Laura’s Journal: Tumacácori National Historic Park

Posted on by snukes
The church at Tumacácori mission. Repairs and structural support added recently are visible as smooth patches.
No big stone bricks available? No red velvet drapes? No silver frames? No bas relief stonework? It’s fine. We’ll paint ’em on.
The cemetery out back was as haunting a cemetery as I’ve ever visited. The bodies originally interred here (1700s and 1800s) have been moved elsewhere, but in the early 1900s local people started using the cemetery again. Most tombs are not labeled beyond the wooden cross. The two that are bear dates of 1911 and 1916.
Pomegranate flowers. Did you know??

Saturday, April 24, 2021
TUMACACORI NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK

We drove so far south to reach this site that we could have tossed a frisbee into Mexico. The mission at Tumacácori NHP was established long before that border existed. Even before 1700, Spanish missionaries roamed the Sonoran desert looking to establish Christianity and the Spanish way of life among the indigenous people. The building as it appears today wasn’t built until the early 1800s and was abandoned at the end of the US Mexican War, barely years 50 after construction started. The mission church was meant to be a grand structure in the European tradition, but like so many attempted imports of European culture, many compromises had to be made to account for local resources. Especially interesting to me was how they could not construct the normal frills of a Catholic church – side chapels, gilded décor, fancy high ceilings – so they painted them on instead. It is a laudable effort of compensation, even if from today’s perspective it seems so misguided.

The pomegranate trees were in bloom. They are so beautiful.

Leave a comment