Arizona EBLAD - Gibbs Smith Cover Archive

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From geological origins and ancient peoples to high-tech industries and world-class golf
resorts; from Spanish missions and mining boomtowns to ranching, tourism, and Navajo
Code Talkers; from Monument Valley to the Tonto Basin to the Mexican border . . .
all celebrate the beauty of this majestic state!
Arizona
Almost everyone in the world knows something about
Arizona, and some of it is even true. The Grand Canyon
State is famous for Geronimo, Tombstone, the Petrified
Forest, Zane Gray, Barry Goldwater, and—later—John
McCain. However, Arizona’s history is unique and often
misunderstood. Before the railroad opened the great
American frontier, dime novels and Wild West shows
made up their own history of the Southwest. It was
always more “fakelore” than fact, but the public
couldn’t get enough gunfights and Apache raids.
They make for great reading, and some of them are
even based on true stories—or at least they were
A Celebration of the
Grand Canyon State
Since 1951, when
his family moved
to Arizona so he
could recover from
asthma, Jim Turner
has lived in Tucson.
He received his
master’s degree in
U.S. history from
the University
of Arizona in 1999. As Outreach Historian for the
Arizona Historical Society, Turner worked with more
than sixty museums in every corner of the state
and received a Distinguished Service Award from
the Arizona Museum Association in 2007. Before
retiring in 2008, he co-authored The Arizona Story,
an award-winning fourth-grade Arizona history
textbook published by Gibbs Smith. He is now a
freelance editor, teacher, researcher, and author.
His Tucson history column, Life in the Old Pueblo,
appears monthly in the Arizona Daily Star. Turner
is a “Roads Scholar” presenter for the Arizona
Humanities Council and an Adjunct Professor at
Central Arizona College.
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Arizona
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before the editors and directors tackled them.
On February 14, 2012, Arizona celebrates its
A r i z o n a
A Celebration of the Grand Canyon State
Turner
Jacket Images:
Front: The Saguaro (1925), by Maynard Dixon;
private collection; photograph courtesy of Medicine Man Gallery.
Back: Sunset Reflections, Cathedral Rock, Sedona.
© Victor Beer Photography, 2011.
Author Photo © 2011 Michael Henry.
Jacket Design by Kurt Wahlner.
centennial as the 48th state in the Union. Author Jim
Turner captures its documented history with engaging
text complemented by scenic and historic images that
define the spirit of this last frontier outpost of the
continental United States. Arizona: A Celebration of
the Grand Canyon State is a colorful, comprehensive,
and exciting popular history of this beautiful state,
from its prehistoric and geologic origins, to its
definitive Native American, Spanish, and Wild West
Jim Turner
History/Regional
$40.00 U.S.
cultures, to its modern biotech industries. Colorful
bywords conjure picturesque images of its diverse
regions—Arizona Strip and Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam
and Lake Mead; Betatakin and Keet Seel, Monument
Valley, Canyon de Chelly; Oak Creek Canyon, Mogollon
Rim, and Tonto Basin; Mazatzal, Sierra Ancha, and
White Mountains; Sky Islands, Mojave and Sonoran
Deserts—not to mention its vibrant cities, prosperous
towns, charming villages, and historic ghost towns.
This is Arizona!
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments 6
Introduction 8
1:
Volatile Lands and Valuable Waters 12
CHAPTER
2:
Arizona Indians, Past and Present 42
CHAPTER
CHAPTER 3:
New Spain and the Republic of Mexico 72
4:
Manifest Destiny, the Argonauts,
and the Civil War 102
CHAPTER
5:
Conflicts of Culture and
Legends of the Wild West 132
CHAPTER
6:
Railroads, Copper, and Statehood 162
CHAPTER
7:
The Boom, the Bust, and the Wars 192
CHAPTER
8:
Postwar Boom to the Space Age 222
CHAPTER
CHAPTER 9:
Modern Arizona 252
10:
Through the Ages and into the Future 282
CHAPTER
Endnotes 314
Credits 324
Bibliography 326
Index 330
The Corkscrew, Antelope Canyon near Page, Arizona.
© Jerry Jacka, 2011.
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INTRODUCTION
Here you have no rain when all the earth cries for it,
or quick downpours called cloud-bursts for violence.
A land of lost rivers, with little in it to love;
yet a land that once visited must be come back to inevitably.
—Mary Austin, Land of Little Rain, 1903
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icknamed the “Baby State” because it
miles of precisely engineered irrigation canals
was the last of the contiguous states
throughout the Southwest.
to join the Union, its admission in
Decades before Jamestown and Plymouth
1912 created the 48-star American flag that flew
Rock, hundreds of Spanish conquistadors trav-
until Alaska and Hawaii rounded it out to 50 stars
eled thousands of miles from Mexico City to the
in 1959. Arizona may be a latecomer to statehood,
center of Kansas in their quest for gold, glory, and
but it’s the home of the first Republican Party
God. They were followed by missionary priests
presidential candidate and the United
States’ first female Supreme Court Justice.
Newcomers and visitors often think
there’s not much history in Arizona, but
nothing could be farther from the truth.
The Grand Canyon, the world’s open-air
geology textbook, begins with ancient
schist strata at the bottom of the canyon that date back 1.7 billion years. From
dinosaur tracks to petrified tree trunks,
Arizona’s prehistoric record is set in stone.
Eleven thousand years ago, ancient cultures hunted Ice Age mammoths through
tropical swamps in what we now call Arizona. Several millennia later, while King
John signed the Magna Carta and Genghis Khan conquered Asia, ancient farmers built
in the 1600s, then soldiers in the next century,
multistoried cliff dwellings and dug hundreds of
building forts on New Spain’s northern frontier.
Left: Totem Pole [right] and Yei-bi-chai Rocks, Monument Valley, Arizona. © Jerry Jacka, 2011.
Above: Many artists, including Carl Oscar Borg, have depicted Coronado’s arrival at what he thought
were the Seven Cities of Gold.
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Above and clockwise:
The California Gold Rush of 1849
drew attention to Arizona’s vast
mineral wealth.
Standardized signal bells for mine
shaft hoists promoted safety.
Bird’s-eye view of Superior,
Arizona. Courtesy of Dori Griffin.
Major John Wesley Powell led the
first expedition to explore the Grand
Canyon via the Colorado River, 1869.