Samuel Breidenbach, with models of various dinosaurs at his T Rex Museum. Breidenbach is now working on a book about the Tortolita area.

james gregg / arizona daily star

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Samuel Breidenbach wants your grandparents' photos. And yours, too. Maybe.

Arcadia Publishing — publisher of books on regional and local history, like what you find in the gift shops at Sabino Canyon or the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum — has enlisted Breidenbach to put together a book on the Tortolita area for its "Images of America" series.

Breidenbach has been working on the project for the last couple months and is still hoping to make the June deadline set by the publisher.

Problem is, he's having trouble tracking down photos.

He knows they're out there, he said.

They're in people's attics or long-forgotten boxes of old family trinkets. And he has no idea how to find them.

"I need another hundred photographs," he said.

He's not being picky, either.

He'll take anything — whether it's an old family vacation picture with the Tortolita Mountains in the background or a more recent picture from a hike in the area. And anything between.

He has contacted the Oro Valley Historical Society to see what they might know, but the ball hasn't really rolled in that direction.

"We don't have many pictures of that area," said Pat Spoerl, of the Oro Valley Historical Society.

Oro Valley recently got its own book in the same series, she said.

She had heard that Breidenbach was working on the Tortolita book but didn't know much else, she said.

Breidenbach said he has also checked with the Arizona Historical Society but has run into dead ends there as well.

He'll find a picture of a man on a horse in front of a cactus, he said, but it's not clear whether the picture was taken in Sahuarita or Tortolita.

The society also charges for its pictures, he said — which makes him hesitate when the pictures he's finding don't match up so well with what he's trying to do.

In a phone message, Kate Reeve, head of libraries and archives for the society, said she was having trouble finding anything when she searched on the word "Tortolita."

"He would have to do a more detailed search, by old ranch names, old family names," she said.

Breidenbach said he's tried that, too, using old ranch names such as Cayton, Nelson, MacKenzie, Carpenter — ranches in and around the area now known as Dove Mountain.

He's found some help talking to old cowboys and folks whose families have lived in the area for generations.

But still he needs more pictures.

Each "Images in America" book has about 200 pictures, said Kai Oliver-Kurtin, a publicity manager with Arcadia Publishing. The publisher tries to stick with a three- to five-month timeline for pulling a book together.

And it tries to keep the history a little on the newer side because it's nice for some of the older population who lived through the times the book covers, she said.

But the group purposely works with local people from all walks of life, because local people know the most about the area, she said.

That works in Breidenbach's favor. He also runs the T Rex Museum and is a paleontologist at heart. So he's expanded the book's scope to include a bit of prehistory as well, to round it out.

He knows what dinosaurs roamed the Tortolita Mountains, and they'll be in the book, he said.

Oliver-Kurtin said it's not unusual for an author to expand the scope. "The reason why we do pick local authors, is because they do have that knowledge."

Breidenbach said whatever money he gets paid once the book is published will be donated directly to the Tortolita Historical Society, which formed just a couple months ago.

But that can't happen until he tracks down the photos. At this point, he said, he doesn't need any more stories if they don't have pictures.

"Stories without photos are worthless. If I can't document it, it doesn't do me any good."