Oracle is the gateway to the road up the north face of Mount Lemmon, which starts off of American Avenue and currently offers a secondary route to the top.

Buffalo Bill Cody owned the High Jinks Gold Mine in Oracle briefly and, in 1911, appeared as "Santa" for a group of local children.

On January 1, 2017, in the Arizona Daily Star newspaper, historian David Leighton challenged the accepted history of the town of Oracle: He wrote that Albert Weldon who was born about 1840 in New Brunswick, Canada, traveled on his uncle Capt.

This unit was attached to the California Column and soon marched to Tucson where Weldon was posted at a nearby stage station before moving east and eventually being honorably discharged in Mesilla New Mexico in 1864.

Within a couple of years he found a partner in Irishman Jimmie Lee and both men traveled northeast of Tucson into the Santa Catalina Mountains in search of precious metal.

The ship Oracle was built under the supervision of Captain Charles E. Ranlett and was constructed for the shipbuilding firm Chapman & Flint of Maine.

It was launched in 1853 and was a temperance ship (one that didn't allow alcohol aboard) and sailed to ports across the globe including Melbourne, Australia and Shanghai, China.

Weldon was soon joined by Alexander McKay, an immigrant from Scotland who located two mining claims named Christmas and New Years because of the days they were discovered.

Flora includes emory oak, point-leaf manzanita, holly-leaf buckthorn, alligator juniper, velvet mesquite, netleaf hackberry, lemonade berry, oreganillo, Thurber’s desert honeysuckle, ocotillo, turpentine bush, yellow bells, golden-flowered agave, mescal agave, sotol, soaptree yucca, beargrass, Engelman’s prickly pear, fishhook barrel cactus, cane cholla, firecracker penstemon, showy four o’clock, sacred datura, Goodding verbena, fairy duster, tufted evening primrose, Arizona mariposa lily, deer grass, and Parry’s grama.

Fauna includes greater roadrunner, common raven, acorn woodpecker, great horned owl, zone-tailed hawk, Cooper’s hawk, wild turkey, Gambel’s quail, cactus wren, curve-billed thrasher, hooded oriole, northern cardinal, Lucy’s warbler, vermilion flycatcher, broad-billed hummingbird, Gila monster, Clark’s spiny lizard, Madrean alligator lizard, coachwhip, gopher snake, red-spotted toad, canyon tree frog, black swalllowtail, white-lined sphinx, Arizona sister, Sonoran bumblebee, tarantula hawk, western short-horn walkingstick, western rhinoceros beetle, darkling beetles, rainbow grasshopper, flame skimmer, Arizona mantis, green lynx spider, desert blonde tarantula, Arizona bark scorpion, mule deer, cougar, bobcat, gray fox, coyote, striped skunk, javelina, white-nosed coati, rock squirrel, desert cottontail, and big brown bat.

The Oracle region once sustained more extensive and biodiverse grassland ecosystems, but widespread and poorly regulated cattle ranching has largely depleted them.

It is mostly porphyritic biotite Precambrian granite with large microcline phenocrysts, and has occasional inclusions of white and milky quartz and pegmatite.