Nature & Outdoors

Architectural buffs will love the 200 homes and commercial buildings in Nogales listed on the National Register of Historic Place.

Nature & Outdoors

Visitors to Nogales are sometimes startled to see our wooded hills and waving grasslands, so different from their sandy desert expectations of southern Arizona.

The region is characterized by “sky islands,” the ridges of mountains rising from the valley floors of the “basin and range” landscape.

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Patagonia Lake State Park is located 15 miles from Nogales

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Kino Springs Golf Course is located just outside Nogales on the Santa Cruz River

Sky Islands

Nature organizes itself in vertical neighborhoods in the sky islands, with ecosystems changing every thousand feet or so from the valley floor to the mountain peaks. Well marked hiking trails radiate in every direction for every level of experience. Pick your distance. Pick your degree of difficulty. Make it an hour along the old rail bed, a day in the Coronado National Forest, or a week in the back country along the state-long Arizona Trail.
More than 200 varieties of birds live here or pass through here in annual migrations, making bird watching a common, and successful, endeavor in any season.

Cycling enthusiasts flock here, making time along our rolling roadways or digging up and down the mountain trails. Try fishing in our well-stocked lakes, another “desert” surprise around Nogales.