitting. ADOT supplies garbage bags and sends a crew to mow the shoulders of the road in advance of the event.

Owen said volunteers get hot snacks in the morning and all the trash bags they can fill. They also get free pencils, she said, “and everybody gets to wear these stylish safety vests.”

“We just have so much fun,” Owen said, only half-kidding. “We do try to make it fun.”

For example, volunteers are encouraged to snap photos of their “favorite funky, funny or just plain trashy item” for entry in the annual “weirdest piece of trash” contest.

Last year’s prize went to Owen’s husband, but she swears nepotism had nothing to do with it. He just happened to find — at Mile 13 no less — a brand-new red and green elf’s hat with the jingle bells and price tag still attached.

Past cleanup crews have also collected several ladders and a swamp cooler or two.

Owen said she regularly wears a necklace she found along Arizona 286 during one of the events, though she doesn’t tell people where she got it.