Tom Heath

Although I moved to Tucson in 1993, I recently realized i know little of of my new hometown. I had no idea of how special a place it truly is. In 2015, I learned of a museum in downtown which fired off a canon, an honest to goodness canon, every Second Saturday and hosted living history days, replete with 18th century Spanish colonial soldiers and civilians. I was intrigued, and a bit embarrassed, that after almost 25 years in Tucson, I was so unaware of our history, our culture and the efforts underway to preserve both. This began a period of exploration to find out what else I didn’t know about our great city. Turns out, there was, and remains, quite a bit for me to learn

Skip ahead to 2017 and I met the station manager of Downtown Radio and shared with him my desire to highlight these stories, these hidden gems in our Tucson urban core, and we decided it would make an interesting 30 minute weekly radio show. My theme would be Life Along the Streetcar.

Life Along the Streetcar tells the stories. The stories of how Tucson came to be, how Tucson is and what Tucson may become. The show is a community conversation and not an academic exercise. We allow people to tell their story, recognizing the inherent bias of their perspective. Our end result is not a thesis or historical document, rather an oral account of those who have and are living the history.

I have had the pleasure of speaking with hundreds of Tucsonans about their story. This books is my attempt to highlight a couple of the early episodes from 2017-2018 that encapsulate this struggle for economic stability and cultural relevance. In my opinion we are making better decisions and have a better understanding about how the two elements are interdependent on each other. In the 60's it appears we were trying to break free of the Tucson history in favor of modern vision for the city. The current development seems to recognize the importance of our history on the longevity of our future success. The present is simply the intersection of our history and future. One could argue the success of the future is unequivocally based on the acceptance of our past.