Scenic Military Range, Once Off-Limits, Puts Out Welcome Mat

The federal government is putting out the welcome mat at a remote gunnery range twice the size of Delaware and often as inhospitable as a Gila monster, even when nobody’s shooting.

Indeed, contradictions abound at the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range, a 2.7-million-acre preserve in the southwestern corner of Arizona. Described as the Free World’s largest target range, it encompasses seven areas where fighters strafe and bomb simulated trains, convoys and missile bases and three others where pilots practice dogfights.

An information packet, which includes an agreement absolving the military of any harm to the visitor, refers to unexploded ordnance dating back to the 1940s and warns that “munitions items are designed to maim and kill.”

Some of the range is so inhospitable that Spanish explorers named an east-west trail El Camino del Diablo--”The Devil’s Road.” Historians estimate that hundreds have died of fatigue or dehydration in remote parts of the range over the centuries.

“There’s evidence out there of at least 40 old graves along the route,” said 1st Lt. Michele S. Monroe, chief of a natural resource management unit at Luke Air Force Base outside Phoenix.

But she said the range also is “an irreplaceable national treasure,” a trove of biological wonders and opportunities for hikers, backpackers, hunters and prospectors in a landscape that varies from post-Armageddon flats to a rich overlay of plant life on bacon-colored peaks.

A civil engineer, Monroe won the Department of Defense’s prestigious Natural Resource Conservation Award in 1988 for projects to study the endangered Sonoran pronghorn antelope, to build eight water-catchment basins among the crags and to repair damage to El Camino del Diablo.

Thanks in part to the concrete dams that seal off rock-walled washes to collect up to 50,000 gallons each during rainy periods, the range’s herds of desert bighorn sheep are on the increase, she says.

Aircraft avoid the 822,000-acre Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, run by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and studies indicate that the animals closer to bombing areas have adjusted, Monroe says.

“I’ve been told by bighorn hunters who have been out there during a sonic boom that the sheep may look up from eating, but they don’t bolt and run,” she says.

Natural Wonders

Dick Thomas, a spokesman for the Bureau of Land Management office in Phoenix, says he was surprised by the natural wonders detailed in a new land-use plan produced by his agency.

“I’ve lived in Phoenix for 35 years, and I thought that was one big flat where they’d bombed the hell out of the scenery since 1941,” he says.

Despite the live bombs sometimes dropped, the Air Force, which operates on the east end, and the Marines in the west, have kept most of the range pristine, says Carole K. Hamilton, the BLM’s area manager.

“The public image of a bombing range may be misplaced in this case, because most of the ground has not been blown up,” Hamilton says. “A lot of people think this is one of the cleanest areas in terms of not having a lot of brass on the ground, target drones and other debris.”

The plan calls for protection not only of flora and fauna, but of geologic formations--dunes near Yuma--and historic and prehistoric sites. The plan was developed under the Military Lands Withdrawal Act of 1986.

Congress reserved the range and five others for the next 15 years, changed its name to honor Goldwater, a senator from Arizona and the 1964 Republican presidential nominee, and designated the BLM to manage resources everywhere but on the Cabeza Prieta.

The plan notes that the primary mission of the range is to train pilots and aerial gunners for the Air Force, and for the Navy through the Marine Corps Air Station at Yuma.

But it also calls for limited, on-road recreational use and for creation of areas of “critical environmental concern” and special management.

Entry Registration

Visitors are required to register at one of several entry points, stay on established roads and telephone the military when they leave the largely unfenced range. The entry checkpoints give visitors an information kit with maps clearly marking target areas.

In addition, the military never uses the range on Saturdays or Sundays, when public use is highest.

Lt. Col. Stephen M. Roberts, commander of the 832nd Combat Support Squadron at the Gila Bend Auxiliary Field, foresees few problems with greater public use of the preserve.

“We do have some instruments out there that we don’t want moved or molested,” Roberts says. “Some are calibrated. But our greatest concern about increased public use would be illegal or unauthorized off-road vehicle use.”

Visitors also could wander into a target zone, interrupting the training. And those who forget to telephone when leaving could find themselves assessed for search expenses or barred from the range for a year.

Maj. Wayne St. John, Roberts’ operations officer, says the sheer size of the range, and the maps and instructions in the visitors’ kit, preclude unintentional visits to gunnery areas.

“There’s plenty of federal property out there that’s not used as gunnery range,” he says. “Three-fourths of it is not.”

Roberts says a greater problem has been motorists shooting holes in warning signs on the fences along state Route 85.

Cutting the public off from much of the southwestern corner of Arizona has produced some quirky reactions in the past.

In 1941, ranchers grazing livestock on what was to become the bombing range refused to vacate the land until nearly three weeks after Pearl Harbor, when a federal court overrode provisions of a grazing law and authorized the military to take possession.

Through the years, word got out that money was to be made recycling brass shell casings ejected by aircraft on strafing runs. That led to a May, 1974, incident in which five young men, hired to collect the casings, died after being abandoned on the range without provisions.

There is little likelihood of a repeat tragedy: Most of the guns aboard the F-15, F-16 and A-10 aircraft used today spit the valuable casings into containers and bring them back.