Diana Hadley, a retired environmental historian, knows firsthand the remoteness of Guadalupe Canyon, a lush riparian corridor spanning northern Mexico and the Southwestern United States. In the early ’70s, she and her then-husband raised three children there while working on a cattle ranch and living off-grid. The location had its hardships: Once, a huge monsoon storm damaged the road into the canyon so badly, her family had to pack supplies in by mule for six months. Still, Hadley recalls the canyon as “a really exciting, beautiful place to live.” The canyon walls themselves were “absolutely beautiful,” Hadley said. “They’re really steep, and they’re rosy-colored rock.”
Now, some of those rock walls are crumbling. Racing to fulfill President Donald Trump’s campaign promises, the Department of Homeland Security is dynamiting cliff sides and carving switchback roads up incredibly steep mountains to build a 30-foot-tall border wall through Guadalupe Canyon.
https://www.hcn.org/articles/borderlands-border-wall-construction-and-environmental-destruction-in-a-remote-arizona-canyon