The Whetstone Mountains are a range of mountains in

Cochise County Cochise County ( ) is a county in the southeastern corner of the U.S. state of Arizona. It is named after Cochise, a Chiricahua Apache who was a key war leader during the Apache Wars. The population was 125,447 at the 2020 census. The county ...

, southeastern

Arizona Arizona is a U.S. state, state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region of the western United States with Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It also borders Nevada to the nort ...

. The

Opata Opata may refer to: * Opata people, an ethnic group of Mexico * Opata language, their language * Aleš Opata, Czeck military officer * Zoltán Opata, Hungarian football player and manager See also

* {{Disambiguation ...

called the mountains ''Babocomari'', a name still attached to the nearby

Babocomari River The Babocomari River is a major tributary of the upper San Pedro River in southeastern Arizona. The river begins in the Sonoita Basin near the community of Elgin, Arizona, and flows eastward for approximately before merging with the San Pedro, ...

. The Spanish continued the name as ''Sierra del Babocomari''. American Colonel

Benjamin Bonneville Benjamin Louis Eulalie de Bonneville (; April 14, 1796 – June 12, 1878) was an American officer in the United States Army, fur trapper, and explorer in the American West. He is noted for his expeditions to the Oregon Country and the Great Basi ...

reporting on an inspection tour of the area in May 1859, gave the mountains their current name, because they contain a deposit of a hard fine-grained rock named

Novaculite Novaculite, also called Arkansas Stone, is a microcrystalline to cryptocrystalline rock type that consists of silica in the form of chert or flint. It is commonly white to grey or black in color, with a specific gravity that ranges from 2.2 to 2. ...

, that could be used as whetstones to sharpen cutlery and tools.

Geography

The range is located south of

Interstate 10 Interstate 10 (I-10) is the southernmost transcontinental highway in the Interstate Highway System of the United States. It is the fourth-longest Interstate in the country at , following I-90, I-80, and I-40. It was part of the origina ...

, between the

Santa Rita Mountains The Santa Rita Mountains ( O'odham: To:wa Kuswo Doʼag), located about southeast of Tucson, Arizona, extend from north to south, then trending southeast. They merge again southeastwards into the Patagonia Mountains, trending northwest by sout ...

to the west, and the

Dragoon Mountains The Dragoon Mountains is a range of mountains located in Cochise County, Arizona. The range is about long, running on an axis extending south-south east through Willcox. The name originates from the 3rd U.S. Cavalry Dragoons who battled the C ...

to the east. Higher elevations of the major ranges in the region are in the

Madrean Sky Islands The Madrean Sky Islands are enclaves of Madrean pine–oak woodlands, found at higher elevations in a complex of small mountain ranges in southern and southeastern Arizona, southwestern New Mexico, and northwestern Mexico. The sky islands are su ...

ecoregion, with

sky island Sky islands are isolated mountains surrounded by radically different lowland environments. The term originally referred to those found on the Mexican Plateau and has extended to similarly isolated high-elevation forests. The isolation has s ...

habitats. Located within the

Coronado National Forest The Coronado National Forest is a United States National Forest that includes an area of about 1.78 million acres (7,200 km2) spread throughout mountain ranges in southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico. It is located in parts of ...

, the Whetstone Mountains are in its Sierra Vista Recreation Area, with access via hiking trails.

Kartchner Caverns State Park Kartchner Caverns State Park is a state park of Arizona, United States, featuring a show cave with of passages. The park is located south of the town of Benson and west of the north-flowing San Pedro River. Long hidden from view, the cavern ...

is in the eastern foothills of the Whetstone Mountains, on Arizona State Route 90. The trailhead for the Foothills Loop Trail is in the park.

Peaks

Peaks in the range include: * Apache Peak, *French Peak, *Granite Peak, — southern section. *Cottonwood Peak, — northeast section. *East Peak, — eastern section.

History

Iron Springs, within the Whetstones is where

Wyatt Earp Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp (March 19, 1848 – January 13, 1929) was an American lawman in the American West, including Dodge City, Kansas, Dodge City, Wichita, Kansas, Wichita, and Tombstone, Arizona, Tombstone. Earp was involved in the gunfight ...

fought in a gunfight during the

Earp Vendetta Ride The Earp Vendetta Ride was a deadly search by a federal posse led by Deputy U.S. Marshal Wyatt Earp for a loose confederation of outlaw "Cowboys" they believed had ambushed his brothers Virgil and Morgan Earp, maiming the former and killing th ...

, 1882. In 1994 two

University of Arizona The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona, United States. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it ...

students discovered the bones of a previously unknown

dinosaur Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic Geological period, period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the #Evolutio ...

in the Whetstones. This plant-eating

sauropod Sauropoda (), whose members are known as sauropods (; from '' sauro-'' + '' -pod'', 'lizard-footed'), is a clade of saurischian ('lizard-hipped') dinosaurs. Sauropods had very long necks, long tails, small heads (relative to the rest of their b ...

was in length, tall, and estimated to weigh . In 2018 the ''

Sonorasaurus ''Sonorasaurus'' is a genus of brachiosaurid dinosaur from the Early to Late Cretaceous (Albian to Cenomanian stages, around 112 to 93 million years ago). It was a herbivorous sauropod whose fossils have been found in southern Arizona in th ...

'' was named the official dinosaur of Arizona.

References

External links

Visual overview Saguaro Juniper Corp.

Whetstone Ecosystem Management Area
{{Authority control Mountain ranges of Cochise County, Arizona San Pedro Valley (Arizona) Madrean Sky Islands mountain ranges Coronado National Forest Mountain ranges of Arizona Wyatt Earp