Tubac at 274: Arizona's First State Park, a Working Art Colony, and a 45-Mile Day Trip South of Tucson Worth Putting on the Calendar Before the Heat Sets In

Drive south from Tucson on Interstate 19 for about an hour and you will pass the kind of place most Tucson residents have heard of but only a fraction have actually walked. At Exit 34, the village of Tubac sits in the Santa Cruz River valley at roughly 3,200 feet of elevation, in Santa Cruz County, between Green Valley and Nogales. The Spanish military founded a presidio here in 1752; a generation later, in October 1775, Captain Juan Bautista de Anza led a 240-person overland expedition north from Tubac that would, the following spring, found what is now San Francisco. Today the original presidio site is preserved as Tubac Presidio State Historic Park — designated as Arizona's first state park in the late 1950s — and the village around it has, since the late 1940s, operated as one of the longest-running art colonies in the Southwest. Four miles further south, at Exit 29, Tumacácori National Historical Park preserves the ruins of a Spanish mission whose roots trace to a Kino visita first recorded in 1691. The 4.5-mile Anza Trail between the two is one of the most-walked historic-trail segments in southern Arizona. Here is a sourced May 16, 2026 hidden-gem walk-through for Tucson residents, Green Valley and Sahuarita neighbors, and relocation buyers comparing the southern Arizona day-trip map against other Sun Belt metros.