- City:
- Tumacácori, AZ
- Site Type:
- Parks and Recreation, Gardens and Nurseries
- New Deal Agencies:
- Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), Work Relief Programs
- Started:
- 1939
- Completed:
- 1940
- Designer:
- Charles Carter
- Quality of Information:
- Very Good
- Marked:
- No
- Site Survival:
- Extant
Description
The Tumacácori National Monument was set aside by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1908 to protect the ruins of the Mission of San Jose de Tumacacori. In 1918, it came under the administration of the National Park Service and its regional ‘custodian’, Frank Pinkley. Congress created the Tumacácori National Historic Park in 1990, adding the ruins of two nearby missions, Los Santos Angeles de Guevavi and San Cayetano de Calabazas.
Under the park service’s guidance, Tumacácori mission church and its dependencies were stabilized in 1920-21, but intentionally not fully restored. Only with the aid of the New Deal did the park come to take on its present appearance with the addition of surrounding walls, a visitors center and museum in the mission style, and a decorative garden.
Much of the work at the work was done with the help of the New Deal, under several agencies: the Public Works Administration (PWA), Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), Civil Works Administration (CWA), and Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA).
The gardens were created in 1939-40 by CCC enrollees from Camp SP-11 at Saguaro National Park, working under the direction of landscape architect Charles Carter. They are typical of mission compounds, enclosed, laid out geometrically with brick walkways, and with a large fountain in the middle covered with colored tiles.
Source notes
Nicolas Bleser and Anita Badertscher, The 'New Deal' at Tumacácori National Monument, Tumacácori National Historical Park (NPS), n.d. (pamphlet available at visitor's center)
See also:
"The New Deal in Arizona: Connections to Our Historic Landscape," University of Arizona, The New Deal in Arizona Chapter of the National New Deal Preservation Association.
https://www.library.arizona.edu/newdeal/map.html
quote can be found at: https://content.library.arizona.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/NewDeal/id/221
C.W. Short and R. Stanley-Brown. Public Buildings: A Survey of Architecture of Projects Constructed by Federal and Other Governmental Bodies Between the Years 1933 and 1939 with the Assistance of the Public Works Administration. (1939).
https://www.nps.gov/tuma/historyculture/tumacacori.htm
Site originally submitted by Richard A Walker on November 21, 2019.
Additional contributions by Joan Greer.
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