El Tiradito

El Tiradito ("the little castaway") is a shrine and popular local spot located at 420 South Main Avenue in the Old Barrio area of Downtown Tucson, Arizona. Because of the site's association with pleas for supernatural intervention, it is also called the Wishing Shrine. The legends surrounding the site center around a broken-hearted man dying and, due to a sin, being unable to be buried on consecrated ground. The legends date to the 1870s, and the shrine has been present since at least 1891. Its name comes from the Spanish "tirar." The shrine was the first Arizona property to be placed on the National Register of Historic Places for its traditional cultural values. It is especially important to Tucson's Mexican and Mexican American communities. The shrine consists of the crumbling remains of a brick building, with a large metal rack for candles and desert plants now occupying the interior. Large, glass-encased candles, frequently depicting saints of the Roman Catholic Church are lit and left burning at the shrine, both on the stand and along the ledges of the building. Small slips of paper containing prayers or messages of thanks are also often pressed into cracks in the walls or left elsewhere at the shrine, as are other memorial objects. In addition to the faithful who leave these religious objects, El Tiradito is frequented and favored by many Tucsonans, including writers, p

Data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).