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The cave home of Randy Clark and Cathy Wertz in the Mule Mountains of Bisbee features a large open kitchen with custom countertops and cabinets.
greg bryan / arizona daily star
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(slide show) See more images of the cave house
"There are cave homes all over the world, but nothing like this. To me, it's like buying a national park. There is no place in the world like it."
Jean Noreen, a friend of the couple and the real estate agent who listed the house
DID YOU KNOW …
The lure and lore of the Mule Mountains, as told in the book "Roadside History of Arizona" by Marshall Trimble:
"The rough-hewn range with its twisting rocky canyons was a favorite sanctuary for the Apaches during the 19th century. At the southern end, a trail led through a pass and out into the San Pedro River valley. In this steep-sided canyon were seeps and springs where men and animals could be watered. The Mexicans called the place Puerto de las Mulas (Mule Pass), and that's how the Mule Mountains acquired their name.
"Beneath those granite mountains was a wealth of gold, silver and copper that defied the wildest imagination of even the most incurable prospector. But the mountains guarded their secrets well, and it was late in the 19th century before a government scout named Jack Dunn stumbled across some rich outcroppings in the spring of 1877. …"
more info
For more information and a virtual tour of the Cave House in Chulo Canyon, go to www.thecavehouse.com

Tucson Region

Easy Living in a mountain cave

Couple creates a comfortable home on cliff in Bisbee's Mule Mountains
By Tom Beal
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 09.02.2007
BISBEE — Cathy Wertz and Randy Clark were camped outside Bisbee, trying to figure out how to build a home without altering the natural beauty of the cliff-side land they had just purchased, when they heard explosions from a neighboring property.
They investigated and found mining engineer Gus Gonnason blasting a home for himself in the "competent rock" of a site half a mile away in the Mule Mountains.
"When you're done, can you come over and do one for us?" Clark asked him.
He could. He did. As a result, Wertz and Clark were able to burrow most of their nearly 3,000 square feet of living space into the cliff, with only the windowed wall of their sunroom marking its existence.
The rest of their 45 acres — minus a network of stone paths and a guest house and several outbuildings discretely tucked into the oak and piñon canopy — is as they found it in 1984.
It is a natural preserve where lush vegetation grows amid boulders and a stream cascades toward the San Pedro River in a 2,000-foot fall through the property, filling three pools eroded into the rock over eons.
Wertz loves her cave, but she says it's the setting she will miss the most. She and Clark have decided to sell — asking price for the cave and grounds is $2.7 million.
The mile-high property is home to more than 400 native plant species, including some rare orchids and passion flower vines, 79 species of birds and 113 butterfly species. It also teems with mammals, reptiles and amphibians, including the tree frogs whose tadpoles share the main pool with the daily influx of the couple's friends who come for a swim after work this time of year.
On a sunny day last week, water roared into the pools. The stream dries up seasonally in spring and fall, said Wertz, but is reliably cool and refreshing when the monsoon comes.
The presence of water, acorns and piñon nuts attracts foxes, ringtails, javelina, and coatimundis, for which the couple named the place Chulo Canyon.
Wertz heard about the waterfall and pools from a rancher friend who said it had been a favorite spot for ditch days when he was in school.
Wertz and Clark first explored the property in 1984, after climbing the barbed-wire fence that encircled it. They tracked down the owners and bought the piece with the waterfalls and ponds.
For the next 15 years, they camped or lived in what is now the guesthouse, as the cave was excavated into a left-angled run with grottoes that ascends to a second, smaller opening in the rock.
The higher opening was a lucky mistake, said Clark. "Gus' last blast went up instead of out."
The resulting elevation difference induces a convective breeze when the cave doors and windows are opened.
The interior is an average 68 degrees, considered the optimum temperature for human habitation, said Wertz. It can get as high as 72 degrees in summer and, in winter, with windows open, can cool down to 65.
So — no heating, cooling or water bills. Water for washing and irrigating the houseplants and butterfly garden is diverted from the stream to tanks above the cave and gravity-fed into the house.
Clark, a retired airline captain, is one of those guys who can figure out and build anything. He poured cement to create an even floor, then topped it with red and tan concrete tiles. He channeled the sides to allow water to run outside.
"You can't stop a cave from seeping when it rains," said Wertz, and the couple found that one place was continually wet. It was a spring whose mineral water now drips from a copper pipe into an onyx basin at the back of the cave, providing 25 gallons a day of fresh, cool water.
"The water is the thing that I'm going to miss the most," said Clark.
There were no building codes in unincorporated Cochise County when the cave was built, so Wertz asked the state mining inspector to come by for a look.
He agreed with Gonnason's appraisal of the cave's geology — it was "competent," meaning it would hold voids without timber supports. Wertz said the mining inspector was further impressed by Gonnason's installation of an over-abundance of roof bolts — 6-foot long, expanding metal pins — which tie layers of rock together.
"He said this house will be here about 10,000 years," said Wertz, "so we decided we'd better put in a good kitchen."
Clark poured concrete for the counters and woodworker John Porter created the curving wood cabinets beneath and above them.
Wertz enlisted an array of local artisans and artists to furnish the cave. The most prolific artisan on site was Guadalupe Quezada, who, with his son Gonzalo, lived at the site for 18 months, building the stone walls of the guesthouse, the stone paths that take you pool to pool and the walls and dining banquette inside the cave.
Those who haven't seen the cave have some trouble understanding its beauty and utility, Wertz said. She overheard a ladies' room conversation when she attended her high school reunion a few years back.
"I heard some of my classmates saying: 'Oh God, did you hear Cathy lives in a cave, that's too bad, I thought she was doing OK.' "
Jean Noreen, a friend of the couple and the real estate agent who listed the house, said her colleagues had similar misgivings when she told them she was marketing a multimillion-dollar cave. She held an open house for agents, she said, and they conceded she had priced it about right.
It was impossible to find "comps" — comparable values — said Noreen. Try finding a foothills home with a stream and three natural pools, let alone a cave house.
"There are cave homes all over the world," she said, "but nothing like this. To me, it's like buying a national park. There is no place in the world like it." Noreen says it would make a wonderful retreat center.
Wertz and Clark aren't leaving the Bisbee area entirely, but they already spend winters in Alamos, Sonora, and want to do more traveling.
Their preserve is a full-time commitment, said Wertz, 64. She and Clark, 68, want more flexibility.
Wertz first came to Bisbee in the early '70s, part of a group of young Colorado artists and entrepreneurs who left the insane property market of the burgeoning ski towns of Aspen and Crested Butte for the real estate bargains of Bisbee, where a century of copper mining had about played out and the population was shrinking.
Miners' shacks on the hills, stately homes at street level and the substantial turn-of-the-century commercial buildings on Main Street were all priced to sell.
Wertz, a painter and sculptor, had planned with friends to open an art school in a former Catholic school, but those plans were scrapped.
Instead, she opened a plant store, Bisbee Green, and ran it for six years. Randy Clark showed up in town during that time and walked into the store. A relationship was cultivated; love blossomed, etc. The two were married in 1985.
Wertz then worked 12 years for the Arizona Department of Agriculture as an inspector and later district supervisor.
Among her duties was enforcement of the state's native plant laws. Wertz enlisted the friends she made, and employed the knowledge she acquired in those jobs to compile her lists of the flora and fauna in Chulo Canyon.
Wertz said she wants the property in the hands of a conservationist, who will keep it as pristine as possible and build on the work already done by plant and animal researchers who have spent time in their guest house.
"It's so hard to give up living in a paradise like this," she said.
See more images of the cave house at azstarnet.com/slideshows
● Contact reporter Tom Beal at 573-4158 or tbeal@azstarnet.com.
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