Best Neighborhood Walk
Sam Hughes Neighborhood
READERS' AND STAFF PICK: Sam Hughes NeighborhoodFLOURISHING IN TUCSON are scores of neighborhoods featuring streets lined with charming, beautiful homes, but the one to see using your feet as the preferred mode of transport is the Sam Hughes neighborhood.
Bounded by Speedway, Broadway, Campbell Avenue and Country Club Road, Sam Hughes is that enviable neighborhood where residents are guaranteed a sense of history, a handy central location and a politically correct address. Its palm tree-lined streets offer an amalgam of stucco and brick, petunias and palo verdes, bicycles and baby-joggers.
Retirees live alongside yuppies who live alongside starving students who live alongside well-paid professional basketball players who live alongside corporate attorneys who live alongside struggling artists. And they all seem drawn to that nostalgic '50s sense of community, living in a place where you know your neighbors. Writing in the now-defunct City Magazine, Norma Coile once called Sam Hughes "the most self-satisfied neighborhood."
Whether you're sight-seeing, rubber-necking, strolling with the kids, studying landscaping possibilities, shooting architectural photographs or just getting some exercise or fresh air, Sam Hughes makes for a delightful walk. Slicing through Sam Hughes is Third Street, a busy bike path with restricted car traffic. If you stick to Third, you'll likely be swept along by a stream of bicyclists, joggers, skate boarders, Rollerbladers and an occasional skier.
You might get to play hopscotch with some kids (sure, they'll think you're weird) or leave a message in sidewalk chalk. Listen to the birds. Watch the cats leap over vine-covered walls. Or chat with one of the elderly residents who's lived in the same house with arched ceilings and hardwood floors since 1930.
No matter the time of day or the season, you'll be sure to observe many of the Sam Hughes inhabitants, from the diaper set to the cane set. They love their neighborhood and you'll see proof, not like on some other residential streets that resemble well-kept ghost towns.
Shade is abundant even in some of the alleys, which also make for good, safe and interesting travel. Vary your route off of Third Street and enjoy comparing the tiny bungalows to the massive estates. Preoccupy yourself with watching homes change as you recognize remodeling and add-ons as a booming industry.
Take in Himmel Park or Tucson Community Meditation Center on your way through the neighborhood. Plan your walk to coincide with local doings: a game at the university, a balloon glow on the mall, the carnival of Spring Fling, reading hour at the Himmel Branch Library, Christmas Mass at the Benedictine Convent, a farmer's breakfast at Rincon Market or the drumming that magically emanates from the park most Sunday evenings.
But take the bus to Sam Hughes from El Con; don't park in the neighborhood, if you can help it. Sam Hughesians aren't fond of foreigners cluttering up their streets with automobiles.
--Rosemary Tindall-Gibson and Susan KnightREADERS' POLL RUNNER-UP: One of the few neighborhoods to survive the ravages of modern development, which demand convention centers and postal museums at the expense of other long-held aesthetic and cultural values, Barrio Historico--bounded by Cushing Street on the north, Stone Avenue on the east, Interstate 10 on the west and 18th Street on the south--shelters some of the city's most enigmatic treasures, such as the historic Drachman and Carrillo elementary schools and El Tiradito wishing well, a neighborhood shrine to a sinner just south of El Minuto Café on Cushing Street. The barrio's narrow streets are lined with an eclectic architectural mix of bungalows, territorial, mission and transformed-Sonoran styles, and even some Pueblo Revival elements. The pride and genuine affection of the neighborhood's residents are evident in the care bestowed upon blossoming yards and fragrant desert gardens, colorful coats of new and old paint and a general atmosphere of comfort and community. The neighborhood association sponsors a home tour once a year--usually in the spring--but visitors can wander at their leisure throughout the year. When you've eaten one enchilada too many at El Minuto, walk this neighborhood slowly.
