EL CORRAL HISTORY

In 1915, The Tucson Citizen reported that local developer John Murphey had purchased several thousand acres of property in the foothills of the Catalina Mountains to the north of town. The editors of the newspaper projected the purchase as “folly,” an investment in worthless desert hillside, never to be recovered.

At that time, the Catalina Foothills lay a distant six miles from the City of Tucson. Tucson as we know it today was vastly different. The Mormon Colony at Binghampton straddled the Rillito Creek and was the largest concentration of people in the area. Farther to the east, a group of Native Americans from Sinaloa were occupying the ruins of old Fort Lowell.

To the west was a fledgling horse track known as Rillito Downs. Along the lush, riparian landscape of the Rillito Creek bottom-lands, a dirt track meandered east and west. This trail would later become River Road.

For John Murphey, it took just over a decade to prove his detractors wrong. By the end of the 1920’s, homes were being built in the Catalina Foothills Estates. Murphey brought architect Josiah Joesler to Tucson in order to build houses in his neighborhoods. The distinctive Spanish Colonial and Mission Revival style buildings in the area began to take form.

In 1926, a building appeared a short distance east of Campbell Avenue and became a popular dining spot. This was possibly the first restaurant/café/tavern east of Oracle Road. Over the years, the restaurant changed hands several times.

In 1939, the restaurant was known as the El Corral Café and was owned by Leroy C. Perkins.

In 1946, the business was purchased by E.H. Bruening and came to be known as El Corral Night Club. The ‘Nightclub’ name continued through the late 1950’s until it again changed hands once again and became the El Corral it is today.