El Rio Golf Course

El Rio opened in the 1930s as Tucson's first full-service country club and hosted the inaugural Tucson Open in 1945, won by Ray Mangrum over Byron Nelson; Babe Didrikson Zaharias also qualified into that event. The City of Tucson acquired the private club in 1968, making it a municipal course. It sits beside the historically Mexican-American Westside barrios, and in August 1970 the El Rio Coalition marched on the course demanding public park and neighborhood-center land - a landmark Chicano-rights victory that helped launch Raul Grijalva's political career and led the city to build Joaquin Murrieta Park and the El Rio Neighborhood Center.