Latina activist Lorraine Lee namesake of trail near city

A desert trail in Tucson Mountain Park will be dedicated Saturday to the late Chicana activist Lorraine Lee during a celebration at the site, which is adjacent to the JW Marriott Starr Pass Resort & Spa.

The Pima County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the naming of the Lorraine Lee Hidden Canyon Trail in April, board Chairman Richard Elías said.

Lee was executive vice president of the nonprofit Chicanos por la Causa before she died on Oct. 31, 2007, after battling throat cancer for more than a decade.

She was honored for her work by local, state and national organizations, including the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic civil-rights and advocacy group.

"Lorraine gave her heart and soul to our community in many different ways," Elías said. "Through the growth of Chicanos por la Causa, she helped families through housing, education and human services. It was her advocacy for disenfranchised people that made Lorraine's career so spectacular."

In addition to her service, Elías said, the Lee family worked to serve county residents for decades. He mentioned Lee's father, the late Richard Lee, who retired as a county health inspector; her brother, James Lee, who works for the county library system; her late aunt, Theresa Lee, a public-health nurse who was the namesake of the Theresa Lee Clinic; and her aunt, Sophia Lee-Reynolds, a retired county public-health nurse who worked on Tucson's south side for more than 40 years.

In the 1990s, Elías said, Lorraine Lee also chaired the TCE Subcommittee for the Pima County Board of Health. TCE, or trichloroethylene, is an industrial solvent that had been routinely dumped on the ground by airport-area manufacturers for about three decades beginning in the 1950s. It seeped into the groundwater supply and has been linked to health problems.

Federal settlements and lawsuits followed, including a June 1991 $84.5 million settlement for families from one of the companies that dumped the chemicals, Hughes Missile Systems - now Raytheon Missile Systems.

In 1983, the Environmental Protection Agency put a large south-side area on its Superfund cleanup list, and in March 2000, a $35 million plan was secured in federal court for cleanup of contaminated areas, mostly around the airport. Other government-supervised cleanups began 26 years ago.

"A lot of people know Lorraine because of her work with Chicanos por la Causa and civil rights, but she had other sides," Alonso Morado said about his late wife.

"She was an environmentalist and had a special love for the Arizona-Sonora desert. We would go on hikes and have family gatherings and picnics in the Tucson Mountains.

"She also loved walking in Saguaro National Park West and also looking at ancient petroglyphs in the area. She made it known that we could only leave our footprints, and take only memories," said Morado, who has hiked the Lorraine Lee Hidden Canyon Trail several times, admiring views of the mountain range, downtown and northwest Tucson.

The trail is 1.2 miles long and ranges from 2,780 feet up to 3,100 feet, said Steve Anderson, planning manager for the county's Natural Resources, Parks and Recreation Department.

"This is a U-shape trail and offers a great short hike. You can go at a moderate pace and take breaks as you walk gently uphill," Anderson said.

The vegetation includes mesquite and palo verde trees, creosote bushes, and barrel, saguaro and prickly pear cacti. Hikers will encounter a variety of birds and likely see rabbits, Anderson said.