Contents: -Email from friend with good historical background -Various related news articles _____________________ To: bhance@u.arizona.edu Subject: RE:Presidio bryan, your question brought more to mind. the original walled fort built by the spanish soldiers downtown was built right on TOP of the Tohono O'Odaham village that exisited at the time. it was a power & conquest thing to signify who was in control.the present court house,city hall,etc are all in turn built over the top of all that.it's not generally spoken of going that far back in history...also, there is some kind of 'indian curse' on the area for having torn down their village... main tucson library or u of a's special collections might have something about this time period. _____________________ Hey Bryan, Spent part of my lunch & a break today to do some research. In 1954 a U of A research team dug down 1 1/2 foot at 2 W. Washington Street and hit a corner base of the original forts wall. They went down another 1 1/2 feet and hit a prehistoric (500 AD) large sunken pole house.On the floor was a firepit, broken pottery,etc. The fort was over ten acres within the walls. That was only the Northern portion of the ancient village... That entire downtown area is built on top of the ancient indian village! It's all under there, the original human habitation of this area! _____________________ Fountain excavators gush upon finding presidio wall Friday, December 11 1992 Jim Erickson The Arizona Daily Star The Arizona Daily Star Archaeologists have unearthed a 15-foot section of Tucson's presidio wall in the courtyard of the Old Pima County Courthouse. The adobe wall was discovered Wednesday beneath the foundation for a courtyard fountain that was removed in the mid-1930s. The fountain foundation was located in October during an earlier search for the presidio wall, which dates to about 1783. "It appears that the fountain was built on top of the wall, and that they destroyed part of the wall in 1929 when they put in the fountain," said Pima County Archaeologist Linda Mayro. "We're delighted that we found it, because this confirms for us that this section of the presidio wall still exists - at least, in part - and maybe it shows that persistence pays off," Mayro said. The northeast corner of the wall was located in 1954 near the corner of Church Avenue and Washington Street. The southeast corner is marked by a brass plaque on the floor of the Pima County Treasurer and Assessor Office that reads: "This disc marks the southeast corner of the old adobe wall that protected Tucson from the Indians in the early days - prior to 1845." The archaeologists drew a line between the two corners to determine the approximate location of the east presidio wall. That line passed through the Old Courthouse courtyard, and ground-penetrating radar confirmed the presence of a buried wall-like structure there. So two 3-foot-wide trenches were sunk in the east half of the courtyard in mid-October, and an adobe wall was found about 2 feet down. "The signature from the radar was so strong that we perhaps felt too confident that it might be the presidio wall," Mayro said. Actually, it was the east wall of the old Pima County Jail, built in 1881 and torn down in 1929. "At the end of October, we were all disappointed because we were in the same position as when we started - not having a real good idea where the wall was," Mayro said. The second phase of the excavation began in the west half of the courtyard on Dec. 2, funded by $13,000 from Pima County. Last Friday, the dig was rained out, and team leader Homer Thiel of Desert Archaeology, a Tucson contract-archaeology firm, spent the day sorting through old files at the Arizona Historical Society. He came across a sketch map of the courtyard area from 1929, when the foundations for the old courthouse and the fountain went in. The map, drawn by city engineer Donald Page, shows the fountain on top of the adobe wall and the courthouse foundation intersecting it in six places, Mayro said. The county plans to build a replica of the 1929 fountain on the original site, and on Wednesday the fountain foundation was uncovered to determine if it's still structurally sound. "With the sketch map in hand, we pretty much expected that when we pulled off the sidewalk to expose the fountain foundation, the wall should be in the vicinity," Mayro said. "And after we pulled away some dirt, the adobe bricks started to show." About 3 feet below the grass of the courtyard, the top of a 45-inch-high section of adobe wall was found. The adobe bricks are 22 inches long, 11 inches wide and 3.5 inches high, with mud mortar. A stone footing at the base of the wall appears to be made of river rocks, Mayro said. The east presidio wall appears to run beneath the north-south sidewalk that bisects the courtyard. The exposed portion of the wall will be covered with protective fabric, then backfilled. Digging for gas line trench downtown unearths remains of 9 early Tucsonans Thursday, January 23 1992 Joe Burchell; The Arizona Daily Star The Arizona Daily Star The remains of six adults and three children - believed to have been residents of the Tucson presidio up to 215 years ago - were unearthed this week by workers digging a trench for a downtown gas line. Yesterday, hundreds of people, including two school classes on field trips to the downtown Tucson Public Library, stopped to watch as archaeologists carefully scraped and brushed dirt away to expose human bones, some no more than a foot below the asphalt. Archaeologist Michael Faught of Desert Archaeology Inc., said the "relatively well-preserved" skeletons are believed to date to between 1776 and 1850, when the presidio was occupied. He said the location, along West Alameda Street just north of the Old County Courthouse, is consistent with the suspected location of a chapel and cemetery at the east end of the presidio. The trenching also uncovered evidence of an approximately 1,200-year-old Hohokam pit house just east of the cemetery at Alameda Street and North Church Avenue. Excavations at the pit house have turned up pieces of pottery from the Rillito Period of the Hohokam, around A.D. 800, and the arm from a clay doll and animal bones, Faught said. Work on the gas line has stopped while archaeologists remove the bones and other artifacts. They are expected to finish this week. Trish Castalia, operations director for Desert Archaeology, said the skeletons probably will be turned over to the University of Arizona to determine more precisely when the people died, their ages, sexes and ethnicity and possibly how they died. Faught said the bodies appear to have been covered with lime and buried without caskets. He said one of the skeletons has what may be rosary beads around its neck. Castalia said the remains eventually would be given to the Catholic Diocese of Tucson, or the Tohono O'odham Tribe for reburial, if it turns out the people were Indians. Marc Martinez, a Southwest Gas inspector, said workers first located the pithouse Monday when they were "potholing," or digging exploratory holes to check for possible archaeological sites, before the actual trenching started. The first skeletons were found during the excavation of the pit house. Further excavation along the path of the trench turned up more skeletons on Tuesday and yesterday, he said. Martinez said the company hired Desert Archaeology to monitor the project because Southwest Gas was aware of the high potential for finding an archaeological site in the area. Faught said remains previously were uncovered during the excavation for the YMCA building, cater-cornered from the site, and there are reports, although not well-documented, of remains found during work on the street and the courthouse. The presidio wall also is known to have run through the area. Faught said the find could be significant in helping to map the configuration of early Tucson and in confirming earlier reports about the Hohokam site. He said it also will help to better predict the location of other archaeological sites that might be affected by future work. Although the cemetery is believed to extend well beyond the gas line trench, Castalia said, there are no plans to remove any more remains. "We will only remove those bodies that have been disturbed by the project. We hope to disturb the cemetery as little as possible," she said. Martinez said the delay is not a problem for the company, which has shifted its workers to other downtown projects. "It's part of history. Once they get done and remove what they need to remove, we can come in and put our line in," he said. Presidio puzzle can send you up a wall Friday, 10 April 1998 METRO/REGION 1B By Jim Erickson THE ARIZONA DAILY STAR So is it, or isn't it, the presidio wall? Experts gathered on the west side of City Hall yesterday to discuss the adobe wall poking up from the bottom of an archaeological trench there. Researchers who dug the hole suspect the wall is a 5-foot segment of the fortification that surrounded the Tucson presidio more than 200 years ago. Several observers said yesterday that there's evidence for and against the wall conjecture. But one expert gave it a definite thumbs down. ``That's not the wall. I think your headline could be `Archaeologists jump to conclusions again,' '' said James Ayres, chairman of the Tucson-Pima County Historical Commission. Ayres said the wall could be part of an adobe structure built after the presidio period. Tucson's presidio wall was completed in 1783. The Center for Desert Archaeology uncovered the buried adobe blocks while searching for the western presidio wall just west of City Hall. The square wall was 750 feet on a side, and its remains are buried beneath a section of downtown roughly bounded by Church Avenue, Pennington Street, Main Avenue and Washington Street. Archaeologists found two layers of orange adobe bricks on top of a wider layer of brown adobe brick. The orange layers are 19 inches wide, and the brown base layer is about 32 inches wide. Bill Doelle, president of the Center for Desert Archaeology, said the brown base layer could be a footing for the presidio wall, which was 8- to 12-feet high. ``This is the wall that we think has a strong possibility of being the presidio wall,'' Doelle said. The northeast corner of Tucson's presidio wall was located in 1954 during an excavation led by Emil Haury. The portion of the wall found there was about 3 feet thick from the ground up, Ayres said. It did not have a wide base and a narrower upper section, which argues against the structure found near City Hall, he said. ``They would have been fairly consistent in how they constructed it,'' Ayres said. ``This is the foundation of some building that was here historically, and not the presidio wall.'' The public can examine the evidence at the site during an open house from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday and Tuesday. The trench is on the west side of City Hall, 255 W. Alameda St. Tom Peterson, chief curator at the Arizona Historical Society, said the remains of the western wall may not be anywhere near the current trench. ``We've always assumed that the west wall was neatly aligned with Main (Avenue), but it's very circumstantial,'' Peterson said. ``We don't have enough information to know where that wall is.'' Mark Santiago, collections manager at the Arizona Historical Society, said he would be convinced that the 5-foot slab is part of the presidio wall if archaeologists sank another trench 20 yards to the north and found another piece of the north-south wall. ``If you could find one or two sections to the north, it (the presidio wall) would be the only contiguous structure of that size from that period,'' Santiago said. The trench will be filled in next week, and there are no immediate plans for further digging. George Teague, a National Park Service archaeologist, said the structure near City Hall does not resemble the wall of the Tubac presidio, which dates to about the same period. The Tubac wall used a cobble footing with adobe blocks on top of the rocks, said Teague, who worked on a 1975 excavation of the Tubac presidio. ``That doesn't necessarily indicate that this is not the (Tucson) presidio wall, but it's something to take into consideration,'' Teague said. The $20,000 Tucson presidio wall dig was funded by the Arizona Humanities Council, the city of Tucson and the Center for Desert Archaeology. Tucson was an adobe fort when San Xavier was finished Sunday, 24 November 1996 NEWS 4A THE ARIZONA DAILY STAR NOTE: SECOND OF THREE STORIES ON MISSION SAN XAVIER DEL BAC RESTORATION Tucson in 1797, when the mission was completed, wasn't much of a tourist destination. It was an isolated settlement of about 1,000 people clustered for protection around and inside the walled Spanish presidio of San Agustmn del Tucson, established in 1775. The adobe presidio walls, built for protection against Apache raids, were 3 feet wide at the base and 10 to 12 feet high and enclosed an area of about 10 acres. Remnants of the huge wall have been excavated in downtown Tucson. Inside the compound was a collection of adobe buildings to house and support Tucson's 100 or so soldiers. Backed up against the wall, so their roofs could be used as ramparts during attacks, were the small dwellings of soldiers and settlers. Other buildings inside the wall included the commandant's house, a small chapel, storerooms and offices, a community well, separate stores for civilians and military personnel, and a jail. Scattered over about 2 square miles outside the walls lived various settlements of Indians, including Apaches Mansos, or ``Tame Apaches,'' and ancestors of the present-day Tohono O'odham. In 1804, Spanish Capt. Josi de Zzqiga, commander of the Tucson presidio, put together a report on Tucson that probably reflects the way the place was seven years before. It was a self-sustaining, agrarian community; most of the men farmed or raised livestock, Zzqiga said. They grew corn, wheat, beans and vegetables, but unlike today, no cotton. There were 3,500 head of cattle in the area, 2,600 sheep and 1,200 horses. ``No gunpowder, chinaware or glass is manufactured,'' he added, and ``no brandy, whiskey or tequila is distilled.'' The only local resource was a lime pit, Zzqiga said, and the only public work ``truly worthy of report'' in the region was the Missisn San Xavier del Bac.