August 20th Park

Tucson counts its birthday from August 20, 1775, the day a Spanish officer named Hugo O'Conor marked out a presidio here and ordered the garrison moved up from Tubac. But the ground was not empty: the fort went up beside a long-standing O'odham village on the Santa Cruz, the northernmost outpost of Spain in what is now Arizona. Within a year Juan Bautista de Anza's expedition passed by on its way to found San Francisco. This small downtown park keeps the founding date in its name.

What the plaque says

This park is a memorial to the founding of Tucson. On August 20, 1775, Lt. Col. Don Hugo Oconor, Commandant Inspector of the Frontier Provinces of New Spain, in the company of Fr. Francisco Garces and Lt. Juan Carmona officially established the location of a Spanish Presidio on the site of a very old Indian village. As part of a reorganized frontier defense plan, he ordered the transfer of the Spanish garrison from Tubac to the new presidio, San Agustin del Tucson, the northernmost outpost of Spain in Arizona.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tucson — steps away
  The Old Pueblo — four thousand years of farming under the sky islands
• Mission San Xavier del Bac — 8.1 mi
  The White Dove of the Desert — the finest Spanish Baroque church in the country
• Saguaro National Park — 21 mi
  The giant cactus, and the O'odham who count it as kin

More markers nearby

• Commemorating the Raising of the First American Flag within the Walled City of Tucson — steps away
• The First Presbyterian Church in Tucson — steps away
• Arizona's First Public School — steps away
• Edward Nye Fish House — 0.2 mi