A longtime Tucson columnist reflects on the Old Pueblo’s 250th anniversary

Tucson celebrated its 250th anniversary last week.

The Old Pueblo has a long and storied history — beginning with a red-haired Irishman-turned-loyal servant of New Spain named Hugo O’Conor scouting out a site for a fortress along the Santa Cruz river he dubbed the Presidio San Agustin del Tucson. It was the year 1775, and it’s widely credited as the moment Tucson began.

Now, 250 years later, the presidio still sits at the center of Tucson, but the city has grown into a modern-day metropolis with a major university and thriving industry.

Tim Steller has called it home for many years — though he’s not one of the Tucsonans who can trace his history far back on the city’s streets. Steller moved to Tucson in 1997 because he spoke Spanish and was assigned to cover border issues for the Arizona Daily Star. He’s still there today, now a columnist for the Star.

Full conversation

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, OK, I want to talk about that idea of of Tucson being a city that faces south because you talk about this orientation right in the piece. And you talk about where you're from in the Midwest and how that was a very east-west kind of orientation that you grew up in. Tell us a little bit about coming to Tucson in the '90s and realizing that the orientation here was different.

STELLAR: Well, I, I was kind of thrown right into that because, in the first year — I was here in 1997. I started covering border issues and so I got, you know, I was in San Luis Rio Colorado and Hermosillo and all these places in my first year here. So, as far as I was concerned, what was interesting about Tucson was not that it was in Arizona or near the mountains or anything, but that it was near Mexico. And I was constantly crisscrossing.

So for me, that was new, especially because I had spent time, a lot of time in Ecuador, Chile, other countries in Latin America. And, you know, Mexico, even right here in Nogales, has a lot of similarities to other parts, even, even to central and southern Chile. And so it was cool for me to be able to like drive into Sonora and spend time in in Mexico and then come back in time to go to bed in my house in the United States.

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Tucson, Arizona.

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A welcome to Tucson sign.

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Aerial view of the Tucson, Arizona, area, with a view of the city from the Tucson Mountain Park area to the west.

Library of Congress

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Tucson, Arizona.

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Tucson City Hall.

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GILGER: Yeah, yeah. It's a different kind of orientation and international one in a way, but it wasn't always like that. Like you talked a little bit about the history of Tucson — the border kind of moved around it, right?

STELLER: Yeah, I mean, you know, in those early, early centuries, like to go up to the Gila River was, way out beyond the edge. And so Tucson was basically the edge for a long time. I mean, the Mexican period from 1821 to 1854 or 1856 is when the United States really got here, was a rough, hard period. This is a frontier town, up until the railroad got here.

The key is this Tucson was the edge, the northern edge of the frontier of a colonial sphere. Now, of course, in celebrating this, the mayor and the city and other entities have referred to this as 250-plus. And that's a reference to the fact that, you know, the Presidio was established across the Santa Cruz River from a Tohono Oʼodham village. And that's a recognition of the fact that, you know, the Tohono Oʼodham have had a presence here or, or their ancestors or other indigenous groups as well for thousands of years.

And so Tucson itself has, has been a place on — maybe not on the map — but it's been a place that existed for thousands of years. But my reason for focusing on the 250 years is that that's when I see it tying into the southern network.

GILGER: Let me ask you about your relationship with this city, right? You're not from there, but you've been there a really long time now. And you write that like so many other people who come to Phoenix as well, you didn't expect to stay for very long, right?

STELLER: Right. Yeah, so like I applied — I got here in January 1997. I applied for my first job outside of here within the first year. And I figured, well, I'll cover border issues and be in and out of Mexico and I'll establish my name and then I'll become a foreign correspondent sometime. And, you know, it just didn't turn out that way.

I just kept doing what I was doing. I ended up getting married. We had kids and bought houses and all that stuff, and suddenly I'm still here 28 years later. And, you know, the place gets into your — as with anywhere, I think — but the place gets into you. ... You have an understanding that gradually grows of how the place works, how it's different and all that. And I don't, I think anyone in Phoenix who's been to Tucson would agree that it's different in a lot of good and bad ways.

GILGER: You still wonder, you say why you live there sometimes, especially in the heat of the summer like you're in today.

STELLER: Yeah, exactly. I'm sure that people in Phoenix feel this too, at this time of year. The big realization I had this year, I was reading a book called "America, América" by Greg Grandin, who's a historian. And it's a history of the Western hemisphere, and like the Anglo America and Latin America kind of in relationship to each other.

And it really opened my eyes to the idea that you could, you know, view this history from a north-south perspective instead of the traditional east-west perspective that we're used to being taught in school. Where it's about the, you know, the colonists coming over from, be it England or Spain. And, it made me kind of sink into the realization that all this time, what's been kind of anchoring me here is that I feel more and more that north-south orientation, that Tucson has it.

GILGER: Let me ask you lastly a journalism question, right, because I feel this as a journalist as well. You cover a place for a long time, you really get to know it very well, but as a journalist, you're always sort of on the outside. Because you're covering the people who are from there or who are part of that culture, who are the people who make the city what it is. Are you one of them? Do you think you still kind of feel a part of it?

STELLER: You know, it's really, complicated. Because I mean, I always think that family and having generational family is what really deepens you in a place. And so I don't have that. Some of my colleagues do.

But there's certain experiences that really place you there, you know. So for example, I mean, oftentimes raising kids in a place as I have here is one of those things. You get to know families maybe who are from here at a different level.

But then there's also just experiencing events, touchstones like, for example, the the January 2011 mass shooting in which, Gabby Giffords was shot and several others were killed. That's a bad thing, you know, but it, but it's one of those things that we all experienced together and it's a shared experience.

Or you could say, you know, the Wildcats winning the championship in 1997 ... when it was my first spring here. And that was one of those touchstones as well.