Rio Rico (“rich river”) is a planned community located in
Santa Cruz County, 57 miles south of Tucson and 12 miles north of
Mexico. The community's 39,000 acres roll gently down from the
Santa Rita Mountains through the San Cayetano Foothills westward
to the Santa Cruz River. The area around and including Rio Rico was
once part of the Baca Float, a tract of approximately 100,000 acres
granted by the U.S. Congress to the heirs of Luis Maria Baca as the
result of an early, unclear grant from the Spanish government. The
community had its beginnings in 1969 and has continued to grow
at a steady pace with the influx of tenants to the Rio Rico South
Industrial Park.
Rio Rico's South Industrial Park is comprised of 256 acres, with 100
acres now serving produce and distribution warehouses and manufacturing
firms (C. E. Gillman Co., Badger Meter Manufacturing and
Molex Inc.). The Rio Rico commercial area comprises 544 acres,
which includes Rio Rico Resort (with tennis and 18-hole championship
golf course) and a commercial center containing a supermarket,
restaurant and a variety of specialty shops. Because of its proximity
to Mexico, Rio Rico has become a stopover for tourists,
increasing the importance of tourism to the area.
Rio Rico is in an area where Spanish and Indian families lived generations
before the American Revolution and where Arizona history
began. Tumacacori National Monument, four miles north, was in Arizona and worked by Mexicans before being purchased by Americans in the 1850s; Santa Rita Hacienda, both a mining and ranching center during the Spanish and Mexican periods, acquired
by the Americans after the Gadsden Purchase. Sonoita, to the east,
was established by the Sobaipuri Indians in 1698. It was visited by
Kino and became a visita of the Guevavi Mission. Sopori, near
Amado, was originally a Pima rancheria. It became a Spanish mining
and stock-raising center and was acquired by Americans in the
1850s.
An excursion to the historic Tumacacori National Monument,
Tubac Presidio, the ruins of old Fort Crittendon and the Duquesne