Though the Old Pueblo, as it's known locally, is modern and lively, Tucson's
Old West heritage will surprise you. Tucson has some of the finest cultural offerings
in Arizona—a large university, historic sites, fine museums, and a great variety
of restaurants and nightlife. Yet you can actually see most of the city's downtown
sights by walking.
Tucson lies in a broad valley of the Sonoran
Desert at an elevation of 2,400 feet. The mountains ringing Tucson offer splendid
scenery and great hiking. In just minutes, you can get out of the city to enjoy
a range of vegetation and climate zones equivalent to traveling from Mexico to Canada!
The Early Farming Culture tilled the soil of the Tucson Basin as far back as
2000 B.C. and appears to have been the first group in the Southwest to have villages,
canal systems, pottery, bow and arrow, and trade routes. These people lived in pit
houses, some of which were very large and likely had ceremonial functions. About
A.D. 150 this group gave way to the Hohokam, who continued farming the river valleys
until breaking up as a culture sometime around 1400. It's likely that some of the
Hohokam survived to become the ancestors of today's Akimel O'odham and Tohono O'odham
tribes.
The first Spanish visitors found an Akimel O'odham village, Stjuk-shon
(stjuk means "dark mountain" and shon is "foot of"), at the
base of Sentinel Peak, the hill with the large "A" now painted on it.
Spaniards adopted the name as "Tucson" when laying out the Presidio of
San Agustín del Tucson in 1775. Attacks by roving Apache made fortifications necessary,
so adobe walls 12 feet high and 750 feet long enclosed the new settlement. Mexico
inherited Tucson from Spain after the 1821 revolution, but little changed except
the flag.
Tucson joined the United States with the Gadsden
Purchase in June 1854, but 21 months of boundary-marking and bureaucratic delays
passed before the arrival of American officialdom in the form of the army's First
Dragoons. Although Apache continued to menace settlers and travelers, Americans
began to arrive in force, and the Butterfield Overland Stagecoach soon opened service
to Tucson. To cope with the desert climate, Anglos adopted much of the food, building
techniques, and other customs of the Mexicans. You'll see the results of these practices,
as well as of Anglo-Mexican intermarriage, in Tucson's cultural mix.
When U.S. army troops headed east to fight in the Civil War, Confederate cavalry
under the command of Captain Sherrod Hunter came west and easily captured Tucson
in February 1862. Union troops led by Colonel James Carleton marched in from California
two months later, clashing with the Confederates at Picacho Pass, on the Butterfield
Road about 42 miles northwest of Tucson. After this battle, the most westerly significant
skirmish of the Civil War, the outnumbered Confederates retreated.
Tucson's Wild West years continued after the Civil War, and men rarely ventured
unarmed onto the dusty streets. Still, the town prospered, serving as the territorial
capital from 1867 to 1877. By 1880, when the first train rolled in, the population
had grown to over 7,000. The Arizona Territorial University opened its doors in
1891 on land donated by a saloonkeeper and a pair of gamblers. Davis-Monthan Field
brought Tucson into the aviation age and became an important training base during
World War II. Many of the airmen and others passing through the city during those
hectic years returned to settle here. With new postwar industries and the growth
of tourism, the Old Pueblo has boomed ever since.