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Southwest symbol: Tucson author traces the saguaro's rise to global icon

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Monsoon clouds stripe the western sky just after a monsoon shower at Saguaro National Park East.

 Kelly Presnell, Arizona Daily Star

The lanky saguaro, Carnegiea gigantea, is the quintessential symbol of Southwest. We see them every day.

Towering saguaros dot much of the Southwestern desertscape.

Their image and distinctive shape adorn jewelry, fabrics, greeting cards, salt-and-pepper shakers, and just about any tchotchke imaginable.

And every morning, a saguaro with four outstretched arms greets readers to Page 1 of Arizona Daily Star’s print edition.

Historian William L. “Larry” Bird Jr. traces the saguaro’s ascension from biological oddity to global icon in the well-researched, richly detailed “In the Arms of Saguaros: Iconography of the Giant Cactus,” recently published by the Desert Laboratory on Tumamoc Hill, University of Arizona.

While the saguaro is the central character of the readable academic work, “In the Arms of Saguaros” presents new views and understanding of Tucson’s history.

“In the Arms of Saguaros” tells unknown stories and the arc of how the saguaro became an icon,” says Benjamin T. Wilder, director of the Desert Laboratory on Tumamoc Hill, who edited the book.

Bird first lived the Old Pueblo in the mid-1970s as a graduate student and had a student job at the Arizona Historical Society. He received his master’s in American history from the University of Arizona in 1975.

He headed east to Washington D.C. for his doctorate from Georgetown University and a career with the Smithsonian Institution. Curator Emeritus of the National Museum of American History, Bird’s research specialty areas are advertising, mass media, politics and popular culture.

Dr. William “Larry” Bird Jr., curator emeritus in the Division of Political History at the Smithsonian Institution has written a book, “In the Arms of Saguaros: Iconography of the Giant Cactus.”

Over the years, he collected souvenirs and ephemera from the Southwest, especially items from campaigns to attract visitors to the area. He created a personal collection from picking up “a postcard here, a poster there,” says Bird, who’s been a Tucson resident for about six years.

At a used bookstore, Bird found a magazine with an arresting image on the cover: A Ray Manley 1950 photo of Marcia Louise Luglan wrapped in the arms of a saguaro.

While the Southwest-themed project had been in the back of his mind for decades, this photo fascinated Bird and spurred him to pursue the topic. The photo is the frontispiece of “In the Arms of Saguaros.”

As a historian he was trained to see relationships between events, Bird says. With that framework, he created a well-annotated work that’s packed with illustrations and photographs, and establishes connections between people and the prickly plant.

Postcard. Saddle and Surrey Guest Ranch, Tucson. Published by Ray Manley Commercial Photography, Tucson, Arizona, ca. 1958.

Bird began with the curated material and wrote the narrative from the material — much like a museum exhibit, says Wilder. Bird gives an objective, scholarly account of sensitive topics like cultural appropriation and erasure, Wilder says.

Through that aperture, Bird traces the saguaro’s natural geographic range and explains the impact of early survey parties, botanists and cactus collectors, and the saguaro’s expanding popularity and presence in world’s fairs, exhibitions, botanical gardens and “cactus houses.” Many of the actions were insensitive to Native Americans or the environment.

Bird presents the role of somewhat disorganized, conflicting advertising and creative publicity efforts in the Southwest’s development. He shares pieces of Tucson’s history that are punctuated with recognizable names, like developer Roy Drachman, novelist Harold Bell Wright and photographer Manley.

Among the insightful tidbits of history included are the evolution of the Arizona territorial and state seals and the placement (or not) of the saguaro, and the background of Desert Sanatorium that broke ground in 1924 and became Tucson Medical Center.

“In the Arms of Saguaros” by William L. Bird, Jr.

To keep Tucson top-of-mind in the 1940s, staged “gag” photos of smooth-skinned models standing barefoot with a prickly saguaro and posed models wearing a “sunsuit” of cactus aimed to attract attention to the Southwest. Cozying up to a cactus required removing spiky spines, padding the cactus and cutting the plant to accommodate a thin-skinned person.

These photos staged on saguaros appeared on postcards, brochures, newspapers, and magazines captured the imagination as a western symbol, Bird says in the book. “By the early 1960s, there was little question that the saguaro symbolized a free, open, and welcoming land, and, if one were lucky enough, the leisure time in which to enjoy it.”

Saguaro images remain popular, as evidenced by the memes, clothing, knickknacks and other memorabilia and themes featuring the towering cactus, such as the colorful, boxy saguaros created for the 2019 Coachella Music Festival.

Bird is the author of several memory-evoking books that dovetailed Smithsonian exhibits. These included World War II posters, the paint-by-number trend of in the 1950s, holiday displays, and souvenirs, keepsakes and curios.

Maricopa women gathering fruit from Saguaro cacti. 1907. In his pursuit of North American Indian portraiture, Edward S.Curtis pictured the saguaro fruit harvest. Photograph by Edward S. Curtis.

“In the Arms of Saguaros” is the third contribution in the “Proceedings of the Desert Laboratory,” an online, open-access journal that aims to continue the desert research on Tumamoc Hill.

“It is a ‘contribution’ to knowledge,” says Bird. “It is the functional equivalent of a long-form academic article.”

The first contribution “Proceedings of the Desert Laboratory” was the illustrated “Oasis at the Desert Edge: Flora of Cañón del Nacapule, Sonora, Mexico.” The second was “Campos de Fuego: A Brief and Fantastic History of an Expedition into the Volcanic Region of the Pinacate.”

Wilder expects to produce about one proceeding a year all focused on the arid regions.

Still awestruck by the desert, Bird says on a recent trip to Gates Pass in the Tucson Mountains he was reminded of being metaphorically “in the arms of the saguaros.”

A park ranger with visitors on the loop drive in Saguaro National Monument in 1961.

Saguaro National Monument in 1935

Photographer Ray Manley, with Howard Kinney, pose Jane McIntosh for a Tucson Sunshine Climate Club publicity photo. 1954. The photo’s caption sheet explains that poses known as “cactus gags,” became a staple of southern Arizona travel and tourism publicity: “Spines are removed to make gag shot possible.” In this case, the photographers padded the topmost rungs of the ladder.

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