Tucson, Arizona

• 1. Introduction

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  Tucson, Arizona sits 60 miles north of the United States-Mexico border, ringed by five separate mountain ranges, in the middle of the Sonoran Desert. On the 20th of August 1775, a Spanish military officer named Hugo O'Conor authorized the construction of Presidio San Agustín del Tucsón on a plot of land near a basalt-covered hill the local O'odham people called Cuk Ṣon, meaning "the base of the hill is black." That name survives today, adapted into English as Tucson. What draws our attention is how much happened on that patch of desert: a city that flew five flags before Arizona became a state, a place where Wyatt Earp killed a fugitive on the rail tracks, where UNESCO singled out the food culture above every other American city, and where a living agricultural museum grows crops descended from seeds planted here over 4,000 years ago. How did a presidio fort become all of this?

• 2. Five Flags, One City

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  Italy gave Tucson one of its most consequential early visitors. Jesuit missionary Eusebio Francisco Kino arrived in the Santa Cruz River valley in 1692 and, in 1700, founded Mission San Xavier del Bac about seven miles upstream from where the town of Tucson would eventually take shape. The Spanish military presence formalized in 1775 with the construction of the presidio, and for decades after, Apache raids were a constant threat. The Second Battle of Tucson was one of many attacks mounted against the settlement during the Spanish period. When Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1821, Tucson fell under Mexican sovereignty as part of the state of Sonora. Then the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848 brought another set of soldiers through town. Philip St. George Cooke and the Mormon Battalion captured the settlement in 1846 but moved west without holding it. Cooke's wagon road through Tucson later became one of the main arteries into California during the Gold Rush of 1849. The formal transfer of the region to the United States came with the Gadsden Purchase, signed on the 8th of June 1854, which brought a territory of 29,670 square miles of present-day southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico into American hands. American military personnel did not formally take control of Tucson until March 1856. Five years later, a series of secession conventions in the region known as "Traditional Arizona" produced a Confederate territorial government, and the most significant battle of the local Civil War campaign was fought at Picacho Pass on the 15th of April 1862. Though Confederate forces claimed a tactical win at the pass, Union troops entered Tucson on the 20th of May 1862 and held it for the rest of the conflict. By the time Tucson was incorporated in 1877, the oldest incorporated city in Arizona, it had passed under Spanish, Mexican, United States, Confederate, and then Arizona state sovereignty, a flag count that residents would eventually mark as a point of local pride.

• 3. Outlaws and Law Officers

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  In the summer of 1878, a masked road agent named William Whitney Brazelton held up two stagecoaches near Point of Mountain Station, about 17 miles northwest of Tucson. One of those passengers was John Clum, a man already well known from Tombstone, Arizona. The Wells Fargo agent John J. Valentine Sr. sent a special investigator, Bob Paul, to look into the robberies, and Pima County Sheriff Charles A. Shibell organized a citizen posse. They cornered Brazelton on the 19th of August 1878 in a mesquite grove along the Santa Cruz River, three miles south of the city, and killed him there. Four years later, in 1882, Tucson was drawn into the most famous chapter of the Earp saga. Morgan Earp was shot and killed, and the coroner's jury named Pete Spence, Frank Stilwell, Frederick Bode, and Florentino "Indian Charlie" Cruz as prime suspects. Deputy U.S. Marshal Wyatt Earp escorted the injured Virgil Earp and his family to the Tucson train station on their way to California, and found Stilwell apparently waiting on the tracks for Virgil. Wyatt killed Stilwell at the station and then conducted a vendetta across the territory, killing three more men before leaving. That same year, on the 5th of June 1882, a man named Jim Leavy, said to have fought in at least 16 gunfights, argued with faro dealer John Murphy in Tucson. Murphy chose to ambush Leavy outside the Palace Hotel rather than face him in the agreed duel, and the killing led to a murder case in which one defendant was sentenced to life at Yuma Territorial Prison, eventually pardoned in 1888, while two others were found not guilty after being recaptured in Fenner, California under assumed names.

• 4. The Name That Stuck

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  When rail service reached Tucson on the 20th of March 1880, Mayor R. N. "Bob" Leatherwood sent telegrams to multiple leaders, including the President of the United States and the Pope, announcing that the "ancient and honorable pueblo" was now connected by rail. That phrase, shortened by newspaper writers to "A. and H. Pueblo," eventually became "The Old Pueblo," and the nickname has persisted ever since. The city's other major nickname arrived by a very different route. In 1992, Business Week published a cover story on the Arizona Optics Industry Association, and the resulting attention gave Tucson the name "Optics Valley." The label was accurate: roughly 150 companies in Tucson are involved in designing and manufacturing optics and optoelectronics systems. A key reason for that concentration is the Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona, one of the few places in the world with the capability to cast the enormous mirrors used in telescopes worldwide and in space. In the early 1980s, city leaders held a contest searching for a new nickname to replace "The Old Pueblo." The winning entry was "Sunshine Factory." It never caught on.

• 5. A City of Gastronomy

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  In 2015, UNESCO designated Tucson a "world city of gastronomy" under the Creative Cities Network program, making Tucson the first American city ever to receive that designation. The distinction reflects a food history that stretches back thousands of years. Archaeological excavations near the Santa Cruz River uncovered a village site dated to 2100 BC, and the floodplain was farmed from around 1200 BC onward, with irrigation canals already in use. The Mission Garden, a living agricultural museum at the base of Sentinel Peak west of downtown, grows heritage crops and heirloom trees representing the people who have farmed this land across that long span of time. Contemporary Tucson cuisine carries that layered history in specific dishes. The Sonoran hot dog wraps a hot dog in bacon, grills it, serves it in a bolillo-style bun, and piles on pinto beans, onions, tomatoes, and condiments that often include mayonnaise, mustard, and jalapeño salsa. Tucson also holds a strong claim to being the birthplace of the chimichanga. A less widely known contribution is Chinese Chorizo, a Sino-Mexican fusion sausage made with pork seasoned with soy sauce, rice wine, and chili, developed in local Chinese grocery stores that operated in Tucson from the 1880s to the 1970s. A festival dedicated entirely to Chinese Chorizo has been held every October since 2022. Tourism tied to food and to the annual Tucson Gem and Mineral Show, the largest such exposition in the world, draws more than 3.5 million visitors each year, contributing an estimated two billion dollars to the local economy annually.

• 6. The Mountain Ranges and the Monsoon

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  Five separate mountain ranges encircle Tucson: the Santa Catalina Mountains and the Tortolita Mountains to the north, the Santa Rita Mountains to the south, the Rincon Mountains to the east, and the Tucson Mountains to the west. The highest point in the area is Mount Wrightson in the Santa Rita Mountains, at 9,453 feet above sea level. The city itself sits at 2,643 feet, on an alluvial plain in the Sonoran Desert, which keeps it somewhat cooler and wetter than Phoenix despite being at a more southerly latitude. The climate is defined by two extremes. Summer average daily highs run between 98 and 102 degrees Fahrenheit, and the record high of 117 degrees Fahrenheit was set on the 27th of June 1990. On the other end, the record low of 6 degrees Fahrenheit fell on the 7th of January 1913. The monsoon is the defining seasonal drama. It officially begins on the 15th of June, though the first storms typically arrive around the 3rd of July. Clouds build from the south in early afternoon, followed by intense thunderstorms and flash flooding that can close main thoroughfares for several hours. Large portions of the city lack storm sewers, so water painted scales on the supports of certain underpasses to warn drivers during floods. Arizona's "Stupid Motorist Law," enacted in 1995, allows authorities to charge up to $2,000 to any driver who bypasses a barricade on a flooded road and needs rescuing. The annual precipitation averages 10.61 inches, with the wettest year on record being 1905 at 24.17 inches, and the driest being 2020 at 4.16 inches.

• 7. Culture, Sports, and the Streets

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  The University of Arizona, chartered in 1885 on what had been overgrazed ranchland between Tucson and Fort Lowell, is today the city's largest employer with more than 10,000 employees. Its men's basketball program made 25 consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances from 1985 through 2009 and won the national championship in 1997. The softball team won the national championship eight times. The swimming program attracted athletes from Japan and Africa to train under coach Frank Busch, who also worked with the U.S. Olympic swim team; both the men's and women's swim teams won the 2008 NCAA National Championships. Tucson's performing arts include the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, founded in 1929 and the oldest performing arts organization in the state. The All Souls Procession, modeled on the Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos and first organized in 1990 by artist Susan Kay Johnson with 35 participants, had grown to an estimated 50,000 participants by 2013. The Tucson International Mariachi Conference, held annually since 1982, gathers several hundred mariachi bands and folkloric dance troops over three days each April. Since the late 1970s, a punk scene has also taken hold downtown, with multiple dedicated venues operating today. Writers who have lived and worked in Tucson include Edward Abbey, Barbara Kingsolver, Leslie Marmon Silko, and David Foster Wallace, and the city runs its own poetry center at the University of Arizona with a sizable library and year-round programming. The Tucson Festival of Books, launched in 2009, reached the rank of fourth-largest book festival in the United States by 2010, drawing 450 authors and 80,000 attendees to the University of Arizona campus each March.