San Lázaro was a Spanish mission in the Sonoran desert. Located in the Santa Cruz River valley, the European settlement was founded as a cattle ranch by

José Romo de Vivar José Romo de Vivar was a Novo Hispanic rancher and miner, an early European settler in Arizona. Biography Vivar's grandfather was Diego Romo de Vivar (1589–1691), a Spanish explorer and military officer who conquered a large part of presen ...

. The mission was founded by

Jesuit The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...

missionary

Eusebio Kino Eusebio Francisco Kino, Jesuits, SJ (, ; 10 August 1645 – 15 March 1711), often referred to as Father Kino, was an Italian Jesuit, missionary, geographer, explorer, cartographer, mathematician and astronomer born in the Prince-Bishopric of Tre ...

about 1695, and was at various times a of Mission Nuestra Señora del Pilar y Santiago de Cocóspera, Mission Santa María Suamca, or Mission Nuestra Señora de los Dolores. Kino oversaw the building of a mission church in 1706. John Ross Browne sketched the mission in 1864. By the late 1860s, it was deserted due to

Apache The Apache ( ) are several Southern Athabaskan language-speaking peoples of the Southwestern United States, Southwest, the Southern Plains and Northern Mexico. They are linguistically related to the Navajo. They migrated from the Athabascan ho ...

raids.

References

{{reflist Missions in Sonora 1695 establishments in the Spanish Empire Jesuit history in North America