A Life Rooted in Arizona
Art Smith’s Journey from Tombstone to Conservation Champion
When asked if he has lived his entire life in Arizona, Art Smith smiles and says, “Not yet.”
It’s the kind of response that captures Art perfectly: dry humor, deep roots and a preference for telling the truth as it is, without softening the edges.
Art was born and raised in Tombstone, Ariz., in a family where work, words and community were intertwined. His parents, Mabel and Clayton, ran The Tombstone Epitaph, the oldest continuously published newspaper in Arizona. During World War II, as local men left for service, Art worked at the paper, learning the mechanics of printing and small‑town economics.
Those early years gave him two things he never lost: a sense that you do what needs doing and a front‑row seat to how land and livelihood are woven together in rural Arizona.
Service, Engineering and Entrepreneurism
Art’s path led from Tombstone to the University of Arizona, where he earned a degree in engineering and later enlisted in the U.S. Navy, where he rose to the rank of a Lieutenant Engineering Officer for Naval destroyers.
An engineer by trade, Art returned to Arizona and worked at Motorola, when the semiconductor industry in the state was still young. There he helped design and build the equipment that made advanced manufacturing possible. He then joined a small engineering and sales firm and—just a short while later—he bought the company.
That same determination would later drive his conservation mindset.
Learning Conservation from the Land Itself
Long before “conservation” was an occupation or a mission, it was simply part of living in the West. As a young man, Art worked for the Bennett Ranch in Cochise County. From Fred Bennett, Art absorbed lessons he never forgot: Ranching and wildlife are inseparable in Arizona.
“You got no ranchers, you got no wildlife,” Art says in reference to freshwater sources on ranching lands where wildlife can find water, food and shelter. He also learned an appreciation for native species’ natural role in managing the land. Predators like coyotes, bobcats and mountain lions, he says, are not enemies to be eradicated but essential parts of a functioning ecosystem.
He watched the San Pedro River in his youth—never dry, fluctuating with the seasons, its cottonwoods rising. He understood water not as an abstraction but as the single most important currency of the land.
Decades ago, a rancher told him, “More people have died in this country over a drink of water than anything else—and you haven’t seen the worst of it yet.” Art never forgot it.
From Idea to Action: Partnering with TNC
By the time Art and his late wife, Corinne, discovered The Nature Conservancy (TNC), they were already conservationists in practice—just not in an organized way. They loved the outdoors. They knew the wide-open spaces of the Sonoran Desert. And they were both keen on making a difference through boots-on-the-ground action.
Over the years, Art and Corinne became deeply engaged partners in conservation across Arizona and northern Mexico:
- They advocated for, and helped fund, The Nature Conservancy’s presence in Prescott, insisting that real progress on the Verde River and local ranches would require being on the ground, building trust with local families.
- Along the San Pedro River, they supported work both in Arizona and in Sonora, helping ranchers to install solar‑powered water pumps, fencing and other infrastructure so water could be distributed more effectively and efficiently without destroying fragile riverbanks.
- They advocated for science‑based conservation in the Malpais Borderlands, using prescribed burns, combatting invasive brush and keeping working ranches viable as a cornerstone of landscape‑scale conservation.
A Gift with Roots: The Family Cabin
In recent years, after the passing of Corinne, Art faced a personal decision. Their Flagstaff‑area cabin—a place they had enjoyed together for 31 years of their 60-year marriage—had become difficult to maintain alone. He could have sold it privately.
Instead, he gifted it to The Nature Conservancy.
Art’s reasons were characteristically straightforward: He couldn’t care for it the way he wanted to anymore, and he believed the best use of the cabin was to convert it into conservation impact.
He called his children first, and they supported the decision. Then he moved quickly, arriving at meetings with his records organized and a clear goal: to get the gift completed in less than a year so TNC could put the proceeds to work.
The cabin has since been sold, and its value is now directly funding conservation, exactly as Art intended.
His gift was not an isolated act—it was the latest chapter in a life defined by stewardship—no fanfare, less talk and more action and a little dry humor along the way.
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