Mission San Jose De Tumacacori, Tubac, AZ

Just down the road from Tubac is the old Mission San Jose de Tumacacori. 

We entered through the visitors Center.  Admission was $10 per person, but free for anyone with a national parks pass.  This was our first glimpse of the Tumacacori church.  

This mission was not only a church, but an entire community that taught European culture to the local people.  This mission included farmland, orchards, workshops and homes.  In the late 1600’s the O’odham people, who lived a very simple life along the River, invited Father Eusebio Francisco Kino to Tumacacori.  Between then and the mid-1800’s priests, soldiers and settlers also began to arrive and built this community.  Some O’odham moved into the mission community and learned much of the European culture.  The O’odham also learned a lot about farming and ranching, and the Spanish soldiers protected the entire community from the raiding Apaches.

A picture of the church in 1868.

By 1912 the church was falling into disrepair.

Today, the exterior of the church has been restored, but the interior is original.

Just outside the church are the community storage room and the cemetery.

The storage room allowed the community to store food and supplies to get them through the winter.

The original cemetery was raided and plundered, but this is what it would have looked like.

The ceremonial room for burial rituals.

Remnants of the original church.

A reconstructed home.

Mesquite and ocotillo branches were used to build the roof.

Mesquite branches and adobe were used in the walls.

Beyond the community, closer to the river, were the orchards and the farm land.

As we were leaving the mission, we stopped to talk to the ranger and asked her if she knew of a good place nearby to disbursed camp.  She was a wealth of knowledge.  She told us to go a little further south to Ruby Road.  A few miles down the road we would encounter a turnoff to the right that would go to Peña Blanca Lake.  She said to go past the lake turn off, and we would come to the national forest camp ground, and just past that, on the left, would be a turnoff with great disbursed camping. She was SO right!  She knew exactly what we were looking for and made the perfect recommendation!