The Southern Arizona Search and Rescue Association is marking it’s 50 ^th Anniversary this month, but that anniversary also marks a sad occasion. It was on this weekend 50 years ago that a freak and unexpected snowstorm slammed Tucson.

About 6 inches of snow fell in the city, but far more came down in the nearby mountains. Six boy scouts were camping in the Santa Rita Mountains at the time, and only three made it out alive.

Bad news hit the Old Pueblo on the night of Saturday, November 15, 1958. That day, 12-year old Ralph Coltrin along with five other boy scouts hiked atop the Santa Rita Mountains. “We started up the trail about 1:15 in the afternoon,” says Coltrin. “Now I know it’s a little too late to be making a trip like that.”

Forecasters predicted the weather would be relatively clear with a high of 81 degrees. “About 9 o’clock in the evening it started to rain,” says Coltrin. “By midnight, it turned to snow.”

It was Tucson’s earliest and heaviest snowfall on record. Three of the scouts went back, but the three others went on. “They had no shelter from the elements, and the three hours of rain soaked them,” says Coltrin. “And then, 24 hours of snow is just something that one can’t survive.”

After two weeks of searching, rescue crews finally found the bodies. That event half a century ago helped form the Southern Arizona Rescue Association. It also helped form a makeshift memorial at Josephine Saddle to honor the three scouts who didn’t make it.

“It looked to me like something that might last a while,” says Coltrin. “But that’s all gone, the crosses are gone, the rocks are gone.”

That is, until 15-year old Boy Scout Ray Helton stepped in. He has made a permanent plaque for his Eagle Scout Project. “I will be placing the plaque in the upper parking lot at the entrance to the Supertrail,” he says.

Helton will hold a ceremony and install his plaque on Saturday, November 15, at 10 a.m. in the upper parking lot at Madera Canyon. Then that afternoon, there will be a gathering at the Boy Scout Museum in Tucson to remember the three young scouts who died.