October 31, 2025 – Día de los Muertos, When Loved Ones Return
While Día de los Muertos has been gaining popularity worldwide, it is often still misunderstood as “Mexican Halloween.” While both holidays share the belief that the dead can return, Halloween is quite different as it focuses on warding off evil spirits. In contrast, during Día de los Muertos, it is believed the dead return to visit their living loved ones. Click here for full article.
September 20, 2025 – The Ghost of Fort Lowell
In December of 1900, strange reports started emerging of a ghostly figure being seen running around the fort ruins during the night. It did not take long before the story had gained enough traction that the ghost of Fort Lowell started appearing in local newspapers. Click here for full article.
July 28, 2025 – From a Catholic Celebration to Drunken Debauchery: the History of the Festival of San Agustín in Tucson
August 28 marks the feast of the patron saint of Tucson, San Agustín (Saint Augustine). While it is no longer celebrated in Tucson, the Festival of San Agustín was once the city’s largest yearly celebration. Click here for full article.
July 19, 2025 – From the Pioneer Brewery to the Presidio Pale Ale: Tucson’s History of Beer
In May, Barrio Brewing Company released a new limited-edition beer in collaboration with the Presidio Museum. The Presidio Pale Ale celebrates the 250th anniversary of Tucson and is brewed with Amarillo hops. With this beer, the Presidio Museum has contributed to a tradition of beer brewing in Tucson that reaches back as far as 150 years. Click here for full article.
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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