Friends of Canoa Heritage Foundation

Our mission is to preserve, protect, restore, interpret, and share the land, cultural influence, and history of the Canoa Heritage Area.

In 1994, a large land developer intended to put a massive housing project on an important historical site, the 4,800 acre Historic Canoa Ranch headquarters, just south of Green Valley, AZ.

Local ranchers, tribal members, descendants, and stakeholders were determined to protect this land, and won the battle. The land was purchased by Pima County as a cultural restoration project. The Friends of Canoa Heritage Foundation was incorporated in 2010, to help create a master development plan for Pima County.

Co- Founder Ellen Kurtz, along with her husband Bill acquired collection of rare books, maps, art and artifacts for what was to become the Salcido-Amarillas Western Research Library (SAWRL) to be housed at the Historic Canoa Ranch.

Politics, the need to store the collection securely, and be available to the public for research purposes determined that the Tohono O'odham Cultural Center & Museum was a better fit for this donation. The SAWRL collection transfer is in progress, complete with a searchable online catalog.

The ongoing "Canoa Speaks" video preservation project captures the stories of the people who lived, worked and dreamed in the Canoa Heritage Area. Hollywood introduced the Old Wild West to the public, the Canoa Speaks project preserves the stories of the people who came before, and lived here after, from a local perspective. We're not Hollywood, but the stories are important to capture and preserve for future generations.

While engaging in our bi-annual highway cleanup, we saw an opportunity for a collaborative preservation project at the Canoa Ranch Rest Area on I-19. Reaching out to ADOT we were allowed to engage in this effort.

In partnership with the Cultural Affairs Department of the Tohono O'odham and Pascua Yaqui (Yoeme) Nations, Old Pueblo Archaeology, and around thirty recognized experts, the "Evolution of Canoa" art/history display was created and has become one of Southern Arizona's newest Attractions.

Opening May 25, 2019, the project was dedicated to the Tohono O'odham Nation in recognition that the area is their motherland. The Canoa Heritage Area defines the location of the communities we serve.

Partnering in this project has created a different perspective, and new resources for tourism industry economic and workforce development for our rural communities, where there is little or no access to the resources that are available to the more populated communities.

The "Visit Canoa" campaign was launched to a previously untapped international tourism market creating a sharable resource that benefits all of our rural communities.

The 27 local attractions and supportive small businesses who serve our visitors in the open spaces of Canoa Heritage Area were hit extra hard during COVID. Many are not recognized by state or county tourism entities, but popular with visitors to our area.

By increasing our volunteer efforts and leveraging sharable resources we have been able to engage the international visitors who are curious about the Canoa Heritage Area at little or no cost to the struggling businesses and organizations who serve them.

Your contributions will go a long way to help us continue share these resources uninterrupted, until the communities we serve recover from the economic hardship that COVID has created.