Book E-text

Dust of the Desert

Welcome to this digital version of Jack Weadock's Dust of the Desert: Plain Tales of the Desert and the BorderDust of the Desert was originally published in 1936 by D. Appleton-Century Company, Inc. This digital version was created using optical character recognition scanning from a copy of the 1963 edition published by Arizona Silhouettes. Jack Van Ryder's original illustrations, reproduced in the 1963 version, were scanned and edited for inclusion in this Web version.

Desert Documentary: The Spanish Years, 1767 - 1821

Researcher Kieran McCarty's wrote of this region's heritage as being "firmly fixed in this period, though five different flags have waved over the land since colonial times." His research reports of the day-to-day life of the Spaniards after the founding of Tucson in 1775, the complexities of building a frontier mission church, and the role of Tucson's presidial soldiers during the war for Mexican independence.

Hooves & Rails


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.