The path is clear for a historic cemetery in Vail and the rural neighborhood surrounding it, and Pima County will see to it that it stays that way.
The county has finished improvements to a disputed stretch of road along the east side of Pantano Wash, which area residents had used and maintained for years before learning last year that it could be closed for good.
Property records showed the rural neighborhood’s preferred route was actually a sewer easement across private land, not a designated road. Then construction began on a pair of new tract-home developments in the area, threatening to erase the path altogether and leaving homeowners and visitors to the 109-year-old Leon Ranch Cemetery with a steep, single-lane track as their only access.
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The road closure would have impacted about two dozen homes, but the graveyard is what drew the county into the dispute. More than 150 people — most of them Hispanic — from some of Vail’s earliest families have been buried in the small, desert plot since 1913.
Developers Pepper Viner Homes, Richmond American Homes and the Estes Company eventually agreed to donate the necessary land for the road and the county agreed to upgrade it, after a lobbying effort by nearby homeowners and the stewards of the cemetery. The county will also handle maintenance of the road from now on.
That $233,000 project was completed last month, just in time for family members to make their annual pilgrimage to the modest burial ground to clean and decorate their loved ones’ graves ahead of DÃa de los Muertos.
“It was great to see the road done. It really met my expectations,†said Sarah Mayer Hiteman, whose great-grandparents and other relatives are buried at the cemetery. “I’m grateful to everyone who was involved in getting it done.â€
Mayer Hiteman singled out now-former County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry for recognizing the need to preserve access to the neighborhood and its historic cemetery.
She was also glad to see the removal of a gate that was used to close the road a number of times since early last year.
“I think the next step is to see that the road is named,†she said.
Right now, it still appears on Google Maps under two different names: Monthan Ranch Road and Pugly Lake Drive.
As far as Mayer Hiteman is concerned, the whole three-quarters-of-a-mile-long stretch should be called Leon Ranch Road. She hopes to see a street sign or two out there some day to “honor the pioneer families of Vail,†she said.
Construction in Vail has left some residents of an older rural neighborhood with only one way out: this steep, one-lane road with a blind spot at the crest. Video by Henry Brean & Jasmine Demers/ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥.
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