According to a Pima County news release, at the May 14 meeting, Pima County Board of Supervisors approved the master plan for Mary Henderson Desert Center.

If she were alive, Mary Ewing Henderson would undoubtedly be pleased that her home in the Tucson Mountains, the surrounding 22.5 acres and its network of trails will be preserved by Pima County for the community’s benefit.

According to an obituary in the Decatur, Ill., Herald & Review, Mary Ewing Henderson died April 19, 2002, in Tucson after a long illness. She was 88. She married Arthur Henderson in 1948 and they made their home in the Tucson Mountains. Her husband died in 1952, but “her love of the desert and mountains led to her strong advocacy of maintaining open space and her longtime support of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum,” the obituary said.

The title to the property on West Anklam Road passed to the museum when Mary Henderson died. In 2012, the museum donated the property to Pima County.