The Daily Agenda: Reliving history at Tucson’s Mission Garden
Mission Garden is getting ready to unveil a new mural showcasing the area’s history and culture … It was created in collaboration with Native American youth … Another applicant for Kozachik's seat.
If you live in Menlo Park or on the west side of town, you’ve probably noticed the addition of a brightly colored mural to the desert area along South Grande Avenue.
The mural, painted on a wall made from recycled plastic ByBlocks, depicts the natural history of the surrounding area with bold images of wildlife, rain, native farming techniques and the three sisters — corn, beans and squash.
The artwork was designed by young people from the Boys and Girls Clubs of Tucson’s Pascua Yacqui Clubhouse and inspired by the area’s Indigenous roots and their visits to the nearby Mission Garden, a living agricultural museum showcasing the area’s multicultural heritage.
Together with artists Maxie Adler and Paul “Nox” Pablo, a team of volunteers spent the last several months preparing the area, constructing the wall and painting the mural, which will be officially “unveiled” Saturday during a community celebration.
The mural was funded by a National Park Service grant and donors and is a collaboration between the garden, the boys and girls club and the Santa Cruz Valley National Heritage Area. It’s meant to draw attention to the rich history and culture of the valley.
“It’s like a modern-day pictograph. Even today, visitors can come and get a taste of what we value and our culture and what’s important to us through this public art,” said Santa Cruz Valley Heritage Alliance Executive Director Lesley Kontowicz. “How cool would it be if someday, 1,000 years from now, someone will happen upon them?”
For the people involved, the project is significant for a variety of reasons. Its use of repurposed plastic diverted six tons of plastic from landfills, eliminating 18,000 lbs. of carbon dioxide gas.
And the inclusion of Native American artists and youth in the process means that people representing the culture and traditions of original inhabitants of the landscape were a part of the process. This is the second mural created as part of the partnership between the alliance and youth from the Pascua Yacqui clubhouse, with several students involved in the first returning to help out with this project.
“Hiring an O’odham artist (Pablo) was important, since this was originally an O’odham community,” Kontowicz said. “There are some reparations happening now, but I think there’s a lot more to be done.”
The mural’s location is also significant. The Santa Cruz Valley National Heritage Area covers 3,300 square miles of the watershed of the Santa Cruz River that’s located along an ancient trade route and has been home to diverse cultures and communities. The Santa Cruz Valley is one of the country’s longest-inhabited regions, with traces of human occupation dating back more than 12,000 years.
A National Heritage Area is a non-regulatory designation made by Congress to honor and celebrate a place’s contribution to American history while also stimulating economic development and geo-tourism in the region. Santa Cruz received its designation in 2019, but the alliance has been up and running since 2004, working to protect and promote the valley.
National Heritage Areas are different from National Parks and other types of federal designations because they don’t impose zoning or regulations on land use and don’t involve land acquisitions. Instead, it’s a community-based conservation strategy that recognizes that the people who live in the area are uniquely qualified to preserve its resources.
This is certainly the case for the Santa Cruz Valley National Heritage Area, with its centrally located Mission Garden, which is lovingly maintained by more than 300 volunteers.
Mission Garden sits at the foot of Sentinel Peak on the site of the Native American Village of Cuk Son, a sacred place to the Tohono O’odham people. A living history of the area, it includes plots representing both native plants and different periods and cultures in the region, including O’odham farming (before and after European contact,) Hohokam, Spanish, Mexican, Chinese, Yoeme and more.
That’s why the garden’s leadership jumped at the chance to host the mural, although making it happen took a little longer than expected. While the National Park Foundation approved the project in 2021, there was a lot of work to be done to bring it to fruition.
“When it was conceived, it wasn’t fully vetted,” said the alliance’s Kontowicz. “The original idea was to just paint it on one of the garden’s walls, but Pima County owns the site, so they said no.”
At the time (the middle of the pandemic,) the cost of lumber and other construction materials were too expensive to fit into the project budget, with the National Park Foundation funds only covering the cost of painting. So, the project stalled until the group discovered ByBlocks and reached out to the Ward 6 office to purchase some of their own.
Nearly two years after the plan’s approval, the wall was assembled during the hot days of August and September. The next step was the design.
“The students came, took a tour, looked around and conveyed what impressed them about the place to the artists, then the artists created this with the student’s help,” said Mission Garden Executive Director Alyce Sadongei.
From there, each artist took one side of the wall and got to work. Adler painted the side that faces the garden and Pablo the side that faces Grande Avenue.
Organizers are excited to share the mural with the public during Saturday’s gathering, which will include a blessing by local spiritual leaders, a talk by the artists and information about the wall’s construction. With some of the students who helped create the mural also in attendance, Kontowicz is excited to see the community show their support.
Mission Garden’s Outreach Coordinator Kendall Kroesen says he’d like to see more collaborations in the area, saying they have the potential to generate a lot of revenue for the city.
“I’m hoping (the heritage alliance) will be kind of the glue that brings together a lot of organizations,” Kroesen said. “I think that they could really be something that promotes collaborative cooperation with a lot of groups, because a lot of overall economic impact from the region comes from people who hear about the natural resources, the bird watching and the cultural identity of this region.”
Now there’s seven: Miranda Schubert threw her hat in the ring to replace Tucson City Councilman Steve Kozachik, who resigned March 31, the Tucson Sentinel’s Jim Nintzel reports. She and six other people are applying to finish Kozachik’s term, which runs until the end of next year. Schubert ran against Kozachik in 2021 and got 27 percent of the vote. She says she plans to run for the following four-term. The deadline to apply is April 15.
Ticking clock: The University of Arizona should move on from President Robert C. Robbins sooner rather than later, Arizona Daily Star columnist Tim Steller writes. Robbins announced he would leave his position at the end of his contract in 2026, or earlier if officials find a replacement. Steller traces the mistakes Robbins made after the charismatic start to his tenure, from miscalculating student financial aid to hiring a friend despite warnings not to.
Castle Doctrine status quo: Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed a bill that would’ve expanded Arizona’s “defense of premises” to include hundreds of acres of ranch land, Capitol Media Services’ Howard Fischer reports. The sponsor of the bill, Rep. Justin Heap, a Republican from Mesa, talked about migrants crossing farm and ranch land when he explained the bill to legislators. Meanwhile, a supporter of the bill, Sen. John Kavanagh, a Republican from Fountain Hills, said it had “nothing to do with the border” and complained that opponents of the bill “purposely misrepresented” it, even though it was Heap who cast it as related to the border.
Lots of work left to do: City of Tucson agencies helped hundreds of people find permanent housing last year, but they are still far behind what’s needed, Arizona Public Media’s Hannah Cree reports. The annual report from the city’s Department of Housing and Community Development showed progress since 2022, but also that more than 20,000 people applied for housing vouchers. The city has about 1,200 units of affordable housing in the planning stages.
Road update: Tucson officials are holding an open house so the public can learn about the status of the project to widen Grant Road to six lanes from Alvernon Way to Swan Road, with landscaped medians and continuous sidewalks. Granite Construction is planning to start work on the project in May, officials said in a news release Monday. The open house will be Saturday at 11 a.m. in a vacant lot at 4010 E. Grant Road.
Candidates step up: Pima County isn’t the only one with competitive races for county supervisors this year. The races for all three Santa Cruz County supervisor seats are chock full of candidates, the Nogales International’s Angela Gervasi reports. And just like in Pima County, the race for sheriff has more than a handful of hopefuls trying to unseat the incumbent.
4 minutes 28 seconds: The maximum duration of totality of yesterday’s 2024 solar eclipse anywhere along its path, according to Astronomy.com. By comparison, the maximum length of totality for the last total solar eclipse, which took place in 2017, was just 2 minutes 40 seconds.