If you grew up in the foothills, you know the Dusenberry-River Library and Brandi Fenton Memorial Park. Both are printed on this map of Catalina Foothills, along with Catalina Foothills High School, Orange Grove Middle School and Fruchthendler Elementary School, and the neighborhoods run from Tucson Country Club Estates out to Oracle Foothills Estates.
Catalina Foothills is in Pima County, in greater Tucson.
KNOWOL made this map in 2026 and gave it the look of an old atlas. The shaded relief of Whaleback comes from United States Geological Survey elevation data, and the streets were drawn from Census Bureau files. The community sits in the southern foothills of the Santa Catalina Mountains and is usually described as the land north of River Road, east of Oracle Road and west of Sabino Creek, with the Coronado National Forest on its northern edge. It covers 44.6 square miles and had 52,401 people at the 2020 census. The DeGrazia Gallery in the Sun is on the National Register of Historic Places, and we checked it against National Park Service records.
Murphey’s foothills
Before the 1920s this was mostly federal trust land and open cattle range. Starting in that decade, John Murphey bought property north of River Road, and in 1928 he picked up a tract of 7,000 acres between North Oracle Road and Sabino Canyon at a federal land auction. His plan was low-density housing on big, private lots that kept the desert plants, the natural lay of the land and the mountain views. Most neighborhoods here still have that low-density, suburban feel, even with more than 50,000 people living in the community.
To carry out the plan, Murphey hired Josias Joesler, a Swiss architect born in Zurich in 1895 who had worked in Havana, Mexico City and Los Angeles before he and his wife Natividad moved to Tucson in 1927. Homes began going up in the 1930s, and Joesler designed a number of them. His buildings used hand-applied plaster, hand-hewn beams and decorative iron and tin work. In 1931 residents organized the Catalina Foothills School District. Murphey sold it land near East River Road and North Campbell Avenue, and Joesler designed the first school building there, which still houses the district’s administration.
The two men finished St. Philip’s in the Hills Episcopal Church in 1936, at Campbell Avenue and River Road, then the main entrance to the Catalina Foothills Estates. Murphey gave the land, Joesler gave his design work, and the congregation paid only for the building itself, an example of Spanish Colonial Mission architecture. The church went on the National Register in 2004. Growth followed the Oracle Road corridor north and the Ina Road and Skyline Drive corridor east. The Skyline Country Club opened in 1963, and La Paloma and Ventana Canyon resorts came in the 1980s.
Click to explore a larger preview. The digital watermark does not appear on printed maps.
Names on this map
These names are printed on this map.
Streets and roads: Magee Rd, Del Coronado, Manzanita Ave, E Campo Abierto, Grove Rd, Canyon Dr, E Finisterra, N Resort Dr, Cam Juan Paisano, E Saranac Dr, E Sunrise Dr, Via Colorada.
More street names, A to Z
E Tanque Verde Rd, E Valle Di Cadore, E Wrightstown Rd, Greenlee Rd.
Gallery in the Sun
Ted DeGrazia was born in Morenci in 1909 to Italian immigrant parents and worked in the copper mines with his family before he left for Tucson and the University of Arizona. In 1949 he bought 10 acres in the Santa Catalina foothills, when the land had no electricity or water. Near Swan and Skyline roads he built his home, a small first gallery and the Mission in the Sun, and the main gallery was finished in 1965 with help from Yaqui and Tohono O’odham friends. It holds thirteen separate galleries of his work. In 1960 UNICEF used his image Los Ninos for greeting cards, and many millions were sold worldwide, and his page says that’s how he came to be described as the most reproduced artist in the world. Today the DeGrazia Gallery in the Sun has a chapel, an art gallery and a free museum, and it has its place on the sheet.
Around the foothills
Sabino Creek comes down out of Sabino Canyon, where waterfalls sit only minutes from the desert. During the Great Depression, federal work crews built Sabino Dam and nine bridges over the creek while trying to push a road to the top of Mount Lemmon. The creek is printed on the map, and so are Tanque Verde Wash and Whaleback. Three school districts share the community. Catalina Foothills Unified serves the upper foothills, and Tucson Unified serves the lower and northeastern neighborhoods, including Fruchthendler Elementary School.
One subdivision has a story locals like to tell. The steel magnate William J. Holliday fenced his land to keep cattle off it and called it Rancho Sin Vacas, the ranch without cows. The developer Kelley Rollings later bought it, and with his Spanish-speaking office manager he named some streets after the seven deadly sins, like Plaza Sin Lujuria, the place without lust. The Tucson Arizona Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, finished in 2017, is in Catalina Foothills as well.
This Catalina Foothills map is a good addition to an office, library or den, and it can help teach children the geography and history of the area. It’s made for anyone who calls Catalina Foothills home, from River Road up to the edge of the national forest, and KNOWOL created it in 2026 to show the community as it looks today. Zoom in on the preview above to explore the details, then click here to get your copy of the Catalina Foothills map.
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