El Tiradito: The Shrine That Stopped a Freeway

On South Main Avenue in the heart of the old Barrio, there is a niche in an adobe wall filled with candles. People bring photographs of the dead, handwritten notes, flowers. The candles burn day and night. Some were placed by people asking for a favor. Some were placed by people who simply needed somewhere to put their grief.

The shrine is called El Tiradito, the Little Castaway. The legends surrounding it date to the eighteen seventies, and the University of Arizona's Southwest Folklore Center has collected more than twenty distinct versions of the origin story. The most common tells of a sheepherder named Juan Oliveras who fell into an affair with his mother-in-law, was discovered by his father-in-law, and was killed on this spot. Because of his sin, the story goes, he could not be buried in consecrated ground. The tradition holds that if a candle burns through the night, the lighter's wish will be granted. The first written account of the shrine appeared in an eighteen ninety-three newspaper. It was already old then.

In nineteen seventy-one, the city proposed a freeway that would cut through the Barrio neighborhood. The route would have required demolishing El Tiradito and displacing roughly twelve hundred residents. Activists responded by nominating the shrine to the National Register of Historic Places. The application was accepted. El Tiradito became the first property in Arizona placed on the National Register specifically for its traditional cultural values as a popular religious site, not for architectural significance, not for connection to famous individuals, but for what it meant to the community that prayed there. The freeway route was amended. The shrine survived.

It is still here, on South Main Avenue, still full of candles. Whatever you think of the legend, the shrine stopped a freeway. That part is documented.