Tumacacori.
For years, it has served as a stopover for those traveling between Mexico and Southern Arizona.
Father Kino passed through what was originally a Pima settlement in the late 1600s, founding mission San Cayetano de Tumacácori on the east bank of the Santa Cruz River in January of 1691. The next day, Mission San Gabriel was founded at Guevavi, 15 miles upriver.
But the mission we see today is not the one Kino founded, but a replacement built more than 100 years later.
Even later in time, Tumacacori would beckon those traversing what we once called the Nogales Highway.
Families — many of them with longtime ranching roots in the area — built bars, restaurants and other businesses to lure the weary traveler.
When Interstate 19 opened in 1979, Tumacacori was bypassed. The old Nogales Highway became a frontage road.
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Even so, many of the old-time businesses on this road survived — still run by the same families. Other enterprises sprang up as well.
Just an hour south of Tucson, Tumacacori is well worth a visit.
Tumacácori Mission
Graffiti - some of it supplied by pioneer Tucsonans - is the last thing you'd expect to see inside the mission at Tumacácori - one built more than 100 years after Father Kino passed through.
This church "was heavily damaged in the earthquake of 1887," says facilities manager Steve Gastellum. "It took the roof off. Dirt piled up. People used to ride their horses in here."
Sure enough, 10 or so feet up on the walls, you can still make out the faint scrawls.
In 1908 President Theodore Roosevelt declared the mission a national monument. Now a National Historical Park, the mission replaced the one Father Kino built in 1691,which no longer exists.
The beginnings of the mission we see today began after a Pima uprising against Spanish settlements in 1751. Kino's mission was resettled on the west bank of the Santa Cruz.
About 1800, Fray Narciso Gutierrez started building a large church to replace that modest mission - a task that took several decades.
Mission San José de Tumacácori is the church we see today.
Though its bell tower was never capped, the mission - with its embellished facade, carvings and statuary - was impressive. But in 1848, Apache raids and a hard winter drove the last residents out of Tumacácori and out of nearby Tubac.
Time, vandalism and the Sonoran earthquake of 1887 all helped reduce the mission to little more than ruin.
And ruin it remains - though even that takes some doing. "We don't restore, we just keep it intact," says exhibit specialist David Yubeta.
Yubeta, who's been here since 1985, heads a preservation crew that makes and replaces adobe blocks on site. Each block weighs 63 pounds, dry.
Mission walls are 5 feet thick; the bell tower walls 9 feet thick. Lime plaster covers the walls inside and out. But no cement is used to stabilize the adobe.
Unlike the restoration going on at San Xavier del Bac, this mission, says Yubeta, "is to be protected in perpetuity as a ruin."
Not that other improvements haven't been made over the years. In 1937, workers built the visitor center and patio. A new mission roof, similar to the one that caved in the earthquake, was added in 1940.
The museum has undergone a recent upgrade, featuring dioramas dating back to the 1930s, as well as statuary that long ago graced the church.
Inside the church, which gets 40,000 visitors a year, you can still make out the faint blue paint and stenciling.
"This church has more use of stencils that any other church in the Kino chain," says Gastellum, whose parents were married here in 1939.
Santa Cruz Chili and Spice Co.
It began as a failure. At least that's the word from Jean England Neubauer, whose rancher father, Gene England, started planting mild Anaheim chiles at his farm near Amado in the early 1940s.
When buyers failed to appear, he dried and ground the chiles into a powder that local grocers quickly snapped up.
That was the beginning in 1943 of Santa Cruz Chili and Spice Co., whose products - including a chile paste England also developed - are sent to distributors and restaurants all over the country, but are sold in grocery stores only in Southern Arizona.
"We process 200,000 pounds of fresh chiles in a season," says Neubauer, company owner.
The chiles are now grown and processed in the Sulphur Springs Valley through a partnership with the Curry Seed and Chile Co., which specializes in chile genetics.
A warehouse and a chile grinder remain at Amado, and chile powder and spices are also packed at the company's spice center in Tumacacori.
Here, visitors can sample various salsas made by the company, purchase a wide variety of gourmet foods, cookbooks, spices and herbs, and browse the Western museum that documents the area's rich history, including that of Neubauer's family.
In 1931, Gene England came to Arizona with a résumé that included cattle wrangling, wildcatting in the oil fields, stunt riding in early Western movies and flying his own airplane.
He put up that airplane, as well as a set of pearl-handled pistols, as collateral for the Rock Corral Ranch, on the eastern slopes of the Tumacacori Mountains.
In 1942, he married Juliet "Judy" Kibbey, who came from a prominent Mexican ranching family. Her father, William Beckford Kibbey, a one-time Harvard student, came West at the turn of the 20th century and went to work in the mines near Cananea, Sonora.
In Sonora, he went into partnership with Ramón Elias as owners of the 60,000-acre Rancho El Alamo.
To guard against roaming bandits, Kibbey built a castlelike fortress to protect his family.
In 1912, he married Josefina Mix y Escalante. Their daughter, Juliet - Neubauer's mother - attended Bryn Mawr College, then returned home, where she met and married Gene England.
"It was my mother who created this little museum in the early 1970s," says Neubauer. Do drop in.
Details
Santa Cruz Chili and Spice Co., 1868 E. Frontage Road.Open 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturdays, switching to 3 p.m. summer Saturday closings after Memorial Day. Closed Sundays. 1-520-398-2591.
Wisdom's Cafe a smart stop
Yummy lunch-bucket fare may have been the spur that led to Wisdom's Cafe, a family-owned restaurant in business since 1944.
"My dad got a job working construction on the old Nogales Highway," says Herb Wisdom, son of restaurant founders Howard and Petra Gomez Wisdom.
"He would take burros to eat for lunch. His co-workers wanted a bite. Pretty soon he was taking burros to them," says Herb.
Today Wisdom's, offering lunch, dinner, and a full bar, serves up to 300 diners on a busy day. About half order the restaurant's trademark dessert: the fruit burro - deep-fried, dusted with sugar and cinnamon, and served with a scoop of ice cream.
Good enough, it turns out, to be written up in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
"It's the only dessert we serve," says Celeste Wisdom, who now owns the restaurant, along with husband, Cliff Wisdom, Herb's son.
The cafe, which began at the family home on property gifted to Petra by her father, also featured a roping arena where Howard hosted bulldogging and rodeo events.
When Interstate 19 opened in 1979, however, business dried up. The following year, Herb and wife, Irene, returned from California and took over.
Herb had been in law enforcement. And Irene, though born in Nogales, initially came back "kicking and screaming."
"I knew nothing about cooking, still don't," says Irene, laughing.
Well, somebody does back in the kitchen. The cheese enchilada I had was luscious, as was my peach burro - half of which I took home.
Not that it was instant success after Herb and Irene took over.
"We struggled for two years," says Herb, who now mans the bar and, like several other family members, pitches in where needed.
Everything changed, says Herb, the day Green Valley community organizer Merl Peek showed up in 1982.
"He said, 'If you are non-smoking, I will have all our meetings from Green Valley here.' " Today, says Herb, Green Valley brings in 90 percent of their business.
That sure seemed to be the case the day I showed up for lunch. Had to wait for a table, along with that tortilla-wrapped fruit burro - and a scoop of family history.
Details
Wisdom's Cafe, 1931 E. Frontage Road, open Monday-Saturday 11 a.m.-3 p.m. and 5 -8 p.m. Closed Sundays. The restaurant will also close the first three weeks in June for routine maintenance. 1-520-398-2397.
Old Tumacacori Bar
It's got a moose head, a pool table, about a thousand empty whiskey bottles in various shapes and sizes, and a history definitely worth lifting a glass to.
Stop in at the Old Tumacacori Bar and you just might run into owner Abe Trujillo, 81, who just celebrated his 60th year pouring the cold ones here.
He's also been known to cool a few hotheads over the years.
"My worst fight was when four football players from the U of A stopped here in the '50s," says Trujillo, who lives next door to the bar.
"I was closed. They broke my door down, my beautiful door." Trujillo, who also served as a Santa Cruz County deputy sheriff for 19 years, did what he had to do: "Before you know it, one's on the floor. Then another one. They all 'slipped' down."
That kind of toughness came early on for Trujillo, whose father died when Abe was 12. Already a veteran of serving sodas and making sandwiches, young Abe instructed his mother, Guadalupe, in how to make the drinks.
Originally from a ranching family, Abe's father, Terso Trujillo, later built a store and gas station on the old Nogales Highway. "We lived in back," says Abe.
A couple of years after Prohibition ended, Terso Trujillo opened the bar.
Soon as he turned 21, Abe took over the bar, which in later years has been tended by his daughter, Dolores Riggan, and her daughter, Charlie Trujillo.
Two weeks ago, more than 600 showed up to celebrate Abe's birthday - and six decades of tending bar, Charlie reports.
Over the years, everyone from John Wayne to Grace Kelly has also stopped by, says the family. And back in the early '90s, a high-fashion model shoot was done here.
Charlie has the proof, too, the February 1992 issue of Bazaar magazine, with models prancing around on the bartop.
Still, I wouldn't try that stunt if Abe's tending bar.
Details
Old Tumacacori Bar, 1900 E. Frontage Road, open 2 p.m.-2 a.m. daily. 1-520-398-1227.
Tumacacori Mesquite Sawmill and Gallery
From roots to limbs, they use just about every bit of the mesquite tree at the Tumacacori Mesquite Sawmill and Gallery, turning out everything from $8 crosses to $10,000 doors.
The trees, whose lumber is neatly stacked on shelf after shelf, come from Las Cienegas National Conservation Area, which is harvesting many of its mesquites to restore the area to natural grasslands.
"These trees would be harvested anyway," says Art Flores, who along with wife, Valerie, bought the 28-year-old business eight years ago.
"I was in the corporate world, working for Otis Elevator for 20 years and Val was 20 years in federal law enforcement," says Art, who moved here from Tucson. "I quit the rat race and then created my own little rat race down here."
Customers range from architects, designers and craftsmen to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, Tubac Golf Resort and Spa, and San Xavier del Bac, for its restoration work.
Stop by their showroom for an idea of some of the items they can produce - furniture to cutting boards.
Details
Tumacacori Mesquite Sawmill and Gallery (www.mesquitedesign.com) is open to the public, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Saturday. Closed Sundays. 2007 E. Frontage Road. 1- 520-398-9356.
Other spots to visit
• Tumacacori Outpost and Antiques. Operated by former California antique dealers Jessica and Leandro Ramirez, the store is crammed with antiques and bric-a-brac. Open 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday. 1892 E. Frontage Road. 1-520-398-9626.
• Tumacacori Mission Restaurant. Here 23 years, the restaurant offers fresh Greek food as well as Mexican specialties. Most popular dish: the moussaka. Open 11:30 a.m.-8 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday. Closed Mondays. 1896 E. Frontage Road. 1-520-398-9038.
• Lily's Home and Garden. Four years ago, owner Lyle Collister sold the Santa Rita Lodge in Madera Canyon and rented a studio to paint in Tumacacori. That studio is now Lily's Home and Garden, offering original paintings, floral designs and local handcrafted items. 1932 E. Frontage Road. Open 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. Call for summer hours: 1-520-398-3134.
• The Spanish Horse Gift Gallery. Offers Mexican pastries and coffee, as well as Mexican furniture, Talavera pottery and Southwestern jewelry. Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily. 1890 E. Frontage Road. 1- 520-398-2557.
Did you know
More than 90,000 adobe blocks were used to build the Franciscan church at Tumacácori between 1800 and 1822.
Info available
A 15-minute video is available in the museum, as well as a self-guiding tour book. Hours are 9 a.m.-5 p.m. daily. Admission is $3, ages 16 and older. 1891 E. Frontage Road. 1-520-398-2341.
