The Presidio of Tucson

The walls of the Presidio were reported to have run along Washington Street on the north, Church Street on the east, Pennington Street on the south, and Main Avenue on the west. Each side of the Presidio was about 750 feet long.

The wall was reported to have been between 18 inches and 4 feet thick and between 6 and 16 feet tall. We have no contemporary descriptions of the wall; instead, we rely on accounts preserved by people in the 1920s and 1930s and, as a result, we have many conflicting details.

Inside the fortress were homes, barracks, and stables built against the interior walls, a cemetery and church on the east side, a commander's house in the center, and several plazas. A pair of gates pierced the west and east walls, roughly where Alameda Street meets Main Avenue and one on Church Street at Alameda. The wall helped protect the community against attacks by Apaches, but by the 1850s this threat had subsided and the wall was demolished, with many of the bricks serving as building materials for Territorial period homes. The first map of Tucson, drawn in 1862, appears to show the general outline of the wall, especially the north and east sides. The last known standing portion of the wall was torn down in 1918.