Before Arizona was a state, one man spent decades traveling across what is now southern Arizona and Sonora, mapping a region Europeans still barely understood. Eusebio Francisco Kino arrived in the Pimería Alta in 1687. A Jesuit missionary, explorer and cartographer, he would spend the next 24 years traveling thousands of miles across the region, much of it on horseback. Kino explored the Gila and Colorado rivers, visited the Casa Grande ruins and produced maps that became some of the most important European records of the Southwest. His expeditions also helped establish that California was a peninsula, not an island. He founded more than 20 missions and visitas across the region, including sites associated with San Xavier del Bac and Tumacácori, while introducing livestock and new agricultural practices. But Kino’s legacy is complicated. The missions were also part of Spain’s colonial expansion, working to convert Indigenous communities and bring them under Spanish religious and p...