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A state of the southwest United States on the Mexican border. It was admitted as the 48th state in 1912. Explored by the Spanish beginning in 1539, the area was acquired by the United States in 1848 through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Phoenix is the capital and the largest city. Population: 6,170,000.
Arizonan Ar'i·zo'nan or Ar'i·zo'ni·an adj. & n.
For more information on Arizona, visit Britannica.com.
Situated on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains, the forty-eighth state covers 113,956 square miles of arid terrain divided into three geographical provinces. The Colorado Plateau province, bounded by Utah to the north and the Mogollon Rim to the south, is a scenic combination of extensive forests, open grasslands, spiraling mesas, and stunning canyons, including the Grand Canyon. Streams crisscrossing the eroded country feed into the Little Colorado River, which flows northeast to the Colorado River. Cutting diagonally from the White Mountains in the northeast to the Sierra Estrella range in the central southwest is the Central Mountain province, characterized by elongated mountains that join the Sonora Desert province, which stretches southward to the Mexican border. Both of the southern provinces claim watersheds that drain into the Gila River, which flows westward to the Colorado River.
Indigenous Roots
Evidence indicates human habitation of the region at approximately twelve thousand years ago, with the ancient Anasazi Indians occupying the Plateau region above the Rim and the more technologically advanced Hohokam residing in the Gila Valley, where they engineered an extensive system of canal networks that ultimately attracted the attention of Jack Swilling, who founded the capital city of Phoenix in 1867.
By the time of the official Spanish Entrada in 1540, the majority of the native population was living in essentially four areas: the Moqui or present-day Hopi (possibly descendants of the Anasazi) and the Navajo resided north of the Little Colorado; the Walapai, Havasupai, Mohave, and Yuma nations along the Colorado River; the Yavapai and Apache in the central and eastern mountains; and the Pima and Papago (possible descendants of the Hohokam) located in the central river valleys.
Spanish and Mexican Era (1539–1846)
A rumor floating around European cities about seven Catholic fathers founding seven golden cities spurred Spanish interest in the region, particularly in the aftermath of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca's colorful report on his trek from Florida to northern Sonora. In 1539, Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza dispatched Fray Marcos de Niza (Franciscan) and Esteban, a Moorish slave who had accompanied Cabeza de Vaca, to investigate the allegations. Following the course of the San Pedro River through eastern Arizona, the party eventually reached the Zuni villages in western New Mexico. After Esteban was slain by the natives, Fray Marcos returned to Mexico City, where he filed a report that led to the formation of a larger mission launched the following year and led by Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, who captured the Zuni pueblos, then sent exploration parties westward to the Moqui villages and canyon country. Hernando de Alarcón simultaneously sailed up the Colorado River with Coronado's supply ships and explored the regions around present-day Yuma.
By 1690, Father Eusebio Kino and other Jesuit missionaries had introduced Christianity and cattle raising to the Piman-speaking people, conducted extensive explorations of the Santa Cruz and San Pedro Valleys, and followed the Gila River to its juncture with the Colorado. The Jesuits planted three missions: San Xavier del Bac (1700), San Cayetano del Tumacacori (1701), and San Gabriel de Guevavi (1701).
Arizona was popularly accorded its name following a silver strike known as Real de Arizonac on a ranchero near present-day Nogales in 1736. The discovery evoked controversy when its founders failed to report it to the Crown. Rumors spread that the Jesuits were behind the secrecy, setting in motion a list of conflicts that would lead Charles III to expel the order from the Spanish Empire entirely in 1767, following the Pima Revolt of 1751, which led to the founding of a presidio at Tubac as a means of quelling future uprisings. The first European American women arrived the following year, in 1752.
When Spanish ventures in southern Arizona fell under the threat of Apache attack, Charles III authorized the military to achieve by force what the missionaries had failed to accomplish with the Bible. Hugo O'Conor, an Irish mercenary under services to the Spanish Crown, was appointed Commandant-Inspector for the interior regions. In 1776, he relocated the Tubac presidio farther north on the Santa Cruz River, opposite the Pima village of Tucson.
Even that radical measure proved of little consequence in curbing Apache raids until Bernardo de Galvez became Viceroy of New Spain in 1786. Aware that the Apache were infinitely better schooled in the art of desert warfare than Spanish soldiers, he ordered that the raiders be persuaded to settle near the presidio, where they could be systematically debauched with alcohol.
In the midst of the newfound calm, the first cries for Mexican independence echoed across the south. The struggle, which lasted from 1810 to 1821, had virtually no impact on Arizona, since no resident participated in the fighting nor did the battlefields extend into the northern regions.
As a means of replenishing war-depleted coffers, the Mexican government opened the Santa Fe Trade in 1822. The first set of arrivals were mountain men and trappers like James Ohio Pattie, Jedediah S. Smith, William Sherley "Old Bill" Williams, Paulino Weaver, and others. Along with mapping most of the rivers, they systematically destroyed the ecological balance by their callous decimation of the beaver population.
The Mexico City government's hold over the area was so precarious that Colonel Stephen W. Kearny took Santa Fe on 18 August 1846 without firing a shot, before crossing Arizona en route to Mexico. The Mormon Battalion played a critical role in isolating locations for settlements that Salt Lake City planted across the northern regions, through the White Mountains and as far south as Gilbert. When the new civil government was established, Arizona was opaquely made part of the New Mexico Territory. Those areas south of the Gila River were acquired through the 1853 Gadsden Purchase.
Geographical proximity to California goldfields brought an estimated 60,000 hopefuls across Arizona during the next decade, many of whom retraced their steps after gold was discovered at the confluence of the Sacramento Wash and Colorado River in 1857. The previous year, the Sonora Exploring and Mining Company had reopened a number of old silver mines near Tubac. Miners and the entrepreneurs who came to mine them sparked a population increase that led to the founding of ferry services along the Colorado River and mercantile houses in most large settlements.
Beginning in 1856, residents began to petition Congress for a separate Arizona Territory under the rationale that the Santa Fe government was incapable of efficiently administering the western region. Four years of rejection led delegates from thirteen Arizona and New Mexico towns to form the Provisional Territory of Arizona. When the Southern states left the Union in 1861, a group of Southern sympathizers met at Mesilla and pledged loyalty to the Confederate States of America. Union forces arrived the following year and recaptured the area after minor clashes at Stanwix Station and Picacho Pass, the two westernmost battles of the Civil War (1861–1865). On 24 February 1863, President Abraham Lincoln affixed his signature to the Organic Act, which officially proclaimed the Territory of Arizona, with a north-south boundary line of 109degrees latitude, as opposed to the east-west line of 34 degrees longitude stipulated in the original documents.
The Territory of Arizona (1863–1912)
Mining, military, railroad building, and agricultural activities dominated the economic landscape during the early decades of the territorial era. Rich gold and silver discoveries, including the legendary silver bonanza at Tombstone in 1877, drew eastern investors to the area, a trend that found renewed vigor when the discovery of electricity gave new value to copper during the 1870s.
By 1880, copper was king, with mines operating at Ray, Clifton-Morenci, Jerome, Globe-Miami, Ajo, and Bisbee. Copper companies such as Phelps Dodge and the Arizona Copper Company built towns, short-line railroads, and a modern business and banking network, and they claimed political dominance in the legislature, which shifted locations with the territorial capital from Prescott (1865–1866) to Tucson (1867–1888) and back to Prescott (1888), before the capital was permanently located in Phoenix in 1889.
The threat of Navajo and Apache raiders led to the building of an excess of two dozen camps, forts, and supply depots by 1870. In 1863, renowned Colonel Kit Carson led a contingent of U.S. soldiers and Ute warriors on a mission to round up the Navajo. In the grim finale, approximately 8,000 Navajo were forced to take the Long Walk to the Bosque Redondo Reservation in New Mexico. When they were finally allowed to return to Arizona in 1868, little headway had been made toward curbing the Apache, whose resistance continued until the Chiricahua were forcibly relocated to Florida in 1886.
Completion of the first transcontinental railroad occurred when the Southern Pacific reached Tucson in 1880, sparking a decade of railroad building that facilitated troops, mail, and the agricultural activities taking place in the Salt River Valley. Cattle ranching and citrus were nascent industries destined to assume dominance, particularly after the completion of the Roosevelt Dam in 1911 granted Salt River Valley Ranches a stable source of water.
People kept pace with the promise, including a steady stream of health seekers, which led to the founding of tent cites that transformed into hospitals and fancy resorts in both Tucson and Phoenix.
Population increases put new fire to the growing movement for statehood. In 1902, the statehood issue was debated in Congress. An enabling act passed in 1910, leading to a convention in Phoenix that drafted a constitution and submitted it to Washington. After a recall provision was eliminated, President William H. Taft signed Arizona into the union on 14 February 1912.
Since Statehood
As the last contiguous state, Arizona was uniquely poised by both geography and social temperament to evolve into its current status as a classroom for the cyber-age. By 1912, years of isolation and perceived federal indifference had given way to an insular form of capitalism kept honest by low-density settlement patterns and paperless business transactions sealed by a handshake. Moneymaking enjoyed the reverence of a secular religion, with chance, change, and experimentation its primary tenets. Because the majority of local leaders were either first-generation heirs to pioneer fortunes built subsequent to the California Gold Rush or recent affluent arrivals seeking relief from various respiratory ailments, the rights of the individual most often took precedence over the general welfare, reducing social reform efforts to little more than a dull roar throughout most of the century.
When it became a state, Arizona's growth pattern essentially mirrored that of the nation, albeit with the deviance common to the built-in perks and special privilege explicit in solicited development. Land was plentiful, taxes were low, labor cheap, crime virtually nonexistent, and governmental restraint on free enterprise minimal and never vigorously enforced. Local boosters touted potential and investors took notice, heralding a new era of prosperity that ranked Arizona ninth in the nation in per capita motor vehicle ownership by 1921, a consumer preference that proved critical to the development of a thoroughly modern road system by decade's end. These same years witnessed the introduction of air-cooled commercial buildings in both Phoenix and Tucson, adding a definitive brick to boosters' arguments that desert living was tantamount to "paradise on earth."
Although Arizona's prosperity was primarily based on copper, cotton, cattle, and citrus, tourism was fast adding a fifth arm to the economic equation, particularly after the advent of five-star resorts such as the $2 million Arizona Biltmore, which was opened in Phoenix in 1929 by a team of investors, including chewing gum magnet William Wrigley Jr., who built an opulent mansion adjacent to the hotel. Louis Swift, Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr., and other industrial giants soon followed suit, earning the capital city prestigious renown as the fashionable place for the wealthy to winter.
The new arrivals brought with them the political conservatism of their Midwestern roots, complete with the self-help doctrine that holds charitable giving a matter of private conscience rather than legal statute. Poverty, dislocation, and disease were remedied by private contributions and formal fundraising events, typically hosted by a prominent individual with a broad network of affluent friends. The success of these venues limited tax-based relief for human tragedies to the Insane Asylum of Arizona, which was informally renamed the Arizona State Hospital in 1922.
The Great Depression brought the winds of change and a new system of social recompense that never fell easy on the minds of leaders attuned to the notion of unfettered free enterprise and individual responsibility. Although the suffering was acute and widespread in rural areas, urban centers were immune to the hardships until 1932, when a downturn in world copper prices led to layoffs and mine closures. Out-of-work miners descended on Phoenix and Tucson, quickly outstripping charitable resources to the point that both cities vigorously petitioned for federal funds from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation during the final hours of the Herbert Hoover administration.
During the New Deal, over forty Civilian Conservation Corps camps were built in Arizona, opening the floodgates to massive federal spending regionwide during the years surrounding World War II (1939–1945). Motorola, AiResearch, and other semiconductor concerns sprang up, giving a boost to both aviation and population, as well as raising issues about the color line separation historically practiced in Arizona up to that time. Federal dollars meant federal rules, including ending segregation in the military and public schools. Renowned pilot Lincoln Ragsdale, one of the original Tuskegee airmen, was charged with integrating Luke Air Force Base in the aftermath of World War II. A fully integrated school system was not realized statewide until the mid-1960s. Housing integration was an even more exacting fight, with over 90 percent of the state's minority residents living in neighborhoods drawn along racial line as late as 1962. Three years later, Arizona passed its first civil rights law, but de facto segregation on the basis of economics continues.
Gender was less of an issue than race in determining social status, but antiquated notions of the "weaker sex" led to certain disparities in the body politic. For example, when Eva Dugan was tried, convicted, and sentenced to hang for the murder of a local farmer in 1926, a public outcry of special circumstance arose on the basis of gender. When the only woman to be hanged in Arizona received her punishment on 21 February 1930, misadjusted balance weights resulted in her decapitation as she dropped through the trap, launching a new round of arguments that prompted Arizona voters to select the lethal gas chamber as the official means of execution in 1933. That same year, the state sent its first woman to the national Congress, Isabella Selmes Greenway of Tucson, a childhood friend and bridesmaid of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.
The Democratic Party enjoyed nearly complete dominance statewide until the "free people, free speech, free enterprise" philosophies of Phoenix businessman Barry M. Goldwater gave rise to a renegade/conservative movement determined to quell the perceived excesses of the liberal temper of the times. Following Goldwater's election to the U.S. Senate in 1952, the Republican Party supplanted its Democratic rivals everywhere except southern Arizona, which has steadfastly remained the most liberal section of the state.
Throughout most of the twentieth century, Arizona enjoyed the prestige of two of the most powerful voices in the national Congress: Democratic Senator Carl Hayden and Republican Barry M. Goldwater, the first Arizonan to run for the office of President of the United States. The state claimed additional accolades when President Richard Nixon appointed Phoenix attorney William H. Rehnquist to the United States Supreme Court. President Ronald Reagan appointed him Chief Justice in 1986. Reagan also appointed the august body's first female jurist, Arizonan Sandra Day O'Connor, in 1981.
Politics were turbulent during the final half of the twentieth century. In 1988, Governor Evan Mecham was impeached and found guilty of two of the three counts cited in the original indictment. Secretary of State Rose Mofford was appointed Arizona's first female governor. On 7 September 1997, Governor Fife Symington resigned in the wake of fraud charges stemming from his years as a developer. He was subsequently tried, convicted on seven felony counts, and ordered to pay back his investors. On 9 September 1997, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor swore in Jane Hull as governor. She was elected to the office in her own right during the November elections, wherein Arizona made history by being the first state in the nation to elect women to the top five posts in state government.
Arizona's population of a half million in 1940 increased tenfold by 2000, earning the state two additional seats in the House of Representatives. Of the 5,130,632 residents listed in the 2000 federal census, 63.8 percent were of European American descent, 25.3 percent cited their heritage as Hispanic or Latino, 3.1 percent as African American, 5.0 percent as American Indian or Alaskan Native, 1.8 percent as Asian, and 0.1 percent as Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, with the remainder claiming no specific heritage. The average household enjoyed an annual income of $34,751, with an estimated 15.5 percent of Arizona residents living beneath the federal poverty line. Of that number, 23.4 percent are children living in single-parent households. Roughly 68 percent of the population owns their own home, as opposed to 66.2 percent nationwide.
Approximately 85 percent of Arizona residents live in Maricopa County, with an estimated 1,500 new residents arriving daily. Growth has left Tucson with a ground-water shortage problem and raised environmental concerns statewide. During the 1990s alone, the gross state product jutted from $66 million in 1990 to over $140 million at the end of the century. Roughly 13.2 percent of resident firms are minority owned, with another 27 percent owned by women, a figure that is a full percentage point higher than the national average. In 2002, the Phoenix metropolitan area was ranked as the top manufacturing urban complex in the nation.
Less than 18 percent of Arizona land is in private hands, leaving vast stretches of wilderness available for recreation. The Grand Canyon alone boasts an estimated 10 million tourists annually. Every sport from skydiving to golf is available in the state. Residents share the victory and defeats of three major league teams: the Phoenix Suns, the Arizona Cardinals, and the Arizona Diamondbacks (who won the 2001 World Series), as well as enjoy a broad slate of cultural activities and state-of-theart institutions, including three state universities and numerous private colleges and specialty schools. Along with horse and dog racing, legalized gambling is available in one of the many Indian casinos that have sprung up over the past two decades.
Modern Arizona is best likened to the rest of the United States and several foreign countries combined. Less than a third of the residents are Arizona born, with the average tenure of white-collar executives less than four years. The majority of the latter transfer to the area to work in the highly mobile computer chip industry, a vital lynchpin in the state's economy since the 1980s. The lion's share of new arrivals continue to be lured to the area by climate, spectacular scenery, and the economic potential intrinsic to a high-growth setting, despite the fact that Arizona ranks in the bottom third of the nation with regard to tax dollars allocated for indigent care, mental health, and other social welfare programs.
The quality of public education is an ongoing concern without easy remedy. In 1998, the Arizona legislature allocated roughly $400 million in state funding to construct, equip, and maintain public schools at state-established minimum standards, leaving districts the option of passing capital overrides to pay for projects and facilities not included in the original plan. Recent trends toward vouchers have spurred a new round of debate similar to those occurring in other parts of the nation relative to the face and future of tax-supported education in the twenty-first century.
Bibliography
"Arizona Land Ownership Status," adapted from Circular No. 2, Revised June 1995, by Ken A. Phillips, Chief Engineer, Salt River Project.
Department of Economic Security, Arizona State Data Center, 2001.
Faulk, Odie B. Arizona: A Short History. Norman: The University of Oklahoma Press, 1970.
Iverson, Peter. Barry Goldwater: Native Arizonan. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997.
Luckingham, Bradford. Phoenix: The History of a Southwestern Metropolis. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1989.
Sheridan, Thomas E. Los Tucsonenses: The Mexican Community in Tucson, 1854–1941. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1986.
Sonnichsen, C. L. Tucson: The Life and Times of an American City. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982.
U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Arizona, 2000.
Wagoner, Jay J. Early Arizona: Prehistory to Civil War. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1975.
———. Arizona Territory, 1863–1912: A Political History. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1970.
Walker, Henry P., and Don Bufkin. Historical Atlas of Arizona. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1979.
—Evelyn S. Cooper
Facts and Figures
Area, 113,909 sq mi (295,024 sq km). Pop. (2000) 5,130,632, a 40% increase since the 1990 census. Capital and largest city, Phoenix. Statehood, Feb. 14, 1912 (48th state). Highest pt., Humphreys Peak, 12,633 ft (3,853 m); lowest pt., Colorado River, 70 ft (21 m). Nickname, Grand Canyon State, Copper State. Motto, Ditat Deus [God Enriches]. State bird, cactus wren. State flower, blossom of the saguaro cactus. State tree, paloverde. Abbr., Ariz.; AZ
Geography
Northern Arizona lies on the Colorado Plateau, an area of dry plains more than 4,000 ft (1,220 m) high, with deep canyons, including the famous Grand Canyon carved by the Colorado River. Along the Little Colorado River, which runs northwest through the plateau to join the Colorado, are the Painted Desert, where erosion has left colorful layers of sediment exposed, and the Petrified Forest National Park, one of the world's most extensive areas of petrified wood. South of the Grand Canyon are the San Francisco Peaks, including Humphreys Peak, the highest point (12,655 ft/3,857 m) in the state. The southern edge of the Colorado Plateau is marked by an escarpment called Mogollon Rim.
The southern half of the state has desert basins broken up by mountains with rocky peaks and extending NW to SE across central Arizona. To the south, the Gila River, a major tributary of the Colorado, flows west across the entire state. This area has desert plains separated by mountain chains running north and south; in the west the plains fall to the relatively low altitude of c.140 ft (43 m) in the region around Yuma.
Although some mountain peaks receive an annual rainfall of more than 30 in. (76 cm), precipitation in most of the state is low, and much of Arizona's history has been shaped by the inadequate water supply. Since the early 20th cent., massive irrigation projects have been built in Arizona's valleys. Roosevelt, Horse Mesa, Mormon Flat, and Stewart Mountain dams, with reservoirs and storage lakes, irrigate the Salt River valley. The Gillespie Dam on the Gila River helps irrigate the Yuma vicinity. The Coolidge Dam, with its San Carlos reservoir, serves the area near Casa Grande in the southeast. W Arizona is irrigated by Colorado River dams, which also serve California. These include Hoover, Glen Canyon, Davis, Parker, Imperial, and Laguna dams. At the Parker dam, the Central Arizona Project diverts water via canal to Phoenix, the state's capital and largest city, and Tucson, the second largest city. Arizona also obtains water from groundwater pumping stations.
Economy
The state's principal crops are cotton, lettuce, cauliflowers, broccoli, and sorghum. Cattle, calves, and dairy goods are, however, the most valuable Arizona farm products. Manufacturing is the leading economic activity, with electronics, printing and publishing, processed foods, and aerospace and transportation leading sectors. High-technology research and development, communications, and service industries are also important, as are construction (the state is rapidly growing) and tourism. Military facilities contributing to Arizona's economy include Fort Huachuca, Luke and Davis-Monthan air force bases, and the Yuma Proving Grounds. Testing and training with military aircraft and desert storage of commercial and military planes are both major undertakings.
Arizona abounds in minerals. Copper is the state's most valuable mineral; Arizona leads the nation in production. Other leading resources are molybdenum, sand, gravel, and cement.
The mountains in the north and central regions have 3,180,000 acres (1,286,900 hectares) of commercial forests, chiefly ponderosa pines and other firs, which support lumber and building-materials industries. The U.S. government owns about 95% of the commercial forests in the state. National and state forests attract millions of tourists yearly. Tourism centers in the N on the Grand Canyon, the Painted Desert, the Petrified Forest, meteor craters, ancient Native American ruins, and the Navajo and Hopi reservations that cover nearly all of the state's northeast quadrant. SE Arizona's warm, dry climate and Spanish colonial ruins also attract a large tourist trade, as do golf courses and other leisure facilities.
People
Between 1940 and 1960, Arizona's population increased more than 100%, and since then growth has continued. By the 2000 census the cumulative increase since 1940 amounted to more than 1000%, and Arizona was ranked among the fastest growing states in the nation. The mountainous north, however, has not shared the population growth of the southern sections of the state. Over 80% of the people are Caucasian and nearly 20% are Hispanic.
There were 203,527 Native Americans in Arizona in 1990 (or almost 6% of the people), the third highest such population in the United States. In addition to the Navajo, they include Mohave, Apache, Hopi, Paiute, Tohono O'Odham, Pima, Maricopa, Yavapaí, Hualapai, and Havasupai. Agriculture is the basis of their economy, but lack of water makes farming difficult; there is much poverty. The production of handicrafts, including leather goods, woven items, pottery, and the famous silver and turquoise jewelry of the Navajo; tourism; and mineral leases have also brought income to the tribes.
Government, Politics, and Education
The state's constitution provides for an elected governor and bicameral legislature, with a 30-member senate and a 60-member house of representatives. The governor and members of the legislature serve two-year terms. The state elects two senators and six representatives to the U.S. Congress and has eight electoral votes.
Republicans have dominated the politics of Arizona since the 1960s. In the late 1980s and 90s, political scandals tainted Arizona's governors. In 1988, Governor Evan Mecham, charged with obstructing justice and financial improprieties, was impeached and removed from office. J. Fife Symington 3d, another Republican, won election in 1991 and was reelected in 1994; in 1997, convicted on fraud charges, he too resigned. Republican secretary of state Jane Dee Hull succeeded Symington and won election on her own in 1998. In 2002, Democrat Janet Napolitano was elected to succeed Hull; she was reelected in 2006.
Arizona's educational institutions include the Univ. of Arizona, at Tucson; Arizona State Univ., at Tempe; Northern Arizona Univ., at Flagstaff; and several private institutions.
History
Early History
Little is known of the earliest indigenous cultures in Arizona, but they probably lived in the region as early as 25,000 B.C. A later culture, the Hohokam (A.D. 500–1450), were pit dwellers who constructed extensive irrigation systems. The Pueblo flourished in Arizona between the 11th and 14th cent. and built many of the elaborate cliff dwellings that still stand. The Apache and Navajo came to the area in c.1300 from Canada.
Spanish Exploration and Mexican Control
Probably the first Spanish explorer to enter Arizona (c.1536) was Cabeza de Vaca. Franciscan friar Marcos de Niza reached the state in 1539; he was followed by Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, who led an expedition from Mexico in 1540 in search of the seven legendary cities of gold, reaching as far as the Grand Canyon. Despite extensive exploration, the region was neglected by the Spanish in favor of the more fruitful area of New Mexico. Father Eusebio Kino, a Jesuit, founded the missions of Guevavi (1692) and Tumacacori (1696), near Nogales, and San Xavier del Bac (1700), near Tucson. The Spanish Empire, however, expelled the Jesuits in 1767, and those in Arizona subsequently lost their control over the indigenous people.
The Arizona region came under Mexican control following the Mexican war of independence from Spain (1810–21). In the early 1800s, U.S. mountain men, trappers and traders such as Kit Carson, trapped beaver in the area, but otherwise there were few settlers.
U.S. Acquisition and the Discovery of Minerals
In the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848), ending the Mexican War (1846–48), Mexico relinquished control of the area N of the Gila River to the United States. This area became part of the U.S. Territory of New Mexico in 1850. The United States, wishing to build a railroad through the area S of the Gila River, bought the area between the river and the S boundary of Arizona from Mexico in the Gadsden Purchase (1853).
Arizona's minerals, valued even by prehistoric miners, attracted most of the early explorers, and although the area remained a relatively obscure section of the Territory of New Mexico, mining continued sporadically. Small numbers of prospectors, crossing Arizona to join the California gold rush (1849), found gold, silver, and a neglected metal—copper.
In 1861, at the outbreak of the Civil War, conventions held at Tucson and Mesilla declared the area part of the Confederacy. In the only engagement fought in the Arizona area, a small group of Confederate pickets held off Union cavalry NW of Tucson in the skirmish known as the battle of Picacho Pass.
Territorial Status and Statehood
In 1863, Arizona was organized as a separate territory, with its first, temporary capital at Fort Whipple. Prescott became the capital in 1865. Charles D. Poston, who had worked to achieve Arizona's new status, was elected as the territory's first delegate to the U.S. Congress. The capital was moved to Tucson in 1867, back to Prescott in 1877, and finally to Phoenix in 1889.
The region had been held precariously by U.S. soldiers during the intermittent warfare (1861–86) with the Apaches, who were led by Cochise and later Geronimo. General George Crook waged a successful campaign against the Apaches in 1882–85, and in 1886 Geronimo finally surrendered to federal troops. When Confederate troops were routed and Union soldiers went east to fight in the Civil War, settlement was abandoned. It was resumed after the war and encouraged by the Homestead Act (1862), the Desert Land Act (1877), and the Carey Land Act (1894)—all of which turned land over to settlers and required them to develop it.
In the 1870s mining flourished, and by the following decade the Copper Queen Company at Bisbee was exploiting one of the area's largest copper deposits. In 1877 silver was discovered at Tombstone, setting off a boom that drew throngs of prospectors to Arizona but lasted less than 10 years. Tombstone also became famous for its lawlessness; Wyatt Earp and his brothers gained their reputations during the famous gunfight (1881) at the O. K. Corral. By 1880 the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific railroads both extended into Arizona. Ranching began to thrive and sheep raising grew from solely a Navajo occupation to a major enterprise among white settlers. After 1897, the U.S. Forestry Bureau issued grazing permits to protect public land from depletion.
In 1912, Arizona, still a frontier territory, attained statehood. Its constitution created a storm, with such “radical” political features as initiative, referendum, and judicial recall. Only after recall had been deleted did President Taft sign the statehood bill. Once admitted to the Union, Arizona restored the recall provision.
Modern Development
Irrigation, spurred by the Desert Land Act and by Mormon immigration, promoted farming in the southern part of the territory. By 1900, diverted streams were irrigating 200,000 acres (80,940 hectares). With the opening of the Roosevelt Dam (1911), a federally financed project, massive irrigation projects transformed Arizona's valleys. Although Arizona's mines were not unionized until the mid-1930s, strikes occurred at the copper mines of Clifton and Morenci in 1915 and at the Bisbee mines in 1917.
During World War II, defense industries were established in Arizona. Manufacturing, notably electronic industries, continued to develop after the war, especially around Phoenix and Tucson; in the 1960s, manufacturing achieved economic supremacy over mining and agriculture in Arizona. During the 1970s and 80s the state experienced phenomenal economic growth as it and other Sun Belt states attracted high-technology industries with enormous growth potential.
Arizona has contributed several major figures to national politics. Among them, Senator Barry M. Goldwater, the unsuccessful 1964 Republican candidate for the U.S. presidency, was long the standard bearer for American conservatism. Democrat Stewart L. Udall served as secretary of the interior under presidents Kennedy and Johnson.
With the development of irrigation and hydroelectric projects along the Colorado River and its tributaries, water rights became a subject of litigation between Arizona and California. In 1963 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Arizona had rights to a share of the water from the Colorado's main stream and sole water rights over tributaries within Arizona. In 1968, Congress authorized the Central Arizona Project, a 335-mi (539-km) canal system to divert water from the Colorado River to the booming metropolitan areas of Phoenix and Tucson. The canal, which uses dams, tunnels, and pumps to raise the water 1,247 ft (380 m) to the desert plain, was opposed by environmentalists, who feared it would damage desert ecosystems. Construction was completed in 1991, at a cost of over $3.5 billion.
In 1992 a six-year political controversy ended when Arizona voters approved a proposal to observe an annual state holiday honoring Martin Luther King, Jr.
Bibliography
See E. H. Peplow, Jr., History of Arizona (3 vol., 1958); Univ. of Arizona Faculty, Arizona: Its People and Resources (rev. 2d ed. 1972); M. R. Comeaux, Arizona: A Geography (1982); T. Miller, ed., Arizona: The Land and Its People (1986); J. E. Officer, Hispanic Arizona (1987); M. Trimble, Arizona: A Cavalcade of History (1989).
State in the southwestern United States bordered by Utah to the north, New Mexico to the east, Mexico to the south, and California and Nevada to the west. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix.
Local Time: May 16, 2:02 PM
Southwestern state that is one of the oldest winegrowing regions in the United States. Franciscan missionaries planted mission grapes over 400 years ago, many years before they moved into California. There are a few wineries in the northern part of the state; however, the major growing area is in the southeast corner in the mountainous regions south and east of Tucson. The Sonoita AVA (currently the only one recognized in the state) is southeast of Tucson around Elgin in Santa Cruz County. Other viticultural areas include the Sulphur Springs Valley (between Bisbee and Willcox) and Dos Cabezas (east of Willcox). The best-known winery, Callaghan Vineyard, has been making wines since 1990. Others include Arizona Vineyards, Charron Vineyard, Dark Mountain Winery, Domaines Ellam, Dos Cabezas Wineworks, Echo Canyon, Florence Vineyards, Fort Bowie Vineyards, Kokopelli Winery, Palo Verde, Paradise Valley Vineyards, San Dominique, Santa Cruz Winery, Sonoita Vineyard, Village of Elgin Winery, and Whispering Peak Vineyards. Arizona has less than 1,000 acres planted, primarily to popular grape varieties like cabernet sauvignon, merlot, syrah, chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, and sangiovese.
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