USA--Tumacácori NHP, ASARCO Mission Mine Tour, Mission San Xavier del Bac

We left Nogales at 12:35 PM on Wednesday, 3/4/15 and drove north on I-19 about 16 miles to Tumacácori National Historic Park, (Tomb-a-cock-or-ee) which preserves an old Spanish mission church, San Cayetano de Tumacácori, founded in 1691 by Padre Eusebio Francisco Kino, known as the “Padre on Horseback.”  The original mission location was moved from the east banks of the Santa Cruz River to the west bank of the river in 1751 after devastating Indian attacks and the name was changed to San José de Tumacácori.   The Presidio of Tubac was established in 1752, about 10 miles north, with 50 Spanish soldiers to protect the area from Indian raids.

Tumacácori never had a resident priest since it was a visita of Mission San Gabriel de Guevavi, 12 miles away.  A small adobe Jesuit church was erected at Tumacácor in 1757 on a nearby site and survived for 65 years.  International politics were about to raise its ugly head when in 1767 the Spanish King expelled the Jesuits from all Spanish territories and replaced them with the Franciscan order.  In 1771, Tumacácori became mission headquarters and gained a resident priest for the first time.  The church property was walled-in, adobe dwellings were built for the Indians and the church was refurbished with new decoration in and out. In 1787, Guevavi and another visita, Calabasas, were abandoned due to Indian attacks and dispersal of its Indian converts. 

About 1800 Fray Narciso Gutierrez, a Franciscan, began construction of the present larger church, built and decorated like the larger church of San Xavier del Bac close to Tucson.  In the next years, funds ran out and construction stopped but Indian attacks continued, and in 1801, an Apache attack wiped out most of Tumacácori's livestock.  The Mexican War of Independence from Spain was won in 1821 and church construction resumed, but Spain cut off all funds and work stopped again.  Final phases of construction resumed in 1823, but in 1828, Mexico deported all Spanish-born residents leaving only Mexican priests, who were already scarce.  Tumacácori once again was a visita, with no resident priest!

Next political crisis was in 1848 during the Mexican-American War plus stepped up Apache attacks and a very hard winter caused the Tubac Presidio and Tumacácori to be abandoned 157 years after Padre Kino founded the Mission.  In 1853, the Gadsden Purchase put Tumacácori inside the United States border.  In 1908 Tumacácori National Monument was created by Congress to preserve this historic site including the legacy of Padre Kino!   In 1990 Congress added the closely related, but unfortunately very deteriorated, sites of Guevavi and Calabasas to create Tumacácori National Historic Park.  The remains of the Tubac Presidio are protected as Tubac Presidio State Historic Park by the State of Arizona.  We were fortunate to take an excellent free guided tour of the Tumacácori church, outbuildings and the newly restored orchard!  Visiting takes you back through almost 325 years of Spanish borderlands history!

A little bit of the colorful murals is still visible

In the Museum was a small diorama how the church looked in the 18th century

Tubac today has turned into art colony of sorts with many shops, cafes and of course, the state park.

We spent a pleasant night at the Mountain View RV Ranch in Amado, a few miles north of Tubac.

The goal was to get an early start the next morning so we could be on the 9AM first tour of the day at the ASARCO Mineral Discovery Center in Sahuarita.  The tour of the ASARCO Mission Mine, one of the largest open pit copper mines in Arizona, was excellent with a terrific guide!  It started with a bus ride up to a high overlook of the gigantic open pit copper mine, where we could watch the drills, shovels loading the huge haul trucks that bring the ore to the mill in 320 ton truck loads!!

After 15 minutes at the pit, the bus took us to the mill where we could see the crushers, ball mills and wet grinding mills that grind up the raw ore that's only 0.4% copper and concentrate it by flotation to a powder consistency that is 25-30% copper!  The two huge mill facilities here process a total of about 54,000 tons a day!

Left bottom: flotation process--mixed with pine oill bubbles seem to light up

This concentrate is trucked to ASARCO's Hayden refinery where it becomes large 99.9% copper anodes!  65% of all the copper produced in the United States comes from Arizona.   In addition to copper, this mine also produces enough gold and silver to pay its huge electric bill!  This Mission mine began operations in 1961 and is named after nearby Mission San Xavier del Bac, the most famous and best preserved of all the Kino missions.  The Mission mine facility provides the only public mine tours in Arizona and sees about 20,000 visitors per year.

At the entrance to the parking lot we saw this huge cristate saguaro cactus.

Mission San Xavier del Bac

 After leaving the mine, we drove north about 9 miles to Mission San Xavier del Bac, near Tucson.  This mission was founded by Padre Eusebio Francisco Kino in 1692 at the large Pima Indian village of Bac, now called Wa:k. As usual, it started with a small adobe chapel but since a resident priest was not available, it was only visited occasionally.  The foundations for a larger church were laid by Padre Kino in 1700, but lay vacant for a decade because of the death and sickness of assigned padres and perhaps was never finished. It's a sad fact that almost all of the original churches that Padre Kino personally planned and built were gone in 25 years or less, due to Indian raids and natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods.  In 1751, the Pima Revolt resulted in the burning and pillaging of the church.  Another adobe church was built in 1756, and its foundations are still visible 40 yards to the west of the present church.  After the Jesuits padres were exiled and the Spanish Franciscans took charge in 1768, San Xavier became the headquarters for Fray Francisco Garces and later Fray Juan Bautista Velderrain. 

In 1783 Padre Velderrain began building the current Church with money borrowed from a Sonoran rancher, and construction was completed in 1797.  The architect was Ignacio Gaona, who also designed the Church at Caborca, Sonora.  The workers were a large group of the O'odham or Pima Indians.  The Church was built with fired adobe in the form of a cross with the interior over eighty feet high! With Mexican Independence in 1821, San Xavier became Mexican, not Spanish. The last resident Franciscan left in 1837.  With the Gadsden Purchase of 1854, San Xavier became a part of the United States!  In 1859, the Diocese of Santa Fe, New Mexico took charge and began repairs to the Mission.  In 1866, the Diocese of Tucson was formed and San Xavier became part of the new diocese.  Regular Mass began again.  The Mission School opened in 1872 with the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet teaching. From 1940 to the present, the Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity teach at the K-8 school and reside in the Convent.   A violent earthquake in 1877 damaged walls and structures of the Mission. The Franciscan friars returned to San Xavier in 1913.

In 1905, Tucson Bishop Granjon took a personal interest and began major repairs to stabilize all the structures of San Xavier.  Then in 1939, lightning struck the west tower of the church requiring more repair.  More recently, in 1953 the Mission facade was restored and then in 1963, San Xavier was designated a National Historic Landmark. 

An organization that we personally support, Patronato San Xavier, was formed in 1967 to preserve the structures of San Xavier, both interior and exterior. Patronato funded an extensive 5 year interior restoration and conservation project that brought highly skilled international conservators to the Mission to restore the interior paintings, the retablo, saints and angels and the interior decorative painting on the walls.  A masterful restoration was accomplished to international acclaim. The next project starting very soon will be the restoration of the east tower of the Church.  
Today, Mission San Xavier del Bac is considered the finest example of Spanish Colonial architecture in the United States.  

The interior is absolutely glorious with gold and silver leaf, wonderful warm colors, and over 50 saints in niches around the church.  A reclining San Francisco Xavier figure in the west transept draws many pilgrims to the Mission and many prayers for relief from diseases and accidents have been acknowledged. 

The east transept contains a beautiful shrine to Mary, mother of Jesus and the patron saint of Mexico, Our Lady of Guadalupe.  Hundreds of angels are everywhere in the Church.  The altar is a masterpiece of Mexican baroque and Churrigueresque design. It is thought that most artwork in the Mission was created in the church workshops of Querétaro, Mexico and brought to the Mission on the backs of donkeys! 

There is an excellent Mission Museum, a 20 minute history video and a very complete gift shop which even sells O'odham baskets and other crafts. San Xavier is still a working Catholic parish church with daily Masses and other services for its O'odham parishioners. 

  
Each year, over 200,000 visitors drive nine miles from Downtown Tucson to the Tohono O'odham Reservation to visit Mission San Xavier del Bac!   The Mission is an inspiring place to visit and to study the amazingly beautiful craftsmanship lavished on this Church, which is still being carefully preserved for the future! 

*all timeline facts from the official San Xavier website