This is Fina’s Tree which at 110 feet, is the tallest tree in the whole of Tucson, Arizona. The story goes that back in 1910 a storm hit the city, and uprooted the young Red Gum tree, which was discovered and replanted by a little girl named Defina Bravo. Since that day the locals have called it ‘Fina’s Tree’ in rememberance.

Thanks to Jeff Burton.

This is the Casa Grande Ruins National Monument, a few kilometres east of my last post, in Arizona. The monument consists of the ruins of multiple structures constructed by the Hohokam, farmers who lived here from the early 1200s.

In our first thumbnail you can see the outlines of the walls of some village buildings, and just to the south-west of these is an oval-shaped area which seems to have been a sports-field of some kind.

The ‘Casa Grande’ itself is what remains of a four story structure that may have been abandoned by the mid-1400s (its name means ‘big house’ in Spanish). You can clearly see it in our thumbnail… or rather, you can clearly see the roof that was built in the 1930s to protect it.

There’s a good ground-level shot on the Wikipedia page, and the official site has lots more information.

Thanks to Eric, Jeff Burton and William.

Most of the mines which people submit are in low-res, but here’s one which isn’t. This is an abandoned open pit copper mine in Casa Grande, Arizona. Can’t imagine why they abandoned it… I mean, that hole isn’t nearly big enough yet!

It really is huge, – I can’t fit it all on my screen at maximum zoom!

Thanks: Papapenguin, Eric Veilleux, Josh

Just outside of Scottsdale, Arizona, lies this totally bizarre little patch of buildings. Sitting isolated out in the desert, these structures are packed into perfectly regular square… and as far as I can see, for absolutely no good reason – there’s loads of space!

Switching on map mode reveals that this is Roadrunner Lake Resort, which makes me wonder, where’s the lake? Anyway, it seems that this is a retirement community, so I guess all the wrinklies have been packed off into the desert… presumably so they won’t bother their children too much with all that ‘being alive’ stuff.

Thanks to Ivan Medovikov.

Our final post of the 1st annual Google Sightseeing ‘Volcano Day’ is the simply incredible San Francisco volcanic field in northern Arizona.

The field covers 4700 square kilometres and contains 600 volcanoes less than 6 million years old, including the SP Crater, which is shown in our thumbnail. Check out the lava flow! It extends 4 miles northwards from the cone and is around 100 feet thick (make sure you zoom in, it’s in hi-res ).

Unfortunately the Sunset Crater is in low-resolution. It’s the area’s youngest volcano, having erupted lesss than 1,000 years ago, and it’s been a National Monument since 1930.

There’s a great page about the whole area on the U.S. Geological Survey site, and they also have a particularly good photo of the SP crater lava flow.

Many thanks to Jeff Alu, Matt Van Pelt, Jeff Burton, Eric, John King, Scott Jones, Kevin Wampler and Stephanie and to anyone else who I missed throughout these volcano posts. Thanks everyone!