Tucson: A Short History

by Southwestern Mission Research Center, Mission Center Southwest, Southwestern Mission Research Center

  How do you write a short history about the longest continuously occupied community in the United States?    You don't. You ask the experts to characterize the past with a profound hope its strengths will live into the future.

The persons who have crafted this book are all Tucsonans. None were born here, but all call it home. However this book will be described by those who read it, it is not a book-by-committee but a book-by-consensus. In the authors’ words, “Tucson, we believe, is too subtle to be encompassed by a single mind, too important to succumb to plastic modernity. Tucson is as Tucson was. And Tucson will only be if it recognizes and remembers the strength of its delicate desert setting.”

A Short History focuses on the timeless character and multi-cultural heritage of a southwestern city. It tells the story of what the place is by nature, and what it has become by the presence of man. Its authors treat the environment sensitively, they explore its prehistory, and they describe Tucson's plural cultures through time. This heavily illustrated volume is a statement about a singular community with a hope that its past qualities will endure as the city experiences huge surges in development.
 
Contents
“The Lead Cross Caper,” Charles W. Polzer 
“Ancients & Archaeologists,” Thomas H. Naylor 
“Blackrobes, Black Springs, and Beyond,” Charles W. Polzer
“Enemies and Allies,” Thomas E. Sheridan 
“Sonorenses, Tucsonenses,” Thomas E. Sheridan 
“Territorial Times,” Charles W. Polzer 
“Clouds, Spires, and Spines,” Tony L. Burgess and Martha Ames Burgess
“Images of Tucson—Past and Present,” compiled by A. Tracy Row
Distributed for the Southwest Mission Research Center
 

152 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

Reviews

[Sarah LeRoy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little outdated, but still really interesting and a good history of the Old Pueblo.

[J.D. Steens · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a brief, well-written history of Tucson, from the first Indian communities to the modern-day (early 1980s). That human history is closely tied to Mexico, both pre- and post-Spanish conquest, the ever-present threats from the Apaches to the east, and to a highly challenging natural environment. Tucson was at the northern end of Mexico until the Gadsden Purchase ($10 million for multi-thousands of square miles of northwest Mexico) in 1853. At the eastern end of the Sonoran Desert, with variously forested environments in the surrounding mountains, and desert grasslands and the Chihuahuan Desert to the Southeast, the Tucson area is considered a “biological crossroads.” The book contains maps, pictures and a good bibliography.