The El Presidio Historic District is where Tucson began as a place of human habitation, a mixture of adobe row houses and Victorian mansions that is several chapters in the city’s history writ in architecture. The district is bounded roughly by Granada on the west, 6th Street on the north, Church Street on the east, and Alameda Street on the south.

Though turned back to desert now, the Royal Presidio de San Agustin del Tucson once stood here, the farthest north the Spanish crown dared to go. The presidio, or fort, had 12-foothigh adobe walls and covered 11 acres, housing a small contingent of soldiers and their families, a population that spent a good deal of its time fearing and fighting Apaches. Much later archeologists discovered that the fort had been built close to a Hohokam site that flourished from about 700–900, proving humans had made their lives on the banks of the Santa Cruz River for as long as nearly anywhere else in the union.

A self-guided tour pamphlet of this district and other downtown-area historic sights is available at the Tucson Visitors Center at La Placita. When the Americans took over in 1856, the fort was dismantled, its walls used to build homes and businesses for new arrivals. As more Anglos settled in, the district became a mixture of adobe row houses and Easternstyle mansions for early 20th century Tucson’s rich and powerful. Many of these old mansions and adobes have been restored and now serve as offices and private residences.

On the district’s western end, the 80-year-old Pima County Courthouse’s (115 N. Church St., 8:30 a.m.–noon and 1–5 p.m. weekdays) sea-green, tiled dome is a landmark of the Old Pueblo’s modest skyline, and it’s worth a walk around the grounds of the city’s government beehive to take in the Spanish Colonial revival touches and, on weekdays, to see downtown at its most industrious. On the weekends, especially in the summer, you’ll likely find the area mostly deserted but still inviting.  Walk across the front courtyard through a few arches and you’ll be in El Presidio Park with its fountains and memorial to the Mormon Battalion, which occupied the presidio briefly in late 1846.

The photogenic Sonoran-style row houses in the Barrio Historico District on the southwest edge of downtown are well adapted to the desert environment. Their front entrances hug the property line (unlike their Anglo counterparts with large front and back yards) to make space for central courtyards hidden from the street, which provide a shaded outdoor living space within the home. Many of the adobes here have been lovingly and colorfully restored and now serve as offices, working galleries, and private residences. Sometimes called Barrio Viejo (the Old Neighborhood), the barrio has been on the National Register of Historic Places since the 1970s. It dates from the mid-1850s and, as its dominant architecture suggests, has traditionally been a Mexican enclave.

Many similar neighborhoods once sprawled out to the edge of the El Presidio District, a large quarter referred to as Barrio Libre (Free Neighborhood), due either to the anything-goes atmosphere in some corners or because the Mexican population was mostly left alone to follow its own rules and culture. Much of the quarter was razed in the late 1960s to make way for the “urban renewal” program that built the Tucson Convention Center (260 South Church Ave., 520/791-4101).

An especially haunting sight here is the El Tiradito Shrine (221 S. Main Ave.). Roadside shrines are common in Southern Arizona even in the most out-of-the-way places, but only one is dedicated to a folk-saint who was, by the church’s standards, an unredeemed sinner. El Tiradito (The Castaway) dates to the 1870s, when Juan Oliveras, a young shepherd, fell in love with his mother-in-law and the two gave in to an illicit passion. They were discovered by her ax-wielding husband, who killed Oliveras and tossed his dead body away on the land that now holds the shrine (such is the tradition, anyway). The church wouldn’t allow the doomed lover to be buried on consecrated land, so the people of the barrio interred him where he was “cast away” and erected a shrine. Some say that if you make a wish at the shrine by night and leave a lit candle, and you find it still burning in the morning, your wish will come true — this is why it’s sometimes called the “Wishing Shrine.”

The Arizona Historical Society Sosa-Carrillo-Fremont House Museum (151 S. Granada Ave., 520/622-0956, 10 a.m.–4 p.m. Wed.–Sat., $3 adults, $2 seniors and kids 12–18, under 12 free), on the grounds of the convention center, exhibits artifacts and tells the history of Tucson’s Hispanic founding families in a circa-1880 adobe house once leased to the territorial governor. Facing Stone Avenue on the eastern edge of the barrio is St. Augustine Cathedral (192 S. Stone Ave., 520/623-6351, www.staugustinecathedral.com), dedicated to Tucson’s patron saint. Built in 1896 and remodeled several times over the years, the church has yucca, saguaro, and horned toads carved into its stone facade and celebrates a mass accompanied by mariachi at 8 a.m. Sunday.

For walking tours of downtown, try Alan Kruse of KruseArizona Tours (4517 E. Patricia Pl., 520/881-1638, www.KruseArizona. com, $15 per person); he dresses in period costume for a two-hour walk around downtown and serves pastry and coffee. Similarly, Julia Benites Arriola of the Arizona Historical Society (949 E. 2nd St., 520/622-0956, $10 per person) serves Mexican pastries and hot beverages on her colorful two-hour tour. The Tucson Museum of Art and Historic Block (520/624-2333, ext. 104, mhayes@ tucsonarts.com, 10 a.m.–4 p.m. Mon.–Sat., and noon–4 p.m. Sun.) offers a 2.5-hour tour for $10, by reservation.