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History of Arizona

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: North American History

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                                                           Flag of Arizona

                                                        History of Arizona

                              European Colonization

                                                            Spanish Period

                                                            Mexican Period

                                                        Territorial Period

                                             The Depression and World Wars

   The first Native Americans arrived in Arizona between 16,000 BC and
   10,000 BCE, while the history of Arizona as recorded by Europeans began
   when Marcos de Niza, a Franciscan, explored the area in 1539.
   Coronado's expedition entered the area in 1540–1542 during its search
   for Cíbola. Padre Eusebio Francisco Kino developed a chain of missions
   and taught the Indians Christianity in Pimería Alta (now southern
   Arizona and northern Sonora) in the 1690s and early 1700s. Spain
   founded fortified towns (presidios) at Tubac in 1752 and Tucson in
   1775.

   All of present-day Arizona became part of Mexico's northwest frontier
   upon the Mexican assertion of independence from Spain in 1821. The
   United States took possession of most of Arizona at the end of the
   Mexican-American War in 1848. In 1853, the land below the Gila River
   was acquired from Mexico in the Gadsden Purchase. Arizona was
   administered as part of the Territory of New Mexico until it was
   organized into a separate territory on February 24, 1863.

   Arizona was admitted into the Union—officially becoming a U.S. state—on
   February 14, 1912.

   Phoenix was the site of a German and Italian prisoner of war camp
   during World War II. The site was purchased after the war by the Maytag
   family and is currently the Phoenix Zoo. Also located in the state were
   the War Relocation Authority's second- and third-largest Japanese
   American internment camps, Poston and Gila River.

Prehistory

The Paleo-Indians and Archaic peoples

   According to the best archaeological and geological evidence available,
   Paleolithic, mammoth-hunting families moved into northwestern North
   America sometime between 16,000 BCE and 10,000 BCE. In central Alaska,
   they found their passage blocked by a huge sheet of ice until a
   temporary recession in the last ice age that opened up an ice-free
   corridor through northwestern Canada, allowing bands to fan out
   throughout the rest of the continent. The earliest undisputed evidence
   of humans in the southwestern United States is a set of fluted spear
   points from the Paleolithic ^. Some scientists have proposed that small
   bands of women, men and children wandered across the deserts of
   southwestern Arizona and northwestern Mexico 10,000 to 20,000 years
   earlier than the mammoth hunters.

   In the opinion of geoscientist Paul Martin, these bands^ , armed with
   Clovis points (named for the site near Clovis, New Mexico where the
   first point was found), encountered mammoths, camels, ground sloths,
   and horses. As these species had never faced sophisticated big-game
   hunters before, the result was the " Pleistocene overkill", the rapid
   and systematic slaughter of nearly all the species of large ice-age
   mammals in North America by 8000 BCE. In a sense, the hunters who
   pursued the Nero mammoths may have represented the first of Arizona's
   many cycles of boom and bust, in which a single resource is
   relentlessly exploited until that resource has been depleted or
   destroyed.

   Archaeologists call the 7,000 years between the disappearance of
   big-game hunters and the emergence of pottery-making societies, in the
   2nd century CE, the Archaic period. Most Archaic groups survived by
   becoming generalists rather than specialists, foraging in seasonal
   movements across the mountains, deserts and plateaus. They did not
   abandon hunting, but they depended to a much greater degree upon wild
   plant foods and small game. Their tools became more varied, with
   grinding and chopping implements becoming more common, a sign that
   seeds, fruits and greens constituted a greater proportion of their
   diet.
   The Ancestral Puebloans, or Anasazi, were a prehistoric Native American
   civilization centered around the present-day Four Corners area of the
   Southwest United States.
   Enlarge
   The Ancestral Puebloans, or Anasazi, were a prehistoric Native American
   civilization centered around the present-day Four Corners area of the
   Southwest United States.

   Climate changes drove the transition from big-game hunting. When the
   first big-game hunters entered Arizona, the forests were as much as
   3,000 feet lower than they are today. In the Sonoran Desert, piñon,
   juniper and oak woodlands extended as far as 1,800 feet down slopes,
   the elevation of lower slopes of Camelback Mountain in Phoenix. Desert
   grasslands studded with Joshua trees, beargrass and yucca carpeted
   valleys below. The great ponderosa pine forests of the Colorado Plateau
   did not exist. Instead, the Mogollon Rim supported vast stands of mixed
   conifers such as Douglas fir, blue spruce and Rocky Mountain
   juniper—the trees characteristic of higher altitudes today. The giant
   saguaro, the plant that symbolizes Arizona in many people's minds, had
   largely taken refuge in present-day Mexico.

   Temperatures rose, and the seasonal distribution of precipitation began
   to change, causing major changes in the vegetation as well. The Clovis
   people were stalking mammoths and other ice-age species in southeastern
   Arizona at a time when many streams were drying up, forcing animals to
   concentrate around streams and seeps. The growing aridity of the region
   therefore coincided with the arrival of hunters who specialized in the
   pursuit of large mammals. It is possible that climate and humans acted
   together to bring an end to these species.

   Arizona grew even more arid after the last ice age came to an end.
   Summers grew wetter, but warmer, so rainfall evaporated quicker.
   Winters became considerably drier, making less moisture available to
   plants. In southern Arizona, woodlands gave way to desert grasslands,
   and desert grasslands gave way to desert scrub. Important Sonoran
   Desert species like saguaro and brittlebush began to recolonize the
   region from the south, while ponderosa forests and piñon-juniper-oak
   woodlands climbed back onto the Colorado Plateau. By 2000 BC, the
   modern plant communities of Arizona had been established and a modern
   climate prevailed.

   The early Archaic peoples of Arizona survived these changes by adapting
   to the cycles of plants rather than trying to change them. In the
   woodlands, they gathered acorns in July and August, and piñon nuts and
   juniper berries in November. In the desert, they picked the leaves of
   annual plants like chenopodium (goosefoot) and amaranth (pigweed). They
   also roasted agave in rock-lined pits each spring, and collected cactus
   fruit and harvested mesquite pods in the summer. Because of their
   dependence on scattered and seasonal resources, Archaic groups did not
   occupy permanent settlements. Instead, they wandered from camp to camp
   in search of water and wild foods.

   Their tools reflected their economy: ground stones (manos and metates)
   were used for grinding seeds into flour, scrapers for working hide and
   wood, and projectile points, smaller and cruder than the earlier Clovis
   and Folsom points, for hunting large and small game. The varying
   proportions of such tools at different sites suggest that people moved
   back and forth between different environmental zones to exploit their
   particular resources. Archaic peoples fashioned artifacts that
   demonstrated their capacity for wonder and their quest for supernatural
   power. Intaglios 10 to 100 feet in length appeared on both sides of the
   Colorado River in southeastern California and southwestern Arizona.
   Many of them were of stylized rattlesnakes, thunderbirds, phalli, and
   human forms.

The introduction of agriculture

   For most of the Archaic period, people were not able to transform their
   natural environment in any fundamental way. Many archaeologists assumed
   that the Archaic cultures of Arizona were dead ends. They believed
   groups outside the region, particularly Mesoamerica, introduced major
   innovations like agriculture into the Southwest. According to this
   model, maize first put down Southwestern roots in the highlands of
   western New Mexico and eastern Arizona, the pre-Hispanic cultural area
   known as the Mogollon. Archaic populations there began growing a small
   and primitive variety of maize at places like Bat Cave as early as 3500
   BCE. From there, maize spread slowly to more arid and lowland areas,
   such as the Sonoran Desert.

   During the 1980s, these early maize dates were challenged by a
   refinement in radiocarbon dating using the accelerator mass
   spectrometer (AMS) technique. Accelerator dates reveal that the first
   corn from Bat Cave and other highland sites appeared around 1000 BCE,
   2,500 years later than previously thought. A number of sites excavated
   in southern Arizona demonstrate that Archaic farmers were cultivating
   maize in the Tucson Basin at around the same time as well. At the
   Milagro site along Tanque Verde Creek, for example, a Late Archaic
   population built pit houses, dug bell-shaped storage pits, and planted
   maize around 850 BCE. Archaic groups, then, were already beginning to
   make the transition from food gatherers to food producers around 3,000
   years ago. They also possessed many of the cultural features that
   accompany semisedentary agricultural life: storage facilities, more
   permanent dwellings, larger settlements, and even cemeteries.

   Despite the early advent of farming, late Archaic groups still
   exercised little control over their natural environment. Furthermore,
   wild food resources remained important components of their diet even
   after the invention of pottery and the development of irrigation. The
   introduction of agriculture never resulted in the complete abandonment
   of hunting and foraging, even in the largest of Archaic societies.
   During the 1st millennium CE, at least three major cultures flourished
   in the Southwest: the Anasazi, the Hohokam, and the Mogollon. These
   three cultures are well known for their architecture and pottery.

European colonization

   The Coronado Expedition, 1540–1542.
   Enlarge
   The Coronado Expedition, 1540–1542.

   Although the first European visitors to Arizona may have come in 1528,
   the most influential expeditions in early Spanish Arizona were those of
   Marcos de Niza and Francisco Vásquez de Coronado^ . The accounts of the
   early Spanish explorers of large mythical cities like Cíbola and large
   mineral deposits of copper and silver would attract settlers and miners
   to the region in later years. These explorations led to the Columbian
   Exchange in Arizona, and widespread epidemics of smallpox among the
   Native Americans. Native-American history of early European Arizonan
   exploration is hard to find, but the O'Odham calendar stick is a
   traditional way of recording notable events, including droughts,
   invasions, floods that could be used as a source.

   Early Franciscans and Jesuits in Arizona also set up numerous missions
   around the area to convert the Native Americans, such as San Xavier del
   Bac. The missionary Eusebio Kino around the Pimería Alta, exchanging
   gifts and catechizing the natives, who were then used as scouts for
   keeping track of events on the frontier. In 1680, the Pueblo Revolt
   drove Spaniards temporarily from northern New Mexico, but the area was
   reconquered in 1694.

Spanish Arizona

   A group of Apaches.
   Enlarge
   A group of Apaches.

   Although the Spanish did not yet have towns for themselves, in the late
   17th century colonists began steadily entering the region, attracted by
   the recent discovery of deposits of silver around the Arizonac mining
   camp. Most of the colonists left after Juan Bautista de Anza announced
   it had merely been buried treasure; however, several stayed and became
   subsistence farmers. During the mid-18th century, the pioneers of
   Arizona tried to expand their territory northward, but were prevented
   from doing so by the Tohono O'Odham and Apache Native Americans, who
   had begun raiding their villages for livestock.

   In 1765, the Bourbon Reforms began, with Charles III of Spain doing a
   major rearranging of the presidios on the northern frontier. The
   Jesuits were expelled from the area, and the Franciscans took their
   place at their missions. In the 1780s and 1790s, the Spanish began a
   plan of setting up Apache peace camps and providing the Apache with
   rations so that they would not attack, allowing the Spanish to expand
   northward.

   For the most part, Spanish Arizona had a subsistence economy, with
   occasional small gold and silver mining operations.

Mexican Arizona

   The Gadsden Purchase (shown with present-day state boundaries and
   cities).
   Enlarge
   The Gadsden Purchase (shown with present-day state boundaries and
   cities).

   In 1821, Mexico won its independence from Spain after a decade of war.
   The revolution had destroyed the colonial silver mining industry and
   had bankrupted the national treasury ^. Along the northern frontier,
   funds that had supported missions, presidios and Apache peace camps
   nearly disappeared. As a result, Apaches once again began raiding,
   running off horse herds, and killing anyone caught outside presidial
   walls. As missions began to wither, Mexico began auctioning off more
   land, causing the Pimería Alta and the Apachería to shrink as territory
   expanded.

   American mountain men began to enter the region, looking to trap
   beavers for their pelts. In 1846, the ideology of Manifest Destiny and
   the occupation of disputed territory led the United States to initiate
   Mexican-American War, resulting in the Mexican Cession that gave
   America the region of Arizona (among other lands). In 1849, the
   California Gold Rush led as many as 50,000 miners through the region,
   leading to major booms in Arizona's population. In 1853, President
   James Buchanan sent James Gadsden to Mexico City to negotiate with
   Santa Anna, and the United States bought the remaining area of Arizona
   and New Mexico in the Gadsden Purchase.

American Arizona Territory

   Arizona Territory in 1866
   Enlarge
   Arizona Territory in 1866

   On March 16, 1861 the southern half of New Mexico Territory declared
   itself independent of the United States. Arizona Territory (CSA) was
   regarded as a valuable route for possible access to the Pacific Ocean,
   with the specific intention of joining southern California to the
   Confederacy. In 1860, Southern California had cleared all legal hurdles
   for secession from the rest of California and was waiting
   reorganization as a new US territory, which never materialized. At that
   time sparsely populated southern California was a hotbed of
   Southern-sympathizers. The Battle of Picacho Pass was the westernmost
   battle of the Civil War fought in the CSA, and the only major one to be
   fought in Arizona. (The westernmost battle of the Civil War was fought
   at San José, California.) During the war, U.S. presidios were moved to
   New Mexico, leaving Arizona vulnerable to Native American attack.
   Hostilities between the Native Americans and American settlers began,
   despite their alliance during the time of the Mexican-American War,
   leading to most Indian tribes being moved to reservations.

   Steamboats, mining, cattle and trains became vital parts of the Arizona
   economy, leading to boomtowns being formed as prospectors found gold,
   and the boomtowns becoming ghost towns as the miners left. Mexicans,
   who still were the majority in Arizona during the time shortly
   following the Mexican-American War, constituted most of the mining
   labor force.

   The Desert Land Act of 1877, which gave settlers 640 acres (1 sq. mi.,
   2.6 km²) of land, caused people to flood into the region.
   1895 map (Rand McNally)
   Enlarge
   1895 map (Rand McNally)

   In the 1900s, Arizona almost entered the Union as part of New Mexico in
   a Republican plan to keep control of the U.S. Senate. The whites in
   Arizona were against joint statehood because most New Mexicans were
   Hispanic. In 1912, Arizona finally entered the Union as the 48th state
   of the United States. In the same year, women gained suffrage in the
   state.

The Great Depression and the World Wars

   In 1917, the United States entered into World War I, thus beginning a
   boom in the economy of Arizona. After suffering through the Great
   Depression, the implementation of the New Deal and another economic
   boom after World War II brought Arizona back into a state of stability.

   During this timeframe, industries such as cotton, copper, farming, and
   miniz began to flourish in the state. The military began using Phoenix
   and Tucson for military bases and academies, with the army becoming the
   community's largest source of revenue. For a time, the Charter
   Government Committee swept the elections. Barry Goldwater and Sandra
   Day O'Connor would later have successful judicial and political
   careers.

   During the war, people also began to move to Arizona from other regions
   of the country because of its inland position and protection from
   aerial attacks. In 1946, Arizona began to enforce right-to-work laws,
   which allowed workers to decide whether or not to join or financially
   support a union. The dual-wage system, in which Mexicans made $1.15
   less per shift, was abandoned. In 1948, the high tech industry began in
   Arizona, with Motorola building one of the first plants in Phoenix.
   1948 also saw American Indians gaining the right to vote, after having
   been disqualified for twenty years for being "wards of the state".

Recent events

   Aerial photo by the Central Arizona Project.
   Enlarge
   Aerial photo by the Central Arizona Project.

   In recent times, Arizona has become a major warm-weather tourist and
   retirement destination, much like Florida. A major part of the tourism
   industry is based on the presence of the Grand Canyon.

   In 1963, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of Arizona over California
   in a dispute over Arizona's share of the Colorado River. Five years
   after the decision, authorization was given for the construction of the
   Central Arizona Project, which was not completed until 1991^ .

   Republican Senator Barry Goldwater, a native of Arizona, ran for the
   presidency in 1964, with William Edward Miller as his running mate. Due
   to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Goldwater found himself in the
   difficult position of running against the successor to a slain
   president, and was soundly defeated by Lyndon B. Johnson. Goldwater
   received only 38.4% of the popular vote and the electoral votes of just
   five states, including 5 from Arizona.

   In 1988, Evan Mecham, the Governor of Arizona, was impeached. Mecham
   faced allegations of money laundering, including trying to conceal a
   $350,000 campaign loan, borrowing $60,000 of state money to prop up his
   struggling auto dealership, as well as allegations of attempting to
   block the investigation of a death threat made by a state official.
   Rose Mofford succeeded him as the Governor of Arizona, becoming the
   first female ever to hold the office.

   Mecham had already been unpopular for his cancellation of a paid Martin
   Luther King Day holiday for state employees. The holiday had been first
   proposed in 1972 by former state senators Cloves Campbell. For the
   first of several times, the legislation had failed to pass the
   legislature, causing Arizona to lose its chance to host the Super
   Bowl,^as well as costing the state tourism and other benefits that
   naturally come from these events. Governor Bruce Babbitt gave state
   employees the day off by executive order, but Mecham later voided the
   order just a week before the holiday was to be celebrated, based on a
   legal opinion by the state's Attorney General that the holiday had been
   created illegally.^

   When the legislation passed in 1989, Rose Mofford signed into law a
   paid state holiday honoring Martin Luther King, Jr.^ , making it
   possible for the state to host a Super Bowl. The chair of the Americans
   for Traditional American Values filed a petition against it, accusing
   Dr. King of being a socialist and philanderer. The two 1990 ballot
   initiatives were, respectively, for celebrating both Martin Luther King
   Day and Columbus Day holidays, and for swapping the Columbus holiday
   for the King one. Both failed. In 1992, in the face of a tourist
   boycott and losing the chance to host Super Bowl XXVII, 61% of Arizonan
   voters publicly approved the payment of state workers on a Martin
   Luther King Day/Civil Rights Day holiday. It was the 49th state in the
   United States to approve the holiday, and the first state to have voter
   approval of allowing state workers to have paid absence on Martin
   Luther King Day. Super Bowl XXX was later played in Tempe in 1996.

   Mofford's successor as governor, Fife Symington, resigned in 1997 after
   conviction of bank fraud. His conviction was later overturned, and he
   was subsequently pardoned by President Clinton.

   On August 17, 2005,^ the governors of both Arizona and New Mexico
   declared an emergency in the Mexico-bordering counties of their states.
   Both governors cited violence, illegal immigration, drug smuggling, and
   the inaction of both the U.S. and Mexican governments as reasons for
   the state of emergency. Governor Janet Napolitano of Arizona freed $1.5
   million in disaster funds to help the border counties, and Governor
   Bill Richardson of New Mexico freed $1.75 million.
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