Tubac preserves the remains of Presidio San Ignacio de Tubac and later historic buildings at the site of the first European settlement in what is now Arizona. After a nearby mission was founded in 1691, Tubac grew from a small Pima village into a mission farm and ranch, then a Spanish settlement in the 1730s before being destroyed in the 1751 Pima uprising. Reestablished as a presidio, it served Spain’s northern expansion and later passed to Mexico in 1821 and the United States in 1854. Tubac briefly prospered as a frontier town under Charles D. Poston, but later declined. Its excavated presidio foundations and surviving buildings now preserve that layered history.