Sometime in early May, a trail camera mounted near the Tortolita Preserve's north boundary caught a mule deer that looked close to giving birth. The volunteers who check that camera, members of a small group called the Tortolita Alliance, posted the photos with a note that she might have delivered a fawn in time for Mother's Day. It's the kind of small, specific thing that only shows up if you're paying close attention to one particular stretch of desert.
Here's the part most people walking that same ground don't know: the desert under that camera, under the 9.4-mile loop trail, under every saguaro and ironwood in the Tortolita Preserve, doesn't actually belong to the town of Marana. It belongs to the Arizona State Land Trust. Marana rents it. And for the first time in years, the town has put a real deadline on changing that.
The Lease Nobody Walking the Loop Thinks About
The Tortolita Preserve is 2,400 acres of state trust land that Marana leased decades ago, with the lease running all the way to 2099. The terms aren't static. Payments climb every five years by 10 percent or the Consumer Price Index, whichever is higher, on a base that has run around $500,000 a year. Run that math forward and town staff have estimated the annual bill could top $2.6 million by the time the lease expires.
That escalator is exactly why, a few years back, Marana officials floated walking away from the deal entirely. At the time, the pygmy owl that had originally justified protecting the land was no longer listed as endangered, and some in the outdoor community weren't convinced the preserve was worth the price. Zach MacDonald, president of the Sonoran Desert Mountain Bicyclists, said his group had ridden it less and less once a bigger, more scenic trail network went in elsewhere in the Tortolita Mountains, calling the preserve "kind of an island." It took nearly 200 residents packing a Planning and Zoning Commission meeting, plus a newly formed Tortolita Alliance, to convince the council to protect the land in the town's general plan instead of opening part of it to development.
That fight settled the zoning question. It never settled the ownership question. Marana kept paying rent on land it didn't control.
From Walking Away to Buying It Outright
The shift toward actually owning the preserve started showing up in Tortolita Alliance updates over the past 16 months. In the spring of 2025, the group reported that Marana had opened talks with the Arizona State Land Department about acquiring the preserve outright, a move that would retire the 99-year lease for good, and that the town planned to meet with the department's new commissioner, Robyn Sahid. By November 2025, Alliance board members were sitting down with state and town representatives at the Marana Municipal Complex specifically to learn how a state land sale process actually works.
By March 2026, the acquisition had worked its way into a bigger document. The Coalition for Sonoran Desert Protection's 2026 master plan, which the Alliance helped shape, referenced working alongside the state land department and the town's proposal to purchase the 2,400 acres and protect it as a wildlife linkage between the Tortolita, Tucson, and Catalina mountain ranges permanently.
Then, on August 17, Marana swore in a new mayor. Jon Post, a Marana native and owner of Post Farms and the Marana Pumpkin Patch, had served as vice mayor and acting mayor since Ed Honea's death in late 2024. Four days after taking the oath, he told AZPM that finishing the Tortolita Preserve deal was one of his top goals for the next two years, saying the town is trying "to become the owners of that property and not rent it from the state." That's the first time the acquisition has come with an actual clock attached.
What's Already Moving on the Ground This Year
The ownership question is still unresolved, but the town isn't waiting to invest. Several things are already in motion for the fiscal year that started this past July:
- Marana Parks and Recreation proposed roughly $70,000 in the FY 2026-27 budget to design and build new trails on the preserve's western portion, the first real trail expansion in years. The Tortolita Alliance has been told it will get input on that design.
- Earlier this year, the department brought on Kimley-Horn to lead an update to the preserve's master plan, telling the Alliance it was setting up public outreach sessions so residents could weigh in before new routes are finalized.
- Along the preserve's north side, the town plans to convert barbed wire fencing to wildlife-friendly wire as part of other work already scheduled there, a small change that matters if you've ever watched a deer try to clear a fence line.
- The Alliance has proposed a saguaro survey and inventory inside the preserve, developed with scientists from the Tumamoc Desert Laboratory, and is waiting on the parks department's response.
None of this required the land purchase to close first. But it's hard to imagine the town committing new trail-building dollars to land it might not own permanently unless the acquisition was starting to feel real.
Why the Math Actually Matters to Someone Who Already Hikes Here
Under the current lease | If the acquisition goes through | |
|---|---|---|
Landowner | Arizona State Land Trust | Town of Marana |
Annual cost | Roughly $500,000, rising 10% or CPI every 5 years | One-time purchase price, no recurring rent |
Term | Runs through 2099 | Permanent |
Long-term risk | State retains the option to eventually sell to another bidder | Preserve status locked in as town-owned open space |
The practical stakes are what changed. Today's Tortolita Preserve Trailhead, at the intersection of Moore Road and Wild Burro Road in the Dove Mountain neighborhood, still runs on a portable restroom, with the nearest flush restrooms and drinking fountains 5.5 miles away at the Wild Burro Trailhead. The main loop is 9.4 miles and takes most hikers three and a half to four hours, which means it currently functions as essentially the whole trail system rather than one option among several. Every April, that same trailhead at 6250 W. Moore Road hosts the RUNMARANA Tortolita Traverse, drawing half marathon runners, 7-mile runners, and mountain bikers across two days. A single-loop preserve that already carries a two-day race field and daily foot and hoof traffic is exactly the kind of asset where 70,000 new dollars for western-side trails means more than it would somewhere with room to spare.
What to Watch Over the Next Two Years
If Mayor Post's timeline holds, the ownership question resolves sometime around 2028. Before that, the more immediate opportunities to have a say are the Kimley-Horn public outreach sessions on the master plan and the Tortolita Alliance's own meetings, which have been the main channel residents have used to shape decisions on this land since the group formed. If new trail mileage does go in on the western portion this fiscal year, it will be the first meaningful addition to a network that has otherwise stayed the same size since the current parking area went in back in 2023.
The preserve isn't going anywhere in the next few months. But the terms under which it exists, rented land with an expiration date versus permanently owned open space, are being negotiated right now, largely out of view, by people who grew up here and are trying to finish something the last mayor didn't get to close.
Saguaro Ranch was built around the same instinct that sent 200 residents to a zoning meeting years ago: that undeveloped Sonoran Desert, once it's gone, doesn't come back. If that kind of permanence in how land gets treated matters to you as much as it matters to the neighbors fighting for the Tortolita Preserve, we'd like to show you how we've built it into 1,100 acres of our own. Schedule a Private Visit with Saguaro Ranch to see it firsthand.
