Arizona, AZ

Arizona State vector maps

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Arizona is one of the Four Corners states. It borders New Mexico, Utah, Nevada,  California and Colorado

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Capital: Phoenix

Land Area:113,990 square miles; Rank 29th

Statehood: February 14, 1912 48th State

Population: 6,731,484 (2014 est)

Useless information facts

Arizona received its name from one of two sources. A Pima Indian word, “Arizonac," translates as “little spring place." It is also an Aztec expression for “silver-bearing.”

“Rattlesnake Heaven" is not just a favorable area for rattlesnakes. Other native reptiles include the coral snake, the king snake, the bull snake, the Arizona mud turtle, the chuckwalla lizard, the uta lizard, the homed lizard, and the Gila monster.

Cotton is an important commercial crop. In 1903, agriculture experts introduced a longer fiber type of cotton which had thrived in the climate of Egypt. This strain of cotton succeeded in the Salt River Valley, and has been bred and strengthened ever since.

John Dew, who once rescued a stranded traveler who had dragged himself to Dew s stage route station because he could see a distant light, was inspired to erect a tall pole and maintain a light every night thereafter. Dew was known as Keeper of the Desert Lighthouse.

Arizona s Kitt Peak was chosen to serve as an observatory site because it had clean air, stable temperatures, and low wind velocity. It joined Flagstaff s Lowell Observatory as Arizona s second major center of astronomical research. Kitt Peak has a massive solar telescope, and Lowell is famous for being the source of the theory that the universe is expanding as well as for the discovery of planet Pluto in 1930.

23 Indian reservations are in Arizona, comprising about twenty million acres of Lribally-owned land and another 312,000 acres which are privately owned. The peoples of the Navajo, Apache, Papago, Hopi, Yavapai, and Pima have reservations there.

The majestic Grand Canyon constantly attracts visitors. Its climate and vegetation are drastically different at different elevations. The canyon floor is similar to the Mexican desert, but the north rim resembles southem Canada. In effect, a person taking a trip up the north rim of the canyon wall will experience a range of climate similar to the full range of climate in the United States.

The Theodore Roosevelt Dam on the Salt River was the earliest U.S. land reclamation project, completed in 1911.

Dick Wick Hall, publisher of the Salome Sun wrote humorously about the fertility of Arizona s land, “Melons don t do very well...the vines grow so fast they wear the melons out dragging them around the ground." Irrigation has made the state the “Salad Bowl of the Nation," with lettuce, carrots, onions, cabbage, and broccoli crops. Dates are an Arizona specialty, also.

Thirty-five miles east of Prescott is Arcosanti, a prototypical development based on the “arcology," architecture and ecology, of Paolo Soleri. About 5,000 residents are to fill the cliffside human habitat and experimental community.

Biosphere II, about thirty-five miles north of Tucson, is a three-acre self-sustaining enclosed capsule for the eight people who lived there in a two-year isolated experiment in harmonious living, 1991-1993.

Points of Interest:

 

· Natural Wonders: Grand Canyon Painted Desert Petrified Forest Meteor Crater Canyon Diablo

· "Whiskey Row" in Prescott, the original capital of Arizona Territory

· Walnut Canyon and Sunset Crater National Monuments, near Flagstaff

· Peach Springs, tribal headquarters of the Hualapai Reservation

· Fort Verde State Historic Park, southeast of Jerome

· Tuzigoot National Monument, ancient hillside pueblos, near Jerome

· Montezuma Castle National Monument, Verde Valley

· Historic Old Town, Cottonwood

· Casa Grande Ruins National Monument, near Coolidge

· Pioneer Arizona Living History Museum, north of Phoenix

· Mission San Xavier de Bac, Tucson

· Saguaro National Monument, cactus preserves, Tucson

· Mojave Indian Reservation and Havasu National Wildlife Refuge, below Bullhead City

· Tohono O odham Indian Reservation, between Ajo and Tucson

· Tubac Presidio State Park, south of Tucson

· Besh Ba Archeological Park, near Globe

· Tonto National Monument, cliff dwellings, northwest of Globe-Miami

· Chiracahua National Monument, north of Douglas

· Mining ghost towns: Gleeson, Charleston, Pearce, Washington Camp

· Restored minipg towns: Tombstone, Bisbee, Jerome

· Barrio Historica, Tucson

A PLACE OF indisputable geographical interest in the U.S. Southwest, of which the GRAND CANYON of the Colorado River.

Arizona was the last of the contiguous UNITED STATES to be granted statehood, in 1912.

The state is bounded by UTAH, NEW MEXICO, CALIFORNIA, and NEVADA, and by Mexico to the south.

The propriety of including the extreme northwestern land area, known as the Arizona strip,

has long been a matter of dispute with adjoining Utah, due to its relative inaccessibility from greater

Arizona across the Colorado River.Most of the Basin and Range Province is arid and is classified as desert.

Three physiographic provinces divide the state into a continuity of diverse regions. To the north, the Colorado.

Plateau Province rises to a maximum altitude at Humphreys Peak (12,633 ft or 3,851 m).The plateau

is joined from several interlocking uplifted blocks,terminating on the southern boundary at the Mogollon Rim.

Source:Donald L. Baars, The Colorado Plateau: A Geological History (University of New Mexico Press, 1983)

Capital: Phoenix

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