Saguaro Land: Author explores the history saguaros as a symbol of the American West

Saguaro Land is a series from The Show looking at the Sonoran Desert — the lushest, hottest desert in the world that happens to be our home.

It's perhaps the most iconic figure of the Sonoran Desert: the saguaro cactus. The great bastions of the Southwest, standing tall and waving boldly in just about every image of the American West for decades. 

But, just how far back does this imagery go in American history? And how has this one relatively restricted plant species come to bear the burden of so many expectations?

William L. Bird Jr. has some answers.

Bird is a curator emeritus at the National Museum of American History and author of the new book " In the Arms of Saguaros: Iconography of the Giant Cactus."

The Show spoke with him about his extensive research into the saguaro and what he found when he dove into it. 

Full conversation

LAUREN GILGER:.And today we turn to perhaps the most iconic figure of the Sonoran Desert, the saguaro cactus itself. The great bastions of the Southwest, standing tall and waving boldly in just about every image of the American West for decades. But just how far back does this imagery go in American history? And how has this one relatively restricted plant species come to bear the burden of so many expectations? Well, our next guest has some answers.

WILLIAM L. BIRD JR.: Well, the earliest renderings date to government exploring parties that were sent out to find the flattest, most expeditious route to California in the era of the Mexican-American War. And the parties that were sent out always had botanists, and also because of their West Point training, were required to be able to draw maps and so often these parties included artists. And so when they run into a saguaro, they’re there to sketch it up, and then by the time they get to the coast, they’re making better drawings, renderings, fine pencil drawings, paintings and then these get incorporated as part of the official government report that’s published by the Congress.

LAUREN GILGER: That is William L. Bird Jr., curator emeritus at the National Museum of American History and author of the new book “In the Arms of Saguaros: Iconography of the Giant Cactus.” I spoke with him more about his extensive research into this and what he found when he dove into it.

WILLIAM L. BIRD JR.: When I started this, I thought that, well, there’s probably this nice arc ascending, you know, the curve of popularity to where we get down to today, where the saguaro is just this ubiquitous symbol of the West, anything West. And it’s more like this kind of an up and down. I mean, the arc goes up for sure, but it kind of has, you know, two steps forward, one step back. And that has to do with the forces of irrigation that do not want to use any kind of native botany as a symbol for anything. You know, it’s the orange tree, it’s the orange grove. It really isn’t until you get to the ‘20s, ‘30s, when the travel and tourism industry starts to pick up. And it’s really the guest ranch owners who gravitate toward this, you know, armed saguaro as a, as a symbol, and it becomes part of the fun in the sun tourism message of, you know, cowboy hats, Western wear, horseback rides, bathing suits, swimming pools and saguaros. You know, what could be, what could be better?

LAUREN GILGER: What could be better? I wonder, like, if there is any evidence in the research, right, of the reaction of the rest of the country when they started to see these? Like, what was it about the saguaro that started to draw people West and why would they want to use it in the tourism stuff? Like, is it just like a novelty people had never seen anything like this before?

WILLIAM L. BIRD JR.: Yes, I think that’s it. I mean, as soon as the railroad comes to Tucson in 1880, and we can date this pretty accurately. You know, the railroad comes from California. It’s working its way East. So the first things that make the return trip are transplanted columnar saguaros that get planted, transplanted on the Pacific Coast in what are known or become known as Arizona gardens. And they’re sort of, sort of monuments to conspicuous, you know, transplantation in the garden of the Hotel Del Monte, which is, uh, created to draw Southern Pacific passengers to the Carmel area. And they have, you know, these massive columnar saguaros that are able to be transported there by the railroad. And they never last, they don’t last. I mean, you can look at successive pictures of the garden and, you know, in a matter of years, the saguaros just kind of fade away and you’re left with palms and agaves and that kind of thing. But they also begin to go East. They travel East along Southern Pacific stations along the way. There’s a cactus garden in Los Angeles, there’s a massive saguaro that’s trackside in San Antonio. And the most riveting photo that I found was at the Chicago World’s Fair, the World’s Columbian Exposition, 1893. This is the Great White City, Daniel Burnham. And there’s an armed saguaro outside the horticulture, you know, pavilion, with a, a selection of, you know, a linear kind of a sand pile of barrels and agaves and columnar saguaros. And people in bowler hats are walking by it, you know, looking at it. It’s really quite, quite stunning.

LAUREN GILGER: You said that you went to grad school in Tucson a long time ago, and it sounds like you’ve been collecting images like this for a very long time. Tell us your own interest in this.

WILLIAM L. BIRD JR.: Well, I just basically parachuted into here, into Arizona, in the mid-70s, and I had not spent any time in Southern Arizona. I’d done all the Grand Canyon things and wonderful things up North. And I was just stunned that you could just, that it was all so accessible here, what’s now, you know, Saguaro West and of course there was Saguaro East, the national parks that, you know, bracketed both ends of the city, were just like stunning to, you know, a flatlander from Maryland like me. And I just never quite, quite got over, you know, how wonderful and how accessible it was. And when I left and went back to DC to try and break into the museum world, where I’m from, I would once in a while would run into, you know, tourism literature, I mean, some of it quite early, you know, from the 1950s, and I would just pick it up and kind of wonder at it, look at it, and just, you know, I’d just look at it out of kind of nostalgia, really.

And didn’t really think that much about it, you know, and then when after I retired, I thought, you know, I really should do something with this because it’s probably a big part in, you know, why I’m wanting to still go out there, be here, work, which of course I am now. And there was one, one magazine in particular that really recommended itself to me. It was a black and white monochrome magazine that simply said “ARIZONA” across the top of the cover. And it wasn’t Arizona Highways, it wasn’t anything like that, I’d seen all that. This is a black and white image. And it’s of a woman, a model, wearing a sawtooth-pocket Western wear shirt. She’s got the white cowboy hat on, but her arms are folded and she’s leaning on the arm of a saguaro. And you look at this and you’re going like, wait a minute, there’s supposed to be some spines there. You know, how can you, how can you get that close? She’s literally in the arms of a saguaro. Hence the title of the book. And that’s kind of where it starts out, with this woman just kind of blithely, you know, pleasantly relaxing in the arms of a saguaro. And that’s something that the travel and tourism industry created as a kind of a viral, you know, publicity. They didn’t use that word, but that was the intent.

They would publish these photos and send them out, syndicate them, and in the hopes that they would recommend themselves to the nation’s editors and, you know, publishers. And basically worked. And so you have people, models, pose, sitting, standing, leaning, barefoot sometimes, on the arm of a saguaro that’s been carefully, you know, worked so that they can actually do that. Or sometimes they’re sitting on it and you can detect that there maybe is a kind of a pad under it, you know. But I didn’t realize when I saw that magazine cover that that was, that was a thing, that was a kind of a conscious policy that they would promote, you know, Southern Arizona with these, what they called gag photos.

LAUREN GILGER: I want to end with a, I guess, a big picture question, of course, because the saguaro is so linked today with the iconography of the West, of Arizona, of this part of the world that we live in, and you’ve really kind of looked at the history of that. I wonder if there’s a, if you have any reflections on why that is, like why we are so entranced by this giant cactus? Like what is it that kind of beckons us or calls us?

WILLIAM L. BIRD JR.: Well, one of the things that I noticed, I mean, I’ve looked at every saguaro photo that you can, I tried to find. And a lot of times, and this is irregardless of the time period, you see people gingerly poking the spines on the plant. And it’s like, you know, you’re reaching out and touching the plant. And so I published this book, that a lot of people are posed, sitting around touching, you know, the plant. But in the end, you know, what it’s really about is like, hey, these plants, they touch us. And I think that’s, that’s what it means. And that’s what I hope it comes down to in the end. There’s something about these plants, they touch us.

LAUREN GILGER: That is William L. Bird Jr., the author of the new book “In the Arms of Saguaros: Iconography of the Giant Cactus.” He is also curator emeritus at the National Museum of American History. Joining us—Larry, thank you so much for coming on and talking about this and all of the research here. It’s really interesting stuff. Thank you.

WILLIAM L. BIRD JR.: My pleasure, Lauren. Thanks.