History

Water in the Desert For most of the last 4,000 years, the reliable springs, riverflow, and high water table in the Mercado District area sustained an oasis that was the focus of habitation and agriculture. Attesting to Tucson's long agrarian past are numerous irrigation canals found on the Rio Nuevo site by archaeologists, the earliest dating to 2,500 years ago and representing the oldest known canals north of central Mexico. Several canals were built by farmers of the Hohokam culture between A.D. 1000 and 1200. The latest canals date to the 19th century, including the Acequia Primera shown below.

The Mercado District site at the base of Tucson's "A" Mountain is the birthplace of Tucson, and has been inhabited for at least 4,000 years.

It evolved from an early agricultural period village—with small pit houses and a canal system water fields of squash, beans, maize, melons, cotton, and tobacco—to a Spanish Colonial outpost, eventually becoming modern Tucson.

When Jesuit missionary Father Kino passed through the area, he visited the Pima Indian village of the Schook-shon, from which the Tucson name was derived. Kino named the site San Cosme de Tucson. In 1770, the San Agustín del Tucson chapel was built just to the south of the Mercado District neighborhood.

After the nearby Mission of San Xavier del Bac was completed in 1797, a two-story Convento was constructed at San Agustin, as well as a walled mission garden, cemeteries, and a granary, all of which served as a visita to San Xavier del Bac.

On August 20, 1775, Lieutenant Colonel Hugo O'Connor, of the Royal Spanish Army, selected and surveyed the site for construction of the Presidio of San Agustin de Tucson, laying the foundation for the beginning of modern day Tucson. The Presidio site was located on the east side of the Santa Cruz River.

The Presidio was abandoned in the 1820s, and by 1843 was falling into ruin. The Convento survived into the early 1900s. But by 1960, only a few walls remained. Not long after, the City of Tucson bulldozed the area to make room for a landfill.

In 1999, the City began the Rio Nuevo project, which among other goals seeks to reconstruct the historic center of Tucson.

The Mercado District of Menlo Park will re-inhabit the historical birthplace of Tucson, an area which had been the home of many peoples and cultures for the past 4,000 years, yet vacant for the last century.

It is a unique model for redevelopment in downtown Tucson, and new development in select areas of the city's evolving edge.

  
For more information, please contact us.