If the words Pimería Alta conjure up visions of Spanish conquistadores in shining helmets and breastplates, you are half right.   The first Spaniard, indeed the first European to enter the Santa Cruz Valley was Fray Marcos de Niza in 1539, decades before the first settlement at Jamestown or the landing of the Mayflower.  But it was a priest, Father Kino who traveled in 1691 throughout the high desert region opening the lands north to the Gila River to Christianize the Indians.   He named the region the “Pimería Alta,”  the  high region of the Pima Indians.

For centuries the fascination of the days of Spain in early western America has gripped all who touch the southwest.  In 1948, three men from early Nogales, a Pennsylvania businessman, civil engineer and former mayor Harry Karns;  a Kentucky AP newsman and publisher of the Nogales Herald,  Hanson Ray Sisk,  and a  US forest ranger, Albert Abbott formed the Pimeria Alta Historical Society   to preserve, protect and promote the history of Kino’s Pimería Alta. 

The past is the previous story of human action and reaction to and from other humans and the forces of nature.  Everything is cause and effect.  What we, the volunteers, do is to help people today understand past cause and effect that created, for better or worse, the present.

Sixty years later, the Pimeria Alta Historical Society   continues the original mission as well as providing an array of services, stories, images and events that relate to the glorious and long history, including the history after Kino,  of one of the world’s most remarkable places.   Members enjoy dinners, tours, lectures, special exhibits, receptions and just plain history get-togethers among our history happenings. We publish a newsletter the Pimería Post  with stories and photos about people, places and events, not to mention a rare book auction in which we highlight an out-of-print book related to this area and offer the book to the highest bidder.   People join us not to get just a few tid-bits about history, or explore our extensive archives, but to get together with other people and enjoy and share the rich and remarkable human story in a place that has been part of Spain, Mexico and the United States………the Pimería Alta.