The San Agustin Mission Complex: Church and Convento

Tucson's Origins: The Ruin of the Abandoned
Convento in the 1880s.

The San Agustin Mission

The San Agustin Mission is located south of Congress Street and immediately east of Mission Road. The area was first occupied during the Early Agricultural period at least 2,600 years ago, with a number of pithouses found on or to the west of the mission. Hohokam artifacts are abundant in the area, suggesting a substantial village was present between 1,500 and 500 years ago. Father Kino documented a Pima village in the area in the 1690s.

The San Agustin Mission was established in the mid-1700s and was completed in the late-1790s to early-1800s. The Mission included the convento (a two-story priest's residence and trade school), a chapel, a granary and other outbuildings, all surrounded by a wall. Nearby were the mission gardens and a Pima village. The mission was abandoned by the 1840s with the chapel falling down in 1862 and 1880, but the convento remained in relatively good condition until the late 1890s. By the 1940s however, clay mining had encroached upon the mission and in the 1950s the City of Tucson used the area as a dump.

Excavations Began on November 20th, 2000

Archaeologists hoped to find the remains of the convento's foundation, but the the convento's remains were destroyed in the 1950s.