Roadside Rest

In Tucson's Long History, What You 'Cs' Is What You Get

Cooke. Crook. Carr. Kitchen, and Kino. It seems an oddity that names bearing the hard sound of the third letter of the alphabet symbolize the beginning and maturing of Arizona's second-largest city, Tucson.

Paradoxically, the C that occurs in the city's name itself is soft if not silent.

Three decades before the birth of George Washington, Spain had its holy man in Tucson. Jesuit priest Eusebio Francisco Kino roamed "the rim of Christendom" establishing more than 24 missions across Sonora, Baja, and Arizona in a parish of 50,000 square miles.

In 1700 he blessed the foundation stone of what would become San Xavier del Bac, surviving today as both a working mission and a magnificent example of 18th-century Spanish colonial architecture.

Mexico's flag was flapping over "The Old Pueblo" - Tucson - when the nearly 400-man Mormon Battalion appeared on the horizon in December, 1846. Tucson extended Mexico's claim to territories extending as far as today's Oregon and Wyoming.

Just think of what was at stake. The United States and Mexico were at war. American forces in California desperately required reinforcements.

"Turn back," ordered the Tucson, Mexico, commander. "Load muskets," responded Capt. Philip St. George Cooke, head of the ragtag U.S. citizensoldiers. Cooke's troop noisily charged into town, only to find it deserted. In time a series of such actions along the borderlands and into California acquired for America the entire tier of Western lands including Colorado, Utah, and Nevada.

Pete Kitchen, Kentuckian, first saw Tucson in the late 1850s. He found a town described by a California newspaper as "dilapidated, spread out over a large surface with heaps of dried mud in the streets. The people drink whiskey and deal monte and they always fear strangers."

Pete took his Mexican bride, Rosa, to his ranch south of Tucson. To the marriage, Pete had brought an earthen fort with a sentinel parapet, skills with firearms, and resistance to Apache raiders. Doña Rosa possessed a strength of equal value: her numerous Mexican relatives and allies.

ranch south of Tucson. To the marriage, Pete had brought an earthen fort with a sentinel parapet, skills with firearms, and resistance to Apache raiders. Doña Rosa possessed a strength of equal value: her numerous Mexican relatives and allies.

"Men plowing in the bottoms are obliged to carry rifles, cocked and ready, slung to the plough handle," reported a visitor. "Every man and boy, and indeed, the women too, go armed. Everything speaks of a land of warfare and bloodshed."

Despite all the precautions, 12-year-old Santiago (James), Pete and Rosa's only son, was killed by raiders in a hayfield not far from home. Still Doña Rosa refused to leave. For years afterward, she lighted candles above the graves of her murdered kin and slain Indian friends. "We are all God's children," she would say.

Credited with ending the ☑ Indian wars in Arizona was Gen. George Crook, who wore a pith helmet and rode a mule named Maude. True, Crook led half the combat forces of a united nation of 50 million; his guerrilla opponents represented a casual alliance of small bands of Apaches.

Yet Mangas Coloradas, Cochise, and Geronimo raided almost at will across a familiar rugged terrain as large as Germany and France combined.

Crook fought fire with fire. He enlisted Apaches as Army scouts. And although it was left to others to accept the final surrenders, Crook is the man history recognizes as the pacifier of the Far Southwest.

From all that tragedy and travail, could a genteel and refined community emerge? Even as late as 1930, Tucson's population was just slightly more than 32,000. But in the next 30 years, it grew nearly seven times to about 212,000. All around, there stretched the arid land condemned by Kit Carson: "A wolf couldn't make a living on it."

Enter William H. Carr.

Bill Carr perused the desert 50 years ago with fresh, wondering eyes. Enraptured, he determined to found an institution that would celebrate the marvels of the land of little water. In partnership with a retired Nature magazine editor, Arthur N. Pack, Carr oversaw the opening of the ArizonaSonora Desert Museum in a refurbished adobe ruin 14 miles west of Tucson.

Respect the American and Mexican deserts, preached Carr. Understand them. Preserve them. For some five decades, the desert museum has functioned as the conservation conscience of all the arid expanses of both nations. Consistently ranked among the great zoos, the museum interprets 317 species of animals and 1,386 species of plants to hosts of admirers from the world over.

Would Tucson's other cultural superlatives prosper so today, had it not been for the extraordinary success of the ArizonaSonora Desert Museum? Would a front-rank cancer research center work such wonders at the University of Arizona? Would Tucson nowadays care for the world's largest assemblage and variety of astronomical telescopes? Would Tucson's premier centers of luxurious leisure, history, opera, symphony, space theater, art, and photography have progressed so well?

Unlikely.