City plans to preserve memory of DUI crash victims at Convent site
A longtime family shrine to two small children killed by a drunken driver sits undisturbed as the archaeological dig takes place a few yards away. Upward of 1,000 objects have been uncovered at the site.
A 7-foot-tall rock and concrete shrine with no names attached has stood on a vacant lot at 18th Street and Convent Avenue for more than 20 years.
Longtime barrio residents know well this homemade shrine to Santa Teresa commemorates Diego and Orlando Mendoza, two toddlers, aged 17 months and 2 1/2 years, killed at the intersection in 1981 by a drunken driver.
The names will come to the forefront as the city builds El Parque de Diego y Orlando Mendoza on the 9,235 square feet (about 100 by 90 feet) around the shrine.
The shrine has been the lot’s only defining feature since it went up in 1984, but archaeologists in the past two weeks uncovered multiple layers of history stretching from the 1880s to the 1930s.
The last buildings at the corner were apparently torn down in the 1970s, said Barbara Montgomery, principal investigator of Tierra Right of Way Services.
Tierra’s dig is a required first step before the Tucson Parks & Recreation Department can start design work on a small neighborhood park that will likely have a paved walk, trees and shrubs, said Kevin McElheny, landscape architect and project manager at the department.
Once Tierra gives clearance for construction, the city department will start design work with hopes to start building the park in fall and opening it by the end of the year, McElheny said.
All city projects have to go through a cultural resource compliance process to determine if a given site is historically significant, said Jonathan Mabry,the city’s new historic preservation officer.
Montgomery said Tierra Right of Way will clear the Mendoza lot for reuse as a park, which may be the third or fourth generation of development on the site since the 1880s-1890s foundations uncovered in the current dig.
“It’s a compromise,” she said. “The thing about putting a park in is there is not much subsurface disturbance.”
Tierra archaeologists uncovered rock foundations outlining 11 rooms in two rows along 18th Street. Some date from before the first Sanborn Fire Insurance map for the neighborhood from 1909, and others correspond with the last Sanborn map in 1919, said April Whitaker, Tierra’s historical archaeologist.
The dig also uncovered a small concrete slab imprinted with WPA 1937 – a Works Progress Administration stamp.
“It seems to be salvaged from somewhere else and placed here as a paver,” Whitaker said.
The foundations, the WPA paver, sections of splintered wood flooring, a later concrete floor and upward of 1,000 objects found in the two-week dig were all buried until a scraper took off the top layer of dirt that revealed the finds.
Also uncovered was an outhouse hole, an archaeologist’s treasure chest because the hole served as a garbage receptacle.
One room at the street corner had black charred stains that indicated it once was a cooking area.
“It’s very different from the other rooms,” Whitaker said.
Artifacts found include glass and clay marbles, Mexican ceramics, Papago pottery, white earthenware and a Japanese dish dating from the 1930s and a couple Chinese ceramics. But that doesn’t mean Asians lived here.
“We know several Japanese markets were in the neighborhood,” Whitaker said. “We did have different ethnic groups buying Chinese (and Japanese) merchandise.”
The archaeologists are mostly collecting. Establishing firm dates for everything will occur in the coming months.
Archaeologist April Whitaker of Tierra Archaeology Services works carefully at West 18th Street and South Convent Avenue.
Archaeologists Anna Neuzil (top) and Marie Roudaut of Tierra Archaeology Services check an area at the Convent Avenue site. They and others have found a small treasure trove of old objects there. The dig is the site of the future El Parque Diego y Orlando Mendoza.
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Downtown frequently undergoes archaeological dig. Here’s a list of some of them:
2008 – Archaeological testing at El Parque de Diego y Orlando Mendoza by Tierra Right of Way.
2007 – Excavation and analysis of Burial 5 from the Barrio Libre Cemetery by Desert Archaeology.
2007 – Results from cultural resources testing at the proposed Tucson Fire Department headquarters central location by Desert Archaeology, Inc.
2003 – Archaeological investigations at Blocks 139 and 159 in Barrio Libre by Desert Archaeology.
2002 – Investigations at Block 136 in Barrio Libre by Desert Archaeology.
2002 – Archaeological testing of the Drachman Elementary School property by Desert Archaeology, Inc., Tucson.
Gilman, Catherine
1997 – Archaeological monitoring of the NDC/Tucson lightwave fiber optic network installation project by Desert Archaeology.
1997 – Archaeological monitoring in the Barrio Libre by Desert Archaeology.
1993 – Archaeological test excavations for the Water Plant No. 1 Expansion in Historic Block 138 by Center for Desert Archaeology.
1990 – Historic archaeology at the Tucson Community Center by the Cultural Resource Management Division at the Arizona State Museum.
1988 – Tucson Convention Center monitoring by the Institute for American Research.
Source: Jonathan Mabry, Tucson historic preservation officer
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EL PARQUE DE DIEGO Y ORLANDO MENDOZA
The proposed park is named after a pair of brothers who died in a car crash near the park site in 1981 when a drunken driver drove through a stop sign and plowed into the car they were riding in. Orlando was 2 1/2 years old and Diego was 17 months old.
They were the children of Frank and Mary Mendoza.
A 7-foot-tall rock and concrete shrine to Santa Teresa that commemorates the brothers was built in 1984 and still stands. It is tended to regularly at the park site.
The Tucson Unified School District owned the land at the time and threatened to remove the shrine in late 1985 with then-TUSD board member and current U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva concerned about separation of church and state matters.
The land ultimately was transferred from TUSD to the Tucson Parks & Recreation Department.