Why an Arizona woman organizes a 45-mile highway cleanup every year

Twenty years ago, Melissa Owen and her husband came down to the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge to look for volunteer work, and she thought that it had the most beautiful land she had ever seen.

She was captivated by the landscape of the refuge, which is a 117,000-acre haven that houses endangered plants and animals located about 75 miles south of Tucson and 7.5 miles from Sasabe and the border, and she wanted to start a life out there surrounded by the lush grassland and rolling hills.

“When I came down here, I just thought this was possibly the most beautiful place in the world,” Owen said. “And so, my husband and I looked and looked and looked and finally a ranch came up and we just sort of held hands and took the jump and bought it. And that was 20 years ago in April.”

Owen and her husband now lead their lives at their ranch and the two miles outside of it that they adopted, dedicating themselves to conserving the wildlife that surrounds them. They don’t graze cattle, and they don’t allow hunting. Rather leave their 640 acres open for the wildlife to inhabit. Many people might not love the secluded and quiet qualities of the ranch, but Owen said it’s perfect for her.

“It wouldn’t suit everyone, but I don’t mind,” Owen said. “People ask me if I get lonely and I say, well, I have dogs and horses. So no, I don’t get lonely.”

Cleaning up SR 286 is a labor of love for organizer

Owen’s love of nature and emphasis on wildlife conservation encouraged her to do something more to protect the land. She was in charge of volunteer work before she moved out to the ranch and wanted to use those skills to help clean up the land around her.

She started organizing highway cleanup events for State Route 286 in 1995. The highway, which runs from the U.S.-Mexico border at Sasabe to about 25 miles west of Tucson, serves as more than just a road for Owen. She said she views it to be a vital part of her ranch. She wanted to make sure it was as clean as could be for any visitors as well as the creatures living there.

“Any of our friends, any of our business associates who are coming down here get an impression of not just our community, but our ranch when they come down to 86,” Owen said. “And also, 286 runs through the National Wildlife Refuge. So not only is trash on the highway unsightly and ugly to look at, but it also is dangerous for the wildlife.”

Owen started the event with a small amount of people, but the numbers gradually grew year after year. Nine years ago, she expanded the event to become a yearly occurrence with the goal of cleaning all 45 miles of the highway in just one day and gave it the name “All the Way to the Border.”

She said she has to nag people to come out and help, but once they participated in the clean-up, they realized how fun of an experience it is.

“If you look at the pictures of the volunteers along the road, you will see that everybody is laughing and smiling and pranking around with their trash grabbers and their bags,” Owen said. “I always say when I talk to folks at the beginning: we have different politics, we’re going to vote for different presidents, we have different ideas about how public lands should be used and cared for, but none of that matters.”

“We’re picking up trash on 45 miles of highway, and you can’t make that anything other than a good experience,” she added.

Cleaning up 45 miles of highway in 1 day

The act of cleaning up an entire highway in a day sounds like a daunting task, but Owen said there are ways to make it easier. The event is under the umbrella of the Arizona Department of Transportation’s Adopt a Highway Program, where volunteers can apply to adopt a section of the highway and keep it litter-free.

Owen said that about 13 miles of the highway have been adopted, which means there is a substantial chunk of it that she doesn’t have to account for. Owen said she encourages her volunteers to adopt a mile, so it is easier to clean the entirety of the highway.

Two-way stretches of a highway can be adopted from ADOT for a minimum of two years. Details about how the process of cleaning up the road works can be found online at azdot.gov.

For the event itself, Owen divvies up the remaining miles to different groups of volunteers to cover as much ground as possible. This year, a group of more than 100 volunteers cleaned up 37 miles of the highway and gathered 261 bags of trash as well as a pickup truck carrying old tires, coolers and couches on Jan. 27.

She said the event has cleaned up all 45 miles of the highway before, but this year’s amount of litter was more than usual because there’s been more activity on the border lately.

Plastic water bottles and beer cans are the most common pieces of junk picked up, but Owens has seen an array of items ranging from clothes, necklaces, and coolers, and one time, she even saw a cannonball get picked up from the side of the highway.

Organizer hopes event encourages more to volunteer

Owen said she is proud of the event and the impact it has. She has seen all different types of people come to visit the land she loves, but she wishes more people in the state would come to help as well, not only for this event but with the wildlife refuge as well.

“We have visitors from all over the world who come here, but yet folks in Tucson kind of just don’t. And one of the things I like about this event is that it gets folks down here, and they see the refuge and how beautiful it is, and then they come back to visit. So, I would like this event to encourage people to visit the National Wildlife Refuge.”

The Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge has many volunteer opportunities, including maintenance of trails and campsites, helping on handyman projects, leading nature walks, presentations to schools and other groups, and more. Details about volunteer opportunities at the Refuge as well as the numerous species kept there can be found on their website.

Owen hopes she can continue to get more and more people to come down to help conserve a place that she feels is special.

“I seriously think this is one of the most beautiful places on earth, and I’m not kidding about that,” Owen said. “We don’t have a Grand Canyon, we don’t have snow-topped mountains. It’s grassland, but it’s absolutely beautiful.”