Exploring the Pimería Alta at Tumacácori Mission
May 2021
Preserving the Unfinished, Tumacácori Mission
Instead of hiking in nature, we went to explore Tumacácori National Historical Park, near the Mexican border. The story of Tumacácori Mission goes back to January 1691, when the Jesuit missionary Eusebio Francisco Kino arrived in the area. Tumacácori was one of more than twenty missions Kino established in the Pimería Alta, the frontier that the Spanish developed to expand and secure their northern lands.
At that time, a mission was much more than a church. It was a community designed to implement the European way of living for the native people living on the lands Spain claimed. Missions were busy centers with farms, orchards, masonry and weaving workshops, and homes. Over time, the landscape and culture changed. Around 1800, the residents of Tumacácori began building the church that still dominates the landscape today.
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Mission San José de Tumacácori is a wonderful gem. The grounds and historical mission site are beautiful, and most of the original buildings are still standing. The NPS policy with such buildings is not to reconstruct or “repair” them to a new state, but rather to preserve and protect exactly what is left. The church, however, was never finished due to a lack of funds and the Mexican War of Independence, after which the Mexican secular government dismantled the mission system. Following a brutal winter and constant raids, the mission was finally abandoned in 1848.
