Tubac Presidio State Park

The Tubac presidio was founded in 1752 by the Spanish and is the oldest European settlement in what would become the state of Arizona.  The second commandant of the presidio, Juan Bautista de Anza II, was charged with finding a land route to California, and his second expedition to California resulted in the founding of San Francisco in 1776.

After Mexican independence, troops were withdrawn and the town left to languish.  In 1849, Apaches killed all the remaining inhabitants, but the town sprang to life again in 1854 after prospectors found silver and gold near here.  In 1860, Tubac was the largest town in Arizona, but the troops departed after the start of the Civil War, leaving it open again to Apache raids.  It never recovered after the war was over; the railroad went to Tucson and prospectors went to Tombstone.  On the verge of becoming a ghost town in the 1950s, artists began to move in, turning the town into a tourist shopping mecca. 

The state park is primarily a museum, so there's not much to take a photograph of.

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