People and Places

We have done research investigating our heritage, our neighborhoods and our terrain. Gathering this research and carrying it through is sacred to our people and very important to where we all grew up. We have encountered the stories of "A" mountain, our families, local art and artists, neighborhood names, our schools, racism, our streets, our economy, and the future. The eight youth historians on this project began without much experience with computers, layouts or writing and research skills. As our individual skills developed, team unity increased.

Welcome

Essay by John Messina, AIA, Research Architect, The University of Arizona 
Southwest Studies Center and the School of Architecture

Sabino Canyon is one of Southern Arizona's natural treasures.

The Traditional Arts of Tucson's Mexican American Community 

From November 3, 1996, through January 13, 1997, the University of Arizona Museum of Art hosted an exhibit entitled La Cadena Que No Se Corta: The Unbroken Chain. This website presents a virtual recreation of that exhibit and celebrates the traditional arts of Tucson's Mexican American Community.

Definitions alter over time, between people, and beyond borders. Landmasses change as physical and human forces exert pressure upon them. And a region is carved, molded, and defined by people in historical relation to it. In Defining the Southwest , we gather multiple visions of what the Southwest might entail. To quote Reed Way Dasenbrook, "What is the Southwest? For whom is it the Southwest? What is the Southwest southwest of?"

About the Defining the Southwest website

In the spring of 1687, an Italian Jesuit missionary named Father Eusebio Francisco Kino started work among a group of Indians on the far northwest frontier of New Spain. The Indians he visited called themselves "O'odham" or "the People" in their own language and were called "Pimas" by the Spaniards. The region where Kino worked, which he called the "Pimería Alta," or "Upper Pima Country," is now divided between the Mexican state of Sonora and the U.S. state of Arizona. Geographically, most of it falls within the Sonoran Desert region.

In Just Memories, Roy P. Drachman shared his memories from a lifetime in Tucson.

The original volume was printed and distributed in July, 1979. The electronic version was orginally created in December 1997 and the re-designed interface published to the Web in November 2004. Just Memories contributes to preserving Tucson's twentieth century history as experienced by the grandson of a pioneer family. Click on any of the chapter titles that appear at the top of each page to navigate through this electronic text.

A History Of The Tucson Street Railway (1897-1906)

by W. Eugene Caywood in collaboration with Keith Glaab
Outside of the Carbarn

In the late nineteenth century, Tucson was a growing town with a strong desire to project a metropolitan image.

One key to continued development was the establishment of dependable public transportation to move Tucsonans around their newly bustling city. This is the story of the first streetcar line: the horse-drawn Tucson Street Railway.