Mankind has been utilizing stones for construction purposes for thousands of years. Carrying on in this ancient tradition in the modern era here in the Copper Corridor is Oracle resident Darrell Klesch, founder and owner of Oracle Stoneworks.
Klesch founded his company in 1983. His first project was building a retaining wall in someone’s backyard.
“It took me eight months to build that wall,” Klesch admitted. “Now, it would take me eight days to complete a project like that.” That6;s what 25 years of experience gets you.
In one of his first major non-residential project, he spent eight years working on the stonework at Biosphere 2, laying all the flagstones, the retaining walls and stairways in the ecological research facility.
“We had to do all the work by hand…all manual labor,” Klesch said. “Our crew brought in enough dirt to cover one acre, five feet deep, using only wheelbarrows, since there were no big machines allowed in the facility. We looked like a line of ants moving in and out of there.”
After finishing this enormous project, he said there was nothing for him to do.
“I was out of work…despairing of how I was going to pay my bills,” Klesch shared. “One day, my mother’s photograph fell off the mantel and the glass shattered. It startled me and I blurted out, ‘Mom, I need a job.’ The next day, Tom Cassel, one of the guys I’d worked with at Mt. Lemmon called me from the U.S. Forest Service and offered me a job working on a Forest Service project.”
He’s never looked back. Sixteen years later, Klesch is still working for the Forest Service. Some of his projects include retaining walls on Mt. Lemmon Highway; restrooms, rock walls, trail steps and picnic sites at Molino Basin, Sabino Canyon and Madera Canyon; bridge repairs and runoff canals near roadways, just to name a few.
Cassell, a project manager with the U.S. Forest Service in Tucson, picked up the story from there: “Darrell is one of the most talented artisans I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet. One of his finest works is at the Wrightson Trailhead up in Madera Canyon. He camped out there for eight months in an RV while working on that project, wetting down the mortar and keeping an eye on things. The day just doesn’t end for him.”
That project included several rock bathrooms, numerous retaining walls throughout the parking lot and picnic area and over 500 stairs along the various trails.
The end of the road at Sabino Canyon, where the tram turns around, also featured stonework by Klesch, before it was destroyed by a landslide in 2005.
“At Sabino Canyon, there was already existing stonework from the WPA era,” said Cassell. “Darrell was able to match the color, shape and texture of the stones, as well as the mortar joints, which is in a much cruder style than I would want to start a project out with, but he was able to match the work.”
Some of Klesch’s other work includes the bathrooms and rock walls at the Windy Point rest stop on Mt. Lemmon Highway and the Gordon Hirabayashi Campground.
“The Hirabayashi Campground is an example of some of Darrell’s exceptional work,” Cassell continued. “He’s a total artisan and a local treasure. I don’t know another stonemason who pays more attention to detail and can do the kind of work he does or has the aesthetic eye he does. He obviously really cares about his work. He will take the time to do the work right or he won’t do it at all. I don’t have to oversee his work because I trust his work, that it will be done and it will be beautiful. We, the Forest Service, and all of us as taxpayers, are definitely getting more than our money’s worth from the work Darrell does.”
In between Forest Service projects, Klesch also keeps busy with residential projects. Many of the homes in Oracle and the Tri-Community area display patios, water features, pool and spa enclosures, and rock sculptures, including “Bertha,” a rock “snowman,” a favorite photograph subject with the Nugget and San Manuel Miner.
