Located north of the city of Tucson, Arizona, just off the 77 freeway and along the northern border of the boundaries of the Saguaro National Park is the town of Oracle, with a population of just under 4,000 residents. Thirty-eight miles from the heart of Tucson, Oracle is a suburb that is far removed from the hustle and bustle of one of Arizona’s biggest cities, where large homes with some land around them are more affordable, though amenities are often a little scarce. Before moving to Oracle, Arizona, however, there are a few things you should consider to ensure it is the right place for you to buy a home.
Named by early prospectors in search of gold and silver in the area, Oracle was the name of a mine named, ironically, after a ship the mine’s owner had once traveled on. By the late 1870’s, gold and silver were discovered in the area and the community began to grow. Buffalo Bill Cody even owned a mine in the area and was something of a local celebrity around the small town itself. By the end of the 19th Century however, Oracle was best known as a retreat for people with tuberculosis due to the arid climate of the high desert and had a sanatorium built upon ranch land known as Acadia. More than a century later, Oracle became the site of Biosphere 2, an earth systems science research facility dedicated to learning about Earth and its living systems. There are five biomes in this 3.14 acre area on the outskirts of the Oracle suburb, including a 1,900 square meter rain forest, an 850 square meter ocean and coral reef, a 450 square meter mangrove wetlands, a 1300 square meter Savannah grassland and a 1,400 square meter fog desert. While it was originally called one of the greatest scientific projects since the America landed a craft on the surface of a the moon, it ran into numerous problems over the course of the nineties and was ultimately shut down and sold. It is now owned and operated by the University of Arizona who is attempting to revive the biomes inside of it.
There are a variety of homes available in Oracle, though one thing almost all of them have in common is that they are often quite spacious and have plenty of square footage around them. Many homes range from modern designs that have Spanish and Ranch style influences, to those homes that have southwestern pueblo and stucco-stylings. Considering the median home value in Oracle is around $170,000 and homes sell for around $200,000 on average, there is usually a wide range of different options available in this Tucson suburb. This is actually a similar value to the rest of Arizona, outside the larger metropolitan areas, like Tucson itself, for example.
One thing Oracle lacks is indoor activities, as they are a little ways outside the bigger city of Tucson and the neighboring suburbs to the North. However, to make up for that, there are numerous things for families to do outside in Oracle and the surrounding area. The Saguaro National Park and Santa Catalina Natural Area to the South offer endless amounts of outdoor activities, from hiking to camping to zip lining down tall mountain peaks of nearby Mount Lemmon. The schools in Oracle are also considered to be better than most in the state of Arizona, making it a very family-oriented community. And the aforementioned Biosphere 2 is an excellent day trip for the whole family, as the University of Arizona offers tours around its futuristic structures to reveal what is going on inside today.
While there aren’t a tremendous number of indoor activities in the Oracle, Arizona area, there are a few places that are go-to’s for locals who need some release from their isolated, outdoorsy existence in the high desert without having to drive all the way into Tucson. In downtown Oracle there are a mix of good restaurants that serve everything from steaks in at the old fashioned Oracle Inn Steakhouse, to cheap and cheerful Mexican at Casa Rivera’s Taco Express to healthy breakfast and smoothie options at the Oracle Patio Café. A handful of other good to decent restaurants are scattered about the area, many of which are Mexican influenced. Oracle also has a healthy community of artists living in and around it, inspired by the beauty of the natural Arizona desert. With this comes showings of a variety of different styles of artwork in various galleries and, as is wont with artists who have just completed work, accompanying parties to those who are in the know.
