Mission San Xavier del Bac |
San Xavier del Bac (Papago
Wahk) is a historic Spanish mission about 10 miles south of Tucson,
Arizona on the Tohono O'odham Reservation. Also known as the
"white dove of the desert".
Founded in 1700, the present building dates from 1785. It is open to the public except on Sundays when it is used as a church. The San Xavier Festival is held the
evening of the Friday after Easter and features a torch-light parade of Tohono O'odham
and Yaqui tribal members.
The interior is richly decorated with ornaments showing a mixture of New Spain
and Native American artistic motifs.
One of the more interesting historic features of the mission is that it is "unfinished". Early taxation rules dictated that
missions under construction could not be taxed, so the mission was never finished, as noted by the absence of one dome.
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