Beginning in the mid-1990’s, June is proclaimed each year as Great Outdoor Month in the United States. This week long commemoration was expanded to a month long celebration of outdoor recreation and the need to protect and conserve the lands and waters of the nation. All year long Tucson has many opportunities for a variety of outdoor activities such as camping on Mt. Lemmon during the summer, birding in the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area in spring or hiking in Sabino Canyon during the fall. University students have taken advantage of these abundant and diverse outdoor opportunities since the beginnings of UA. Here a group of university students has an outing probably to Sabino Canyon in the late 19th Century. Students often went by stagecoach, took picnics and enjoyed the scenery in the canyon. The top left students seated on the rock are identified as Minnie and Fred Waites and the seated boy as Paul Noble.

This photo comes from the University of Arizona Photograph Collection, a collection of photos on many UA related topics including campus buildings, students, university departments and campus activities ranging from 1885 to the present with most of the photos falling between 1910 and 1970. You can find more photos of students at Sabino Canyon along with over 30,000 other digitized photos from the UA Photograph Collection in Special Collections’ digital collection.