Last Updated: May 4, 2026
The Catalina Highway — officially the General Hitchcock Highway — climbs 27 miles from the Sonoran Desert north of Tucson, Arizona to the summit of Mount Lemmon at 9,159 feet, and it’s one of the most remarkable short drives in the American Southwest. In those 27 miles you pass through five distinct ecological life zones — from saguaro desert at the base through chaparral, oak woodland, pine-oak forest, and finally ponderosa pine and Douglas-fir near the top — with the temperature dropping roughly 20 to 30 degrees from the desert floor. The mountain was named for Sara Plummer Lemmon (1836–1923), a botanist who made the ascent in 1881 with her husband John Gill Lemmon while collecting plant specimens — reportedly the first woman to reach the summit. We drove up on a clear March morning, rising out of the desert bloom into cool, forested air, with snow still on the ground near the top. From 75°F in Tucson to a couple inches of fresh snow above Summerhaven in about an hour.
