El Tiradito, Tucson's Wishing Shrine

Tucked into Tucson's Barrio Viejo neighborhood is El Tiradito, "the castaway," a shrine said to be the only one in the United States dedicated to the soul of a sinner buried in unconsecrated ground. The legend, set in the eighteen seventies or eighties, involves a young man killed in a love-triangle dispute and buried on the spot where he fell, too far from the church for a proper burial. Neighbors began lighting candles at the grave, and the tradition never stopped.

Today visitors still leave candles, flowers, and handwritten wishes, believing that a candle kept burning through the night will grant the wish. In nineteen seventy-one a planned highway threatened the shrine and about twelve hundred residents, and the shrine was added to the National Register of Historic Places that year.