When the first cottonwood log was driven upright into the ground in 1776, it’s likely no one imagined a public celebration at the same site 231 years later.

All thoughts at the 18th-century Presidio San Agustín del Tucson went to fending off the Apaches.

“Apaches kept us pretty busy,” said Hector Soza, a modern-day Tucsonan speaking as his great-great-great-grandfather José Maria Sosa, who served at the presidio at its inception. “They’d attack every day.”

The presidio started with palisades, walls made with upright logs sharpened at the ends. Adobe walls followed, and in 1783 the Spanish completed their northernmost presidio in North America.

Sosa had come up from Presidio San Ignacio de Tubac with a troop of soldiers to establish another fort. Sosa enlisted in the Spanish army in 1770 and in Tucson rose in rank to corporal in 1779, to sergeant in 1783 and to alférez (ensign) in 1793 before dying at the presidio on April 2, 1800, after serving the crown for 29 years, seven months and 29 days.

“I’m figuring he died of ill health or old age,” said Soza, who explained the spelling of the family name changed in the late 1800s when a deed for his great-grandfather’s ranch mistakenly spelled the name Soza.

Researching documents, Soza pieced together his predecessor’s 18th-century life based on fact and assumption, such as the morning of May 1, 1782, which came to be known as the Battle of the Entryway.

The Apaches split their force. One group attacked the presidio, and one attacked the bridge leading to the Indian village on the west side. Two Spanish soldiers held off the Apaches at the bridge, and 18 soldiers defended the presidio, but Soza surmises that Sosa was guarding the horses roaming south of the presidio.

“Sosa was not mentioned (in documents regarding the battle), but he was here, so that’s why I say he was guarding the horses,” Soza said.

A 1797 census counted 395 people living in the presidio, including José Maria, his wife, one son, three daughters, one maid and three manservants. About 100 soldiers were listed, and it is unknown how many women lived there.

“Women would walk down to the river and get water, although a well was drilled, 16 feet deep,” said Sybil Needham, co-founder of the Tucson Presidio Trust for Historic Preservation. “They probably had a military escort to protect them at the wash.”

In 1810, Mexicans revolted against the Spanish and gained independence in 1821. Mexico took over the presidio in Tucson, but its military establishment was deteriorating.

“When Mexico took over, everything went downhill,” Soza said.

The U.S. Mormon Battalion came to town in 1848, by which time the presidio was more a civilian complex.

“They dismantled the presidio brick by brick to build houses,” Needham said. “1856-57 I would say it was gone.”

The last known section of wall was torn down in 1918.

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