June 20, 2025 – Colcha: Stitching Together the History of the Southwest
One of the oldest and most overlooked forms of embroidery in the Southwest is called colcha. Long before store bought kits, pre-stamped cloth, or colorfast thread, women were combining creativity and necessity to create embroidered works that told stories and preserved their culture. Click here for full article.
May 19, 2025 – The Army Laundress
One official position of the army that women could hold was the laundress. Like at many other forts during the 19th century, Fort Lowell enlisted laundresses. These women were often married to enlisted men and had to be approved by the post commander. Fort Lowell Museum has an exhibit on army laundresses that features a wringer and a washboard.
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April 19, 2025 – The Point of Projectiles: What Exactly is Flintknapping?
Come by the Presidio on a Wednesday and you might hear a distinctive tapping, crunch-crack sound. Follow your ears and you’ll run into Wolf, practicing what archaeologists call flintknapping. It’s the process of taking rocks containing high amounts of silica and breaking them down with wood, bone, stone, and sometimes metal tools until they can be used as an arrow or spear point, a knife, or a scraper for processing hides. In the Presidio’s display cases you will find several projectile points lined up as a sort of timeline, one which is a key for dating sites across the Tucson Basin.
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March 20, 2025 – Cochineal, the Little Bug that Sparked Piracy, Smuggling, and Espionage
When Hernán Cortés arrived in the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan, he observed the Aztecs had vibrant red textiles. The red dye came from the cochineal bug found on prickly pear cactus. Cochineal became Spain’s second most valuable export with only silver ahead of it. While it was being used all over Europe, Europeans had no idea how the dye was produced. Its production became one of Spain’s most closely guarded secrets resulting in piracy, smuggling, and espionage as other nations tried to discover the secret!
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March 7, 2025 – The Dark History of Frozen Charlotte Dolls
Artifacts excavated at the Siqueiros-Jácome House (our gift shop and exhibit rooms) offer a unique view into the lives of children in the late 19th century. One doll discovered, currently on display at the museum, is a Frozen Charlotte doll. This somewhat plain-looking doll hides a rather dark backstory.
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