The 2024 Bazy Tankersley Southwest Laureate Lecture was presented by two community scholars, Rebecca Orozco and R. Brooks Jeffery. It was preceded by a short memorial to honor the life and career of J.C. Mutchler (1961-2023), Associate Research Historian, Southwest Center, University of Arizona. (See the homage video here: [ Ссылка ])

The site tour of Camp Naco that completed the events will be featured in a different video.

In the footsteps of Bazy Tankersley, J.C. Mutchler’s career was devoted to empowering communities through their understanding of history and sense of place. No project better exemplifies Mutchler’s passion for community-based applied history than Camp Naco. Located in the Cochise County border community of Naco AZ, Camp Naco is a cornerstone of Buffalo Soldier history in Arizona but also represents the multi-layered histories of border protection, mining and railroads, Spanish exploration, as well as the history of indigenous peoples who occupied this region for millennia. Beginning in 2000, community advocates – including Mutchler – began efforts to preserve Camp Naco’s 100+ year-old adobe buildings and 17-acre site when it was under threat of outright demolition. This led to the establishment of the non-profit Naco Heritage Alliance and a 22-year journey of preservation advocacy that resulted in the recent designation of Camp Naco as one of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The designation was followed by two significant awards granted to the City of Bisbee and the Naco Heritage Alliance – $4.6M from the Office of Arizona Governor Doug Ducey and $3.5M from the Mellon Foundation – for the rehabilitation of Camp Naco’s historic buildings and the development of community programming to sustain their future use.

This lecture site tour presented the diverse histories of the Camp Naco site, the tireless efforts to preserve its buildings, and the future vision to reactivate Camp Naco as a destination to honor its past while addressing contemporary needs in the border community of Naco Arizona.

Rebecca Orozco is a Naco Heritage Alliance Board Member and third-generation resident of the border in Arizona. She is Faculty Emerita at Cochise College and taught history and anthropology there and at the University of Arizona. For the past 22 years she has been working to save historic Camp Naco and currently serves as Community Liaison for the Camp Naco Project.

R. Brooks Jeffery is a heritage conservation consultant serving as Startup Executive Director of the Naco Heritage Alliance. He is a Professor Emeritus of Architecture at the University of Arizona where he had a 35-year career as a teacher, scholar, and administrator advancing heritage conservation as part of a comprehensive ethic of environmental, cultural, and economic sustainability in places throughout the world.

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