TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) – Officials urged residents and guests of a desert resort to evacuate an exclusive enclave on the city’s northern fringe Sunday after a wildfire sped downhill, surprising firefighters and threatening up to 300 homes.

The area, called Ventana Canyon, is a high desert enclave in the foothills of the Santa Catalina Mountains. It includes 200-300 upscale homes and the 400-room Loews Ventana Canyon Resort, said George Heaney, a bureau chief with the Pima County Sheriff’s Department.

The voluntary evacuation notice came after strong winds pushed the fire downhill faster than expected, said Donna Nemeth, a fire information officer.

Smoke roiled in ravines along the face of the mountains late Sunday afternoon. Helicopters dropped water as the flames moved downhill through rocky desert terrain.

The fire, which started June 17 and has burned at least 70,000 acres, skirted fire lines last week and burned six cabins between Friday night and early Saturday.

Lines created by burnouts, clearing brush and thinning trees continued to hold Sunday around dozens of other homes and cabins, several youth camps, an observatory and communications towers operated by organizations including the Federal Aviation Administration.

But as the situation on top of the mountain looked better, the fire kept creeping down the mountain face toward the foothills.

Officials said they could snuff it with helicopter water drops and backburns and that thin desert vegetation in the foothills would make the fire easy to fight if it approached homes.

The fire also was about a half-mile from the visitor center at Sabino Canyon, a popular recreation area that was closed due to the fire.

The human-caused fire destroyed 317 homes last month in and around the vacation hamlet of Summerhaven.

New Mexico fire crews said Sunday that the ancient Indian village at Taos Pueblo was out of danger as a 1,500-acre wildfire burned away from the ancient adobe landmark.

On Friday, the lightning-caused fire burned to within a half-mile of the village, which is one of New Mexico’s major tourist draws. By Sunday the flames were 5 miles away, fire information officer Bill Duemling said.

Elsewhere:

– A fire on the Colville Indian Reservation in north-central Washington state swelled to 3,000 acres overnight, increasing its coverage area nearly 50 percent by Sunday.

– A smaller fire consumed 600 acres on the Spokane Indian Reservation to the east, and up north in the Pasayten Wilderness, three fires covered a total of about 1,680 acres.

– Near Winthrop, a fire expanded by about 100 acres overnight to 1,360 acres, said Nick Michel with the state Department of Natural Resources. It was the largest of three fires in that area.

– In central Oregon, three people died Sunday in a collision between a car and truck hauling fire equipment to an 800-acre wildfire, police said. Officials said they did not consider the fire to be the cause of the deaths.

There have been no fire fatalities in the West so far this summer.

Smaller fires were reported in Colorado, Idaho, Montana and Utah, the National Interagency Fire Center reported Sunday. So far this year, about 923,000 acres of brush, grass and forest have burned, less than one-third the acreage that burned during the same period last year, the center said.

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On the Net:

National Interagency Fire Center: http://www.nifc.gov/

AP-ES-07-06-03 2128EDT