March 20, 2009

March 20, 2009

The blog has been pretty thin lately so I figured we needed to correct the situation. Plus if I am going to get Aimee back in the RV I need to get her mind in the “traveling” mode. I found something we hadn’t seen in downtown Tucson, the Presidio San Agustin. But first I need to bribe Aimee by taking her shopping at the 4th Avenue Street Fair. It has a lot of craft booths that she likes to peruse. After a nice lunch at a historic Mexican restaurant downtown, Aimee can’t complain too much when we walk down the street to the recently recreated Presidio. The Presidio was an adobe fort that the Spanish built in 1775 to defend the area from raids by the Apache Indians that started to migrate into the region. From this humble beginning, Tucson grew to be the capital of southern Arizona. Fortunately (for us) the US bought southern Arizona from Mexico with the Gadsen Purchase in 1853.

After a quick look around, we walk a little further to see the Moorish-influenced Spanish Colonial architecture of the Pima County courthouse and a large statue commemorating Pancho Villa. I am surprised to see a stature honoring Pancho Villa since the US considered him a Mexican outlaw who invaded US territory. I am writing it off as more a testament to Tucson’s former history as a rowdy frontier town.