HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
The McDowell Sonoran Preserve is 30 years old today.
On Oct. 3, 1994, then-mayor Herb Drinkwater and the rest of the city council, propped against a scenic view of the McDowell Mountains, signed resolution 4103 creating the preserve out of three parcels of land. Two of them were open space parcels dedicated to the city by developers and the third was a parcel owned by the city that had been previously owned by the Arizona Bureau of Land Management. Those original three parcels totaled 2,860 acres, recalls former mayor Mary Manross, who was a city council member then.
