We hope to see you at our meeting Saturday, July 11, 2026
Lunch: 12:00pm
Presentation: 1:00pm
PROGRAM: A Patch of Ground
A number of years ago, on the day before Thanksgiving, I was the last visitor left in Shiloh National Military Park, near Memphis, Tennessee. The park was about to close; the sun was low in the western sky; I was near Bloody Pond and the Peach Orchard thinking about a lot of things. To the south of me, perhaps 200-300 yards were ancient Indian burial mounds that pre-dated the Civil War. As I stood on that hallowed patch of ground, the hair on my neck stood up and I felt a powerful presence. A “patch of ground” in historic research terms often refers to a plot of land tied to human-milestones. We may travel past a section of land without knowing that it was a major human crossroads of some type; although we may feel that it was. As the group Metal Detecting NYC says: “Well, just because a patch of ground sits empty today doesn’t mean it’s always been that way … Folks come, folks go … and history has a way of hiding itself under your boots.” This talk will be about a patch of land in downtown Tucson that has noted history from the 1700s to today; from Apache attacks to the first Arizona woman elected to Congress, and from Union soldiers to Arizona’s first National Guard Armory. Let’s see what you … feel … about this topic.
PRESENTER: Ronald E. Benson
Mr. Benson is the author of “Arizona’s First Sheriff: Berry Hill De Armitt,” published in the January 2024 issue of the Smoke Signal, the professional magazine of the Tucson Corral of the Westerners. He is also the author of two articles published in the Desert Leaf (Tucson) magazine: “The Perfume of History” in April 2024, and “The Missing Armory of Armory Park” in April of 2026..
LOCATION: Tucson Medical Center’s Marshall Conference Center – 5301 E Grant Road 85712 (enter on the east side of TMC)
MEAL COST: $12 per person.
PRINTABLE RESERVATION FORM: PDF FORMAT
Please return reservation by July 7 to P.O. Box 40744, Tucson, AZ 85717. Also, please enclose your payment for the cost of the lunch with the reservation.
For more information please call (520) 795-9484.