The Mission Trail, part 7

As I stepped out of the back of Tumacacori mission, the first thing I saw was the mortuary chapel. This building was never completed and it is thought that it was intended to have a dome, to complement the dome on the mission. Instead, the chapel remains roofless. There is evidence that this unfinished chapel saw extensive use, but there are no improvements inside of it, just a dirt floor where everyone in attendance most likely stood or knelt. It is a round, roofless, adobe structure. Naturally, the mortuary chapel sits on the edge of the cemetery. The mission-era graves are either unmarked, lost or destroyed because the burials that are currently in place date from the early 1900s, with the most recent being 1916. However, it has been recorded that 593 burials took place from 1755 to 1825. Records of burials from 1825 to 1848, when the mission was abandoned, have never been found. There are references to an "old" cemetery, but the location of it is unknown. Around the present cemetery are 14 niches in the walls. These were once "stations of the cross."
The wall on the east side of the cemetery is higher than the other walls because it is the back wall of the granary that served the mission compound. Inside this former granary are some stairs that lead to nowhere in particular. They once led to a loft that has rotted away with the passage of time.
Just outside the doorway to the granary is the courtyard. This was the center of life for the mission compound. When I stood at the granary door, I saw a ruined portion of the former east wall of the courtyard. The courtyard, or plaza, was once surrounded by a carpenter's shop, ironworker's shop, weaving room, leather shop and grain grinding mill.
About 100 yards behind the mission compound, in a grassy area surrounded by trees, is an old lime kiln. It is basically a rock-lined hole in the ground. Raw material was brought from the Santa Rita Mountains to the east by ox carts and processed here. Lime plaster was applied to the walls of the buildings, usually two inches thick, to provide protection from moisture. About halfway down inside the rock-lined hole is a shelf were a metal grate once rested. Limestone was loaded onto the grate after a fire was built underneath and the rocks were "cooked" until they began to break open. After they broke open, they were hammered into a powder. Then the powder was put into water for a couple of days. After that, it was made into a paste by adding sand to it. This lime kiln is still in excellent condition and could be used today if that type of product was needed.