page_title: History of Tucson, Arizona
section_title: Crime
hierarchical_section_title: History of Tucson, Arizona / Modern period / Crime
caption_attribution_description: English: Hotel Congress, Tucson
context_page_description: The history of Tucson, Arizona, begins thousands of years ago. Paleo-Indians practiced plant husbandry and hunted game in the Santa Cruz River Valley from 10,000 B.C. or earlier. Archaic peoples began making irrigation canals, some of the first in North America, around 1,200 B.C. The Hohokam people lived in the Tucson area from around 450-1450 A.D, in a complex agricultural society.
  Jesuit missionary Eusebio Francisco Kino founded the Mission San Xavier del Bac in 1700. Through the 1700s, Spanish missionaries tried to get the Native Americans to convert to Catholicism and a Spanish lifestyle. The Spanish built a fort at Tubac in 1751. It was moved to Tucson in 1775 where Hugo O'Conor, an Irishman working for the Spanish crown, officially founded Presidio San Augustin del Tucson.
  The Spanish stayed in the area, fighting down repeated attacks on the fort by Apache warriors. In 1821, Tucson becomes part of the new state of Sonora in Mexico, who had won independence from Spain. In 1854, Tucson, along with much of the surrounding area, was purchased from Mexico by the United States in the Gadsden Purchase and was made part of the New Mexico Territory.
context_section_description: In late January 1934, five members of the Dillinger gang, including John Dillinger, himself, were arrested in Tucson. They were five of the top six names on the FBI's first Public Enemy list. A fire allowed firemen to discover their identity and the police promptly arrested Harry Pierpont, Charles Makley, Russell Clark, Ed Shouse, and Dillinger. The police found the gang in possession of over $25,000 in cash, three sub-machine guns, and five machine guns. Tucson celebrates the historic arrest with an annual "Dillinger Days" festival, the highlight of which is a reenactment.
caption: Hotel Congress, built in 1918 in downtown Tucson
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