San Xavier del Bac

Called the "White Dove of the Desert," San Xavier Del Bac is one of the most beautiful mission church complexes in the Southwest. The original mission was founded in 1692 by a Jesuit missionary, Father Eusebio Francisco Kino, to ...

Tubac Presidio State Historic Park

Tubac Presidio (San Ignacio de Tubac) was established in 1752 in response to the Pima Indian Rebellion, an uprising to protest forced labor in local mines and ranches. The presidio (fort) was intended to protect the various missions in ...

Tumacácori National Historical Park

Tumacácori Mission (San José de Tumacácori) was founded by Jesuit missionaries in 1691. Constructed in 1757, the original mission included a small church and compound. In 1799 a more imposing church with a painted interior was built by Franciscan ...

Fort Huachuca

Fort Huachuca, constructed in 1877, was one of a chain of forts established to guard southern Arizona against the Chiricahua Apaches, led by Geronimo. It was here that the Army organized an elite strike force that chased Geronimo and ...

Coronado National Memorial

This site commemorates the first major European exploration of the American Southwest, the 1540-1542 expedition led by Francisco Vásquez de Coronado. The expedition was searching for the seven mythical gold Cities of Cíbola rumored to be somewhere north of ...

Fort Bowie National Historic Site

Fort Bowie was built in 1862 in the Chiricahua Mountains to protect the U.S. Mail route and settlers heading west to the California gold fields. The fort served as the base of operations during the Apache Wars (1861-1886), the ...

Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site

“Val-Kill is where I used to find myself and grow. At Val-Kill I emerged as an individual.”

-Eleanor Roosevelt

Val-Kill, the retreat about two miles from Springwood, the “big house” at Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Hyde Park, was the only ...

First Ladies National Historic Site

Americans did not start calling the president’s wife the “First Lady” until some time in the middle of the 19th century. Some people say Zachary Taylor was the first to use the term in his 1849 eulogy on the ...

U.S. Car No. 1

U.S. Car No.1 is the only private coach railroad car specifically designed for the president of the United States. The Pullman Company built the Ferdinand Magellan in 1928, and refurbished the car and presented it (dubbed U.S. Car No.1) ...

Mount Rushmore National Memorial

Every year, the many visitors to Mount Rushmore National Memorial in the Black Hills of South Dakota draw inspiration from the colossal portraits of four outstanding presidents of the United States: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore ...