Tucson, Arizona

The Tucson region has sustained life for thousands of years, giving life to the Cochise peoples. By the year 300 CE the valley floor of Tucson was farmed by the Hohokam. The modern city itself originates from the Spanish colonial period; it was founded on August 20, 1775, on the east bank of the Santa Cruz River. Don Hugo O'Connor, a soldier of fortune from Ireland of the famed group known as the Wild Geese, fought for Spain in the colonies and found the Tucson basin an excellent location for a fort, strategically superior to Tubac. Multitudinous reasons existed for the founding of the fort: gain new converts for God and taxes for the king, protect the newly blazed north route to California, protect the new converts, and keep encroaching European powers out of the region. Eventually Tucson was officially incorporated as part of the United States in 1854 with the completion of the Gadsden Purchase.

Tucson's establishment as a military fort contributed to its isolation and self-reliance. Small-scale floodplain farming fed the families and soldiers of this fort, creating a symbiotic relationship. This settlement, on the periphery of Mexican thought, endured the Mexican War without hostility, but would become important with the California gold rush at the end of the war. The flux of people to the west, toward California, connected Tucson to the outside world. Tucson, only a small town of 28 families in 1847, saw people from Mexico and the eastern United States travel to California in search of gold. This connected the periphery settlement to the rest of the world. In the final years before Tucson became part of the United States, Mexican soldiers gained rights to land they once protected, ousting older families. Word of the United States taking over reached Tucson families; most were delighted, figuring the Mexican soldiers would leave.

The year 1854 witnessed Anglo, or American-born, settlers making their way to Tucson. The movement, mostly of single adult males, was not in great mass. Some visitors saw life in the region as squalid, most people just eking by, but some saw potential to invest. The few Anglos who came to town had capital and set up dry goods shops, hardware stores, and various businesses. These new arrivals took leadership roles, becoming pharmacists, postmasters, judges, and politicians. Mexicans dominated ranching and farming due to their persistence in the region. Anglos with their capital were able to wedge in and buy up land. Anglo settlers, the minority, dominated commerce and had the majority of the wealth, as they had brought in most of it. Though it was the case that Anglos dominated commerce, Mexicans, Chinese, and African Americans ran stores.

The 1860s witnessed the rise of Anglo commerce in Tucson. Unfortunately, with this rise in Anglo merchants came the fall of the Mexican peso. Anglo merchants devalued the peso, first by 10 percent; then they started providing only $0.75 worth of merchandise for each dollar's worth of pesos. This cut off Sonoran business from the south, and it also caused a movement of Mexicans back to Mexico. The Civil War broke out in this decade, and many of the wealthier merchants, both Anglo and Mexican, left, refusing to sign oaths of allegiance to the Confederacy. For the most part, many were in favor of the Confederacy or any government willing to fight off American Indians in the region. In 1860 there were only 630 Anglos and 8 blacks out of a population of 1,568; that population doubled to 3,224 by 1870.

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