Admire Art and Architecture

Many visitors breeze through the visitor center and museum, eager to encounter the main attraction of Tumacácori's adobe church. However, in the course of only a few steps, they will have been primed to many unique features of Spanish colonial architecture. In fact, Tumacácori's visitor center and museum building is listed as a National Historic Landmark -- one of only 50 in Arizona -- because of its ingenious and subtle interpretive value.

Details

Duration

20-60 Minutes

Activity

Museum Exhibits

Pets Allowed

No

Activity Fee

No

Entrance fees may apply, see Fees & Passes information.

Location

Tumacácori Visitor Center and Museum

Reservations

No

Season

Year Round

Time of Day

Day

Accessibility Information

The visitor center and museum are fully accessible with smooth flooring, ramps, and push-button door openers.

The arcade of the visitor center resembles those of traditional Spanish missions.

NPS Photo

An Exhibit in and of Itself

The visitor center and museum building was designed to be an interpretive experience that embodied the historic style of the mission churches in the area. In 1935, a group of National Park Service employees mounted an expedition to collect architectural information about churches in northern Sonora. Architectural features such as the carved wooden doors, arched portales, and corbels are details brought from this expedition to Mexico.

Can You Find Them All?

A veritable alphabet soup (CCC, WPA, CWA, PWA, HABS, etc.) worked to complete the visitor center building in 1937, the museum in 1939, and the courtyard garden shortly after.

Can you tell which is the real person and which is the model?

NPS Photo

Museum Artifacts and Exhibits

The park's museum contains unique artifacts and images which tell the story of the Santa Cruz Valley, the mission period, and the current age of preservation with the National Park Service. Original wooden statues of saints (santos) which stood in the niches of the church over 100 years ago can be seen today in the museum.

Also in the museum stand lifesized models of mission priests -- so lifelike, they are known to give visitors a bit of a fright!

But perhaps the most valuable figures in the museum stand inside the three original dioramas, made in the 1930s during the New Deal era.

Explore New Deal-era Artistry