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| Tucson Vacation Rentals Arizona Vacation Lodging |
Casa Linda is a spacious, elegant and comfortable private home in the small town of Oracle (just north-east of Tucson, close to Oro Valley, Catalina and Saddle Brooke).
The setting is secluded and semi-rural, 35 miles from downtown Tucson in mountain foothills. Tasteful interiors, sweeping desert and mountain vistas and changing colors of the day make just being there a pleasure.
It is a convenient base for many sightseeing and other excursions of special interest. Beautiful walks, longer mountain hiking, and horseback riding are available locally. Golf and swimming are about twenty miles away. Enjoy Arizona skies and stars at their best. The moderate elevation (4,500 - 5,000 feet) helps to avoid extremes of climate.
Situated in the northern foothills of the Catalina Mountains, 35 miles north-east of Tucson, the small town of Oracle expands over an area of 24,800 square kilometers. The community enjoys a bucolic foothills setting near the many scenic attractions of the Sonoran Desert of southern Arizona.
Oracle derives its name from a ship called the Oracle, which carried Albert Weldon to the western part of the United States via Cape Horn in the 1800's. While working at a mine, Weldon began building a brush camp where Oracle exists today. By 1882 approximately eight dwelling had cropped up in the area. The community's growth truly began once the Apache Mine was established; and today the population stands at approximately 3,000 residents.
Perhaps Oracle is best known for the Biosphere 2, a 150 million dollar project, funded by Texas billionaire, Ed Bass, which was originally constructed to prepare humans to live in space. Situated on a three-acre campus, sealed off from the earth by a 500-ton welded, glass and steel structure which dominates the landscape, Biosphere 2 has since been taken over by Columbia University. It now exists as a learning, teaching, and research center for determining an ecosystem's ability to recycle air, water, and nutrients in order to sustain plant and animal life. Composed of five biomes -- a rainforest, savanna, desert, marsh, and a 25-foot deep ocean -- and 3,000 living species of living organisms, the Biosphere offers daily guided tours with a film presentation of the center, and a .75-mile walking tour inside the Biosphere 2 human habitat.
The Oracle State Park offers a scenic backdrop of nearly 4,000 acres of grassland, riparian woodland, and mesquite scrub habitats, containing varied wildlife and plant species. The park was originally a large cattle ranch; however, by 1952 all but the current park acreage had been sold. In 1975 the ranch was willed to the Defenders of Wildlife as a wildlife refuge, and in 1986 the land became part of the Arizona State Parks system. The park's primary function is to serve as an environmental education center and a wildlife refuge. And while most of the park is not open to the public, a seven-mile section of the Arizona Trail which passes through Oracle State Park, is open to the public for hiking, mountain biking, and horseback riding.
In recent years, Oracle has become known as a fine art town. Shops, studios and galleries pepper the town -- and the Oracle Fine Art Weekend is an annual event. Additionally, there are several interesting shops and country stores offering Native American arts and crafts among other collectibles.
