Alan Kruse, Tour Guide and Guru of Southern Arizona History and Culture
Monday, January 9, 2022
2:30-3:30 pm,
ASA Koffler Great Room & Zoom
Residents of Academy Village and Vail live in the desert miles from historic downtown Tucson, which makes Alan’s Kruse’s presentation particularly important for us. It’s a reminder that we need to revisit our city so we can appreciate how and why the objects and places to which Alan will introduce us have relevance to our relationship to our city and its culture. Alan has appeared a number of times at ASA, always informing and entertaining us.
Alan will point us to a number of objects, sites, and people in Tucson’s past, telling us the stories behind them. Items to be discussed include the façade of the Arizona History Museum, Maynard Dixon’s unique paintings, Locomotive 1673, Rattlesnake Bridge, the John Greenway statue, and Jules Flin and the origins of El Charro restaurant. Alan’s goal is to make our lives richer by helping us appreciate the nuances of our surroundings.
Alan arrived in Tucson in 1970 to attend graduate school at the University of Arizona and went on to teach chemistry at Pima Community College for 28 years before retiring in 2002. After deciding that no one was going to pay him to talk about chemistry, he soon developed Kruse Arizona Tours, which drew enthusiastic clients from 2002 to 2019. His encyclopedic knowledge of local culture earned him the title “the king of local tours” from the Arizona Daily Star, a vice-presidency of the Southern Arizona Guides Association, and membership at the Metropolitan Tucson Convention and Visitors Bureau. He provided both historic Tucson walking tours as well as coach tours throughout the Southwestern states focusing on history, music, theater, and art. He was a docent at the Arizona Historical Society from 1998-2019.
Compiled by Rosemary Brown, Academy Village Volunteer
You can connect to Zoom either by using the following URL: https://zoom.us/j/95456511620?pwd=OC9GcnJRNmJpMTdXdXFhaUpCUkx4QT09 or by opening a browser to zoom.com/join and typing in Meeting ID: 954 5651 1620 and Passcode: 85747