Tucson International

One of the largest aerospace museums in the world, and next door to the most extraordinary sight in American military aviation. Pima opened in May 1976 and now holds around 400 aircraft across 80 acres and six indoor hangars — an SR-71 Blackbird, a B-52, a 787 Dreamliner, a Wright Flyer replica, the full sweep of flight under the Arizona sun. But the reason every pilot knows Tucson is across Valencia Road: the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group — AMARG, "the Boneyard." Roughly 2,600 acres of desert holding thousands of mothballed aircraft, the largest aircraft storage and preservation facility on Earth. The dry Sonoran air and hard alkaline soil are why they're here — airframes keep for decades without rusting. Row after row of B-52s, C-130s, fighters, and tankers, parked wingtip to wingtip in the desert, visible from above as a vast gridded sea of aluminum.

The only place in the United States where the saguaro cactus grows naturally — a Sonoran Desert reserve split into two districts flanking Tucson. From the air the cacti look like a green army marching across the desert floor, each one a 40-foot column, some pushing 200 years old and weighing two tons fully hydrated. The Tucson Mountain District (west) has the densest cactus stands; the Rincon Mountains (east) climb into pine forest sky islands. President Hoover protected the area as a national monument in 1933; Kennedy added the western district in 1961; Congress made it a national park in 1994.

A jagged volcanic range rising 4,000 feet straight off the Phoenix valley floor, immediately east of Mesa. The Superstitions are one of the most distinctive sky-island mountain blocks in the Sonoran Desert — Weavers Needle, the famous 4,553-foot rock spire at the heart of the range, is supposedly the landmark in the lost-mine map left behind by Jacob Waltz, the "Lost Dutchman" who allegedly found a fabulously rich gold vein here before dying in 1891. Treasure hunters have been searching for the Lost Dutchman's Mine ever since; several have died trying. The Apache call the range Wikchawa, "the rough ones." Lost Dutchman State Park sits at the western base of the range, on the Apache Trail. The Superstition Wilderness covers most of the range — 160,000 acres, no roads, no permits beyond a self-issued day pass.

Frank Lloyd Wright's winter home and architectural school, built from 1937 onward using desert masonry — rocks from the surrounding desert set in concrete. The campus is a masterpiece of organic architecture, designed to merge with the Sonoran Desert landscape. From the air, the angular buildings with their signature red canvas roof panels are visible against the desert terrain northeast of Scottsdale. Wright lived and worked here until his death in 1959.