Cultural Encounters
Cultural
Natural
The Santa Cruz Valley is bursting with important historic places and cultural traditions, where Native American, Spanish Colonial, Mexican, and American Territorial heritages and traditions intersect with one another. This cultural heritage remains a source of the identity and vitality of the region.
The following themes of the Santa Cruz Valley National Heritage Area highlight significant aspects of the region’s cultural heritage and include Native American Lifeways, Spanish & Mexican Frontier, Desert Farming, Ranching Traditions, Mining Booms & Ghost Towns, U.S. Military Posts on the Mexico Border, and U.S.-Mexico Border Culture.
Watch our short film about how heritage foods connect past, present, and future (7:44 mins).
Native American Lifeways
A series of prehistoric cultures flourished in this region between the end of the last Ice Age and the beginning of Spanish Colonial activities in the late 1600s. These prehistoric peoples were the area’s original farmers and created the first canals, pottery, and villages in the Southwest. This valley has been part of the territory of the Tohono O’odham (People of the Desert) since prehistoric times, and groups of the Yaqui (Yoeme) tribe of western Mexico arrived here in several waves beginning in the early 1800s.
In and around Tucson, artifacts and exhibits about prehistoric cultures of the Santa Cruz Valley can be found at the Arizona State Museum and the Arizona Historical Society Museum. Like many regions of the western U.S., the Santa Cruz Valley has vibrant Native American communities with deep roots in the region. Celebration of the cultural contributions of Native Americans to the story of this nation is very appropriate and overdue, and the proposed Santa Cruz Valley National Heritage Area provides an opportunity.
To learn more about Native American Lifeways read more here.
Spanish & Mexican Frontier
A number of the presidio fortresses, missions, and ranches occupied between the 1680s and 1854 are still preserved in the Santa Cruz Valley, and many are open to the public. The missions of Tumacácori and Guevavi were established by Father Eusebio Francisco Kino in 1691, and the visita of Calabazas was constructed in the 1750s. All three are part of Tumacácori National Historical Park.
The Tubac Presidio State Historic Park commemorates the presidio established there in 1752, and includes an innovative underground archaeology display.
San Xavier del Bac was a Native American village where Father Kino established a mission in 1700. Construction of the existing church, which still serves parishioners of the Tohono O’odham Nation, began in the 1780s and was apparently completed in 1797. Recent efforts to restore the church have focused on cleaning the interior, exposing many paintings hidden beneath several centuries of smoke and dirt.
Ongoing work on the exterior of the church includes the replacement of concrete stucco with a recreation of the original lime-and-cactus-juice stucco, which prevents water from becoming trapped in the walls of the structure. This actively used church, widely considered to be the finest example of Spanish colonial architecture in the United States, is open to the public.
The Juan Bautista de Anza National Historical Trail commemorates the route followed by Anza, a Spanish officer, who led an expedition of 198 settlers and 1,000 head of livestock from Sonora to found a presidio and mission at San Francisco Bay in 1775. The route traversed the Santa Cruz Valley, and the final staging area was the Tubac presidio. The expedition opened an overland route connecting Sonora and Alta California, whose missions and presidios were previously isolated. The National Park Service is working with local governments and volunteer groups in Arizona and California to develop the trail as an auto route linking sites related to Spanish colonial history, with portions of the trail developed for hikers, horseback riders, mountain bikers, and bird watchers.
Although the area along the Santa Cruz River from Nogales northward has been a part of the United States for more than 160 years, the influences of Spain and Mexico remain strong. Communities are increasingly looking back and celebrating their Hispanic cultural heritage. Annual events, such as the traditional Christmas Mass at Tumacácori National Historical Park, recall celebrations that took place 100 and even 200 years ago. Sonoran-style cuisine which combines Spanish, Mexican, and local Native American influences, is available in many restaurants throughout the region. Local Spanish and Mexican heritage sites are receiving increased visitation as people seek out a greater understanding of the unique history along the Santa Cruz River.
To learn more about the Spanish and Mexican Frontier read more here.
Desert Farming
Irrigation from surface flows ceased in the late 1800s and early 1900s as water tables dropped and the river channel incised its floodplain in many places. However, irrigated farming has continued throughout the valley through groundwater pumping. Today, the main valley is still an important producer of cotton, wheat, pecans, and other crops.
Native American crops are being cultivated again with Colorado River water from the Central Arizona Project canal. Vineyards and fruit orchards have been recently developed in areas of the watershed with the proper elevations and soils.
With its 3,500-year history of agriculture that continues until today, and its many active crop conservation and reintroduction programs, this region is well-suited to interpret this theme through the framework of a National Heritage Area.
To learn more about Desert Farming read more here.
Corn was an early food staple in the region.
Ranching Traditions
Since the introduction by Spaniards of cattle, horses, and other livestock into the Santa Cruz Valley in the late 1600s, ranching and farming have continued to be two mainstays of the rural economy for more than 300 years. Most of the earliest cattle ranches were established at mission communities, but to attract settlers to the area and thereby increase productivity in the region, the Spanish and Mexican governments also offered substantial land grants. Unfortunately, few settlers actually lived on their land grants for long due to the ongoing threat of Apache attacks. Instead, many ranchers lived in military or mission communities for defense, only venturing out occasionally to visit their ranches and check on their livestock.
This pattern of settlement and ranching persisted until the American Territorial period, when American and Mexican ranchers established new ranches and homesteads throughout the region, often sharing labor and mutual assistance. Today, the interplay of Hispanic, American, Mexican, and Native American ranching continues this historical and living tradition, providing a link to the past and to the future.
Deeply rooted in the Spanish Colonial, Mexican, and American Territorial periods, ranching has been the primary land use of the Santa Cruz Valley for 300 years, whether along the actual course of the Santa Cruz River or along its tributaries and mountain uplands. Ranching today persists as testimony to those Spanish missionaries who introduced cattle, horses, and other livestock, Hispanic and Mexican settlers who established land grant ranches, American families who homesteaded lands that continue in family ownership today, and to all those who endured the many hardships of ranching on the frontier in a harsh environment.
Descendants of these explorers, pioneer settlers, adventurers, soldiers, and even the descendants of Spanish horses and cattle, continue a living tradition and a living landscape in the Santa Cruz Valley that is like no other.
To learn more about Ranching Traditions read more here.
Mining Booms & Ghost Towns
Historians have concluded that the legends of lost mines and treasures of early missionaries are nineteenth-century fabrications and that mining was not of major importance on this part of the Spanish and Mexican frontier. Mining took on greater importance after the region became part of the United States in 1854.
Repeated mining rushes for gold and silver created boomtowns that briefly flourished and then were abandoned. Although a few gold discoveries received considerable interest, silver was the main object of mining in the area. At the end of the 1800s, a collapse in the value of silver and the new demand for electrical wire shifted the area’s focus to copper mining. For more than a century, the region has been one of the most important producers of copper in the world.
To learn more about Mining Booms read more here.
U.S. Military Posts on the Mexico Border
The first U.S. Army post was established here in 1856, soon after the region was acquired from Mexico. The post’s first duty was to protect ranches and mines from Apache attacks, which escalated just before troops were withdrawn at the beginning of the Civil War to be redeployed back East. For a few months in 1862, the Confederate flag flew over the region until Union troops arrived from California and recaptured it following the westernmost skirmishes of the Civil War. In 1865, American soldiers were moved closer to the border to defend it against French troops that had invaded Mexico and occupied Sonora. Between 1866 and 1886, several new posts were established, and this region was the frontline of major campaigns to pacify the Apaches.
A new post was established on the border in 1910, when the Mexican Revolution threatened to spill across into the United States. In 1916, this region was a staging area for the Punitive Expedition that crossed into Mexico in pursuit of Pancho Villa after he attacked a town in southern New Mexico. Until the beginning of the United States’ involvement in the First World War, the military presence was increased by National Guard units mobilized from western states to protect the border. From 1918 to 1933, the border was guarded by African American cavalry and infantry regiments known as “Buffalo Soldiers.”
During the Second World War, airfields established in the region were important training bases. Because of the area’s dry climate, thousands of decommissioned aircraft have been stored here since 1945. Bomber groups and intercontinental missiles deployed here were critical parts of the national defense during the Cold War. Today, Davis-Monthan Air Force Base continues to play an important part in supporting and training U.S. forces and participating in the local economy.
To learn more about Military Posts on the Border read more here.
U.S.-Mexico Border Culture
The valley was viewed by successive Spanish, Mexican, and United States governments as a frontier—a remote and sparsely populated landscape full of potential. The 1854 Gadsden Purchase transferred political control of the area from Mexico to the United States. Former Mexican nationals abruptly found themselves, their land, and their properties incorporated into a different nation, one that spoke another language and practiced different cultural traditions. This exchange did not result in the decline of Mexican customs, but rather the emergence of a new culture in the border region, shared by residents with diverse backgrounds.
Shortly after Mexico and the United States declared an end to the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), the border itself encouraged cooperation between the two nations. The Apache strategy of raiding settlements and then quickly crossing the border motivated the recently adversarial nations to sign an agreement, in effect from 1882 to 1886, allowing pursuit of Apaches across the international boundary by either side. Commerce also linked the former antagonists in many ways. Nogales, Arizona, abuts Nogales, Sonora, on the border, and the two towns were founded together in 1882. Railroad lines starting in Guaymas in Mexico and Kansas City in the United States met in “ambos Nogales” (meaning both Nogales’s). The cities have grown together, sharing resources like water, shops, and firefighters, and neither would exist without the presence of the border.
Dancers at the annual La Fiesta de Tumacácori. Photo courtesy Patrick Christman.
This cooperation has extended up the Santa Cruz Valley, enabling the florescence of a border culture that embraces aspects of Mexico, the United States, and the two Native American tribes that live in the valley.
The impact of cross-border interaction has been powerful along the entire border region, but the distinctive history of the Santa Cruz Valley has led to an especially vibrant legacy, which is active today. Many opportunities for experiencing border culture exist in the area now, through festivals, restaurants, neighborhood tours, and museums.
To learn more about Border Culture read more here.