The Oracle on Oracle Road
by Jane St. Clair

I have always wondered if there really was an oracle on Oracle Road, in Tucson, Arizona. An oracle like the ones they had in the ancient world where a medium dispenses psychic truths. If they don’t have an oracle on Oracle Road, then why did they name it that?

It turns out there is an oracle, but it’s a small town about 35 miles north of Tucson. You drive down Oracle Road north toward Biosphere past Bub’s Grub Texas BBQ and eventually you’ll find little Oracle, AZ.

For miles all you see are the typical Western wide open spaces and the big bright Microsoft sky. You can’t capture it with your camera, because pictures (like the one below) are horizontal,

and the wide open spaces are all around you, dwarfing you into insignificance within the bigness of desert creation. It’s just land, lots of land, with an occasional massive boulder in the distance, and silhouettes and shadows of the Catalina Mountains cutting puzzle pieces into the sky.

Oracle, AZ does not look like Tucson. For one thing, it’s at a much higher altitude. You get big green trees and grass there. What’s even neater is that it snows in Oracle. It never snows in Tucson (and when it does, people like me blog about it).

Oracle, AZ has real charm. It’s not like your average town. It doesn’t have a Main Street with stores, post office, coffee house, and courthouse. Instead you just drive along the road and you pass by the library, school, a few little stores and restaurants, and the Oracle Inn. The real town, with its houses and 3600 people, is hidden behind various roads leading from the main street. In that way, it reminds me of Brigadoon, the town that appears every thousand years. You really expect Oracle to rise up and appear out of nowhere, and then do its disappearing act again.

This little community dates back to 1911. The famous playwright Edward Abbey got his mail from the Oracle post office. Buffalo Bill Cody actually lived there, and here’s his house, which may have been nicer when he lived there.

Oracle is home to many artists and art galleries, partly because it’s a cheap place to live.

You can spend a pleasant day in little Oracle, AZ. You’ll want to visit Oracle State Park, tour the old ranch house there, and go hiking. Then you’ll have lunch at the Patio Café, an amazing little shop that serves fancy gourmet meals made from home grown foods.

In the afternoon you can mess around in the art galleries and antique stores. Be sure to see the old motel with units shaped like little Swiss chalets something you’d expect on the old Route 66.

Yet the best thing about this place is the beauty of its wide open spaces and sky. As the song goes, on a clear day, you can see forever, and you can see who you are.

You can see forever and ever and ever more.