Anza Trail Cultural History Park: A Tucson Park Designed for Every Sense

A tactile exhibit at the Anza Trail Cultural History Park. Photo: NPS / Desert Spotlight.

A welcome in three languages

Along the Santa Cruz River in Tucson, Arizona, a mural and archway sculpture by local artists Alonso Delgadillo and Quinton Antone mark the entrance to a new urban park. A braille plaque greets visitors in Tohono O'odham, Spanish and English, and a QR code on it links to a welcome video in American Sign Language (ASL) with audio description. Tactile squares with QR codes throughout the park lead to more.

The welcome plaque in American Sign Language, with audio description. NPS film.

Accessibility beyond ramps

The Anza Trail Cultural History Park tries to answer accessibility questions that go beyond mobility — ramps and paved paths — to learning and understanding. Parks are meant to be open to all, but a park's intentions and its real accessibility often differ: how, for instance, does someone with low vision experience a mural? The park answers with a six-minute audio-described video of Delgadillo's mural, Intersection / Intersección, among much else.

Designed with the people who use it

Rather than guess how people with low vision or deafness would use the space, the project team invited staff and students of the neighboring Arizona State School for the Deaf and Blind to help design it. The students tested how people could move through the park and guided the interactive exhibits and the accessible content behind the QR codes. The park was their outdoor classroom while it was built, and still is.

What's there

The linear park, managed by Pima County, follows the Anza Trail and the river through the heart of Tucson. A plaza of native plants opens onto an accessible path past exhibits made for many senses:

• a tactile map of the Anza expedition of 1775–76;
• the Chime, an art piece that can be rung with the white canes used by blind and low-vision people;
• ASL and audio-described stories, via QR code, of those who traveled this ancient corridor;
• story boxes with the stories and poetry of local young people.

An audio-described tour of the mural Intersection / Intersección, by Alonso Delgadillo. NPS film.

Who made it happen

The project began with the Anza Society, a nonprofit of citizen historians, which asked the Park Service's Rivers, Trails, and Conservation Assistance program for help. RTCA landscape architect Laura Bolyard and the school's mobility specialist Anne Rempe led it, with Pima County and staff of the Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail. Thanks also go to the Anza Trail Foundation, Pima County's parks and arts commission, and the Barrio Hollywood community; major donors included the National Park Foundation, the Union Pacific Foundation and others.

The park opened on January 28, 2023, with a ceremony and community celebration. Everyone involved says they learned a great deal: with strong partnerships and shared practice, universal design can make places across the National Park System more meaningful and equitable.

More: designing the park and its opening.

Sources

Based on "Anza Trail Cultural History Park: A Case Study for Accessible History," National Park Service, Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail; a work of the United States government in the public domain. A photograph centered on the entrance mural, the artist's work, is not reproduced. The Park Service's films, lost when the page was imported, are restored from its page (2026-09-27).