Tucson Oddity: 'Great Wall of Ina' is now a hidden gem

One of Tucson's man-made wonders was rendered invisible 20 years ago, hidden behind a retaining wall.

Those who lived or traveled on the northwest side in the 1980s and early '90s still remember the marvel known as "The Great Wall of Ina."

A landscaped backyard at 1322 E. Thunderhead Circle features four tiers of walls built by John and Betty McCullough that slope down 75 feet from a patio to East Ina Road.

Hot-air balloon companies would point it out to passengers. Movie legend Lee Marvin, who lived on the northwest side before he died in 1987, once remarked about the wall, "Those people must be crazy to be working so hard."

Barbara Criswell of Sunset magazine called the wall "interesting and innovative."

"It was an unusual thing, and it showed a lot of ingenuity. It seemed to solve a lot of problems, too."

The wall still exists, but it's no longer visible from the road.

The county filled in a 15-foot dip in front of the house in order to improve Ina and finished a noise-blocking retaining wall in 1992. The new, not-so-great Wall of Ina is 15 feet tall and 460 feet long, much of it along the property, obscuring it from drivers.

"I wanted to shoot myself. It literally destroyed the wall," Betty told the Tucson Citizen in 1992. "John was speechless. He was sick for two days. It took a few men three months to destroy what it took us more than six years to build."

The couple moved to Tucson from Ohio in 1980. John built the wall to stop county personnel from cutting through his property to check a sewer line meter. He did it without blueprints or any wall-building experience.

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Tucson Oddity: 'Great Wall of Ina' is now a hidden gem