Deconstructing the Phoenix Mountain Preserve  All these years we
thought we knew them. The Phoenix Mountain Preserves used to
consist of 16,500 acres of South Mountain and 7,000 more acres
in the mountains up north--Shaw Butte to Squaw Peak, Shadow and
Lookout Mountains.  Now we're not so sure. They were cobbled
together over more than 50 years from large chunks of federal
land, city parks and private lands bought with $70 million worth
of bonds issued in the 1960s, '70s and '80s.  They are
inarguably one of the most remarkable amenities of life in
Phoenix--mountains right in the city, a testament to a
generation of horsemen and planners who envisioned the urban
sprawl that lay ahead and moved to do something about it.  Those
tracts of open space are so jealously guarded by Phoenicians
that in 1985, after a stream of requests to develop portions of
them, city voters decided to lock them up for good with an
amendment to the City Charter, which functions as a constitution
of sorts. According to that document, b