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SANTA CRUZ County
Santa Cruz County is Arizona s
smallest, encompassing only 1,238 square miles. Created by the 20th
Territorial Assembly in 1899, the county is named after the river that
flows into Mexico from Arizona before winding back into Santa Cruz and
Pima counties. The river was named Santa Cruz, which means Holy Cross
in Spanish, by Father Kino in the 17th century.
The fertile Santa
Cruz Valley was populated by friendly Pima Indians when the Spaniards
first arrived in the 1690s and established several missions, one of
which, Tumacacori, is a national historical park.
Nogales, which
means walnuts in Spanish, was chosen the county seat and remains such
today. There are strong commercial, religious and cultural ties between
Nogales, Arizona, and its sister city across the border, Nogales,
Sonora. It serves as one of the major gateways between the U.S. and
Mexico and is expected to grow in importance as the North American Free
Trade Agreement continues to be implemented.
Tubac, founded in
1752 when the Spaniards built a presidio or fort, began as an early
outpost for exploration and evolved to silver and gold mining and
ranching in the 1800s. Recognized as Arizona s first European
settlement, it was here that The Weekly Arizonian, the first newspaper
of what became the territory of Arizona, was published. It is also home
to Arizona s first state park. Tubac Presidio State Historic Park.
Since the late 1940s, the community has gained a reputation as one of
the premier artisan communities in the state, with more than 120 shops,
studios and galleries in Tubac and neighboring communities of Amado and
Tumacacori.
Given its border
location, tourism, international trade, manufacturing and services are
the county s principal industries. All of Santa Cruz County is an
Enterprise Zone.
The U.S. Forest
Service and Bureau of Land Management own 54 percent of the land; the
state of Arizona, 8 percent; individual or corporate ownership, 38
percent and other public lands comprise the remaining percent. Santa
Cruz is one of the only counties in Arizona without an Indian
Reservation.
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