The flow­ers crown the lit­tle cac­tus, about 2–3″ across, in Hawai­ian-like style.

A hum­ming­bird moth. They’re fast, few and finicky to photo.

Well, you’d have to be Squir­rel-sized or small­er to con­sid­er Mam­mil­lar­ia dioica cac­ti clus­ters a for­est, but there are in fact many, many of these love­ly minia­ture bou­quets to be seen in the Yaqui Well Trail area, at least from the lofty view of human per­spec­tive. Be pre­pared to stoop a bit for a good macro cam­era shot of the March-April petals that adorn their fore­heads. Yaqui Well Trail begins near the tall Fan Palm along Yaqui Pass Road near Tamaris­ki Grove Campground.

Ban­ner pho­to above:  Hills above Yaqui Well, spring­time 2019. This post was updat­ed on 8-10-2020.

The trail to the west of the camp­ground is a rel­a­tive­ly easy jaunt, and with­in the first 200 yards along a some­times rocky hike, clus­ters of Mam­mil­lar­ia begin to spread their way south to the low­er vehi­cle access road in the bot­tom of San Felipe Creek. The road also offers easy access to hid­den Yaqui Well about a mile and a half to the west, but the trail will also lead you there on high­er ground. Mam­mil­lar­ia dioica like well-drained slopes, but they seem not to pre­fer the wind that at times blows down the canyon toward the Salton Sink. In windy con­di­tions the flow­ers close to save ener­gy and await calmer con­di­tions when bees are more apt to be flying.

The quar­ter coin com­pares favor­ably to the flower.

It should men­tioned that dur­ing area thun­der­storm activ­i­ty, San Felipe Creek can quick­ly revive its rep­u­ta­tion as a swift riv­er and autos caught in the flow line, which shares the road near the camp­ground, have been car­ried down­stream.  The soft sand along the shoul­ders can be a prob­lem for 2‑wheel vehi­cles, too, even with­in a few feet of the paved high­way at the dip sec­tion entrance to the trailhead.

Water was­n’t easy to come by in ear­ly San Diego Coun­ty, as ear­ly explo­rations by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment returned sur­vey maps to Wash­ing­ton show­ing scant resources.  The San Felipe Creek was giv­en high pri­or­i­ty by the US Gov­ern­ment short­ly after the State of Cal­i­for­nia was admit­ted to the Union.  the 1850’s saw intense inter­est in cre­at­ing road and rail­road access to San Diego by virtue of its impor­tant naval port, thought to be essen­tial to the defense of the nation.  This became quite obvi­ous dur­ing the Pacif­ic Are­na of WWII where San Diego Bay was cru­cial to the war effort.

Sen­tenac cat­tle herd. Pho­to: Inter­pre­tive sign, trailhead.

Some nat­ur­al ground­wa­ter basins do form in places due to local geol­o­gy and one such desert spring enabled the Sen­tenac broth­ers to run a cat­tle oper­a­tion in San Felipe Creek.  The place had been a camp­ing place for Kumeyaay peo­ple for cen­turies, where grass was abun­dant, food pre­pared and hunt­ing orga­nized. When the cat­tle­men arrived in the 19th Cen­tu­ry, the grass­es were found excel­lent for graz­ing and water sweet for drink­ing.  The well drilled by the Sen­te­nacs is said to be dry, but ground­wa­ter from the San Felipe Creek still feeds the needs of the Tamarisk camp­ground near­by and even­tu­al­ly enters a ground­wa­ter sub­basin to the east.  The Sen­te­nacs also lived and ran cat­tle in the Julian area west of the town­site where a nat­ur­al spring was avail­able.  Many ranch­es in the area expand­ed their range dur­ing WWII to feed US forces. 

Pho­tos by Bar­bara Swan­son except the coin, the moth and the sign (by Lee).

Blog con­tin­ues on Page 2;  click on numer­al “2” below.