Why Catalina State Park's Biggest Saguaros Are the Ones That Fall

Sometime in September 2026, the saguaro with more than 30 arms on the hillside above Catalina State Park's Birding Trail came down. Park manager Steve Haas told the Arizona Daily Star that it was one of the largest and most accessible saguaros in the 5,500-acre park, and that it had probably been growing on the slope above Montrose Wash for about 200 years.

It's the second "granddaddy" saguaro the park has lost in four years. The first stood less than a quarter mile away, just off the Romero Ruins Trail, and fell after a monsoon storm in August 2022. Both were old cactuses carrying a lot of weight, and their size helps explain why they came down.

Where it stood, and how long it took anyone to notice

The cactus sat on no designated trail. You could see it in the distance from the park's main road, and it was prominent enough that visitors walked over to it from the Romero Ruins Trail or the west end of the Birding Trail. The Daily Star described it as a landmark and signpost for decades.

It's unclear exactly when it fell. Haas told the paper he first heard about it two or three weeks before the interview. The story ran in the Daily Star's October 8, 2026 print edition, with a photo dated October 6 showing the remains on the hillside as a pile of broken stems.

Regular hikers had already spotted the gap before it made the news. One commenter in a Tucson hiking group, quoted by the Daily Star, commented on the saguaro's fall.

The arms were the weak point

The cactus didn't tip over at the roots. It had developed a noticeable lean, and then the trunk snapped about three feet above the ground, sending its water-heavy stems down the slope.

Don Swann, a retired biologist who spent nearly his whole career at Saguaro National Park, looked at photos of the cactus taken in November 2025, less than a year before it fell. He saw ordinary aging, such as patches of epidermal browning. He did not see the oozing black liquid of bacterial necrosis, which can mean a saguaro is dying. His best guess was a strong summer storm. He also pointed to the structure that made the cactus famous:

"One thing about a saguaro with so many large arms is that the base is carrying a tremendous amount of weight, which would make it susceptible to falling or breaking. The (Catalina State Park) saguaro was leaning in November, but it didn't lean over and fall — it snapped."

Don Swann, speaking to the Arizona Daily Star

So the big, many-armed silhouette that turns a saguaro into a landmark is also what puts the most strain on its base.

This fall's storms hit other giants too. Swann told the paper that a storm in mid-September 2026 brought down 10 to 20 saguaros in the Tucson Mountains District of Saguaro National Park. That's the same general area where a 2023 microburst knocked down or damaged about 1,200 of them. No one has confirmed that the same storm took down the Catalina cactus. The timing and Swann's reading of the photos both point that way.

Two granddaddies, a quarter mile apart

The 2022 collapse is the closest comparison, and it's a helpful one. Both cactuses were about 200 years old, both were landmarks, and both stood within a short walk of the Romero Ruins Trail.

News of the 2022 collapse traveled a long way. Haas told the Daily Star it reached Germany, where one reader wrote in to ask whether park officials planned to stand the cactus back up.

What a fallen giant does next

The park didn't stand the 2022 cactus back up. As the Daily Star reported in 2022, Arizona State Parks said on social media that it would stay where it fell to provide habitat and food as it decomposed.

The next year, the one arm still standing after the collapse produced its own small crop of flowers and fruit, as the paper reported in its follow-up.

The October 2026 coverage doesn't mention any plan for the new remains. The 2022 statement applied to that cactus alone, so what happens on the Montrose Wash hillside is still the park's call. For now, the October 6 photo shows the stems lying where they landed.

These two giants weren't the last of their kind, either. In the 2023 follow-up, a parks spokeswoman said the park has other very large saguaros of similar age with many arms. They draw less attention because of where they stand. Saguaros that old are uncommon, but being visible from the main road is what made these two famous.

The same ground, this fall

The cooler season starts at Catalina State Park this month, and several of the park's scheduled programs bring people back to the area around the fallen cactus:

1. Native Plant Walk, Thursday, October 15, 7:30 to 10:30 a.m. It goes through native grasslands and down into Romero Canyon.
2. Saturday Nature Program, Saturdays from October 17, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., weather permitting, with live reptiles.
3. Music in the Mountains, October 17 and November 7. Bring a chair.
4. Guided Bird Walks, Sundays, Wednesdays, and some Mondays, October 18, 2026 through May 17, 2027. They run three to four hours in a park with more than 150 bird species.
5. Catalina Nights, a one-mile guided night hike on the Nature Trail on the first, third, and fifth Fridays. Registration required.

To see the site yourself, start at the west end of the Birding Trail or take the Romero Ruins Trail, the same routes visitors used to reach the cactus when it was standing. There's no designated path up the hillside. The 2022 granddaddy's surviving arm stands less than a quarter mile away, off the Romero Ruins Trail.

Many of us at Desert Refined by Team Platinum use the same trails and landmarks our clients do, and we pay attention when one of them changes. If you have a favorite trailhead or a view you want to keep close to home, let's talk about it. Let's Connect.