70 Fun Facts About Arizona

Arizona became the 48th state on February 14, 1912. Which holiday does that date fall on?

Arizona was the last of the contiguous 48 states to join the Union; only Alaska and Hawaii came later.

The state's name is thought to come from an O'odham phrase, alĭ ṣonak, meaning what?

The phrase passed into Spanish as Arizonac before being shortened to the name used today.

How much did the US pay Mexico for the 1853 Gadsden Purchase?

The land south of the Gila River was wanted for a southern transcontinental railroad route.

Which government formally organized an Arizona Territory first, on January 18, 1862?

The Union created its own Arizona Territory the following year, splitting it off from New Mexico Territory.

Which town, home of Whiskey Row and the World's Oldest Rodeo, was Arizona's first territorial capital?

The town was named after historian William H. Prescott, and its rodeo has run continuously since 1888.

In what year did Phoenix become the territorial capital of Arizona?

The capital had bounced back and forth between two other towns for a quarter of a century before settling in Phoenix.

Phoenix was named for a city rising from the ruins of which ancient canal-building culture?

Their canals ran for roughly 135 miles, and modern Phoenix canals still follow some of the same routes.

What all-time record high temperature did Phoenix reach on June 26, 1990?

Sky Harbor Airport briefly halted flights that day because aircraft performance charts did not go that high.

What is the nickname of the Phoenix metropolitan area?

The name comes from its setting in the Salt River Valley, and Phoenix is now the most populous state capital in the country.

Which Arizona city was the first in the United States to be named a UNESCO City of Gastronomy, in 2015?

Nicknamed the Old Pueblo, it is also the oldest incorporated city in the state, dating to 1877.

How long is the Grand Canyon?

It reaches up to 18 miles wide and more than a mile deep.

Which president signed the 1919 act that made the Grand Canyon a national park?

Roosevelt had visited in 1903 and set up a game preserve there, but the park itself came 16 years later.

Who was the first European known to have seen the Grand Canyon, in 1540?

He was scouting for the Coronado expedition, which was searching for the fabled Seven Cities of Gold.

What is the highest point in Arizona, at 12,633 feet?

It is part of the San Francisco Peaks, the remains of an extinct volcano in the north of the state.

Most of Arizona does not observe daylight saving time. Which territory within the state does?

The reservation spans three states, so it keeps clocks in step with its Utah and New Mexico portions.

From March to November, most of Arizona shares its clock time with which neighboring state?

In winter Arizona is an hour ahead of the Pacific coast; in summer the difference vanishes.

Old Oraibi, one of the oldest continuously inhabited US villages, belongs to which people?

Their villages sit atop three mesas in northern Arizona, and their reservation is entirely surrounded by a much larger one.

Arizona meets three other states at the Four Corners. Which of these is NOT one of them?

It is the only spot in the U.S. shared by four states, and the monument marking it also sits on the boundary between two tribal reservations.

Hoover Dam, on Arizona's western border, holds back which reservoir?

The dam was known officially as Boulder Dam for much of the 1930s and 1940s before its original name was restored.

The 1831 London Bridge, bought in 1968, was rebuilt across a channel of which Arizona reservoir?

Developer Robert P. McCulloch paid about roughly $2.5M for it as a lure for tourists and retirees, and rededicated it in 1971.

NASA astronauts trained for the Apollo Moon missions in which northern Arizona landmark?

The 50,000-year-old hole is nearly a mile across and remains privately owned by the Barringer family.

Which Arizona park protects fossilized logs from the Late Triassic?

Theodore Roosevelt made it the country's second national monument in 1906; it was upgraded to a national park in 1962.

John Ford shot Stagecoach, Fort Apache and The Searchers among the buttes of which Arizona landscape?

Its Navajo name means 'valley of the rocks', and its tallest buttes rise 1,000 feet above the floor.

Which sandstone gorge near Page, with sections called The Crack and The Corkscrew, requires guided tours?

Its swirling walls were carved by flash floods, which is also why unaccompanied visits are banned during monsoon season.

The vivid blue-green water at Havasu Falls comes from a high concentration of what?

The same mineral builds the natural travertine dams that form the pools below the falls on the Havasupai reservation.

Lowell Observatory, where Clyde Tombaugh made his famous 1930 discovery, is in which Arizona city?

The city sits at about 7,000 feet inside the largest contiguous ponderosa pine forest in North America, and in 2001 became the world's first International Dark-Sky City.

In 2024 Arizona adopted an official state planet. Which one?

It was discovered from Arizona in 1930, which is the state's claim on it despite its demotion to dwarf planet in 2006.

Which Arizona city refused McDonald's its yellow arches in 1993?

The town, named for a postmaster's wife, guards the look of its red-rock setting closely.

Which Route 66 town has a Standin' on the Corner Park thanks to the Eagles' Take It Easy?

The song was written by Jackson Browne and Glenn Frey, and the park added a second statue honoring Frey in 2016.

Which Arizona mining town, founded by Ed Schieffelin in 1879, is 'The Town Too Tough to Die'?

Schieffelin had been warned that the only rock he would find in Apache country would be his own gravestone; he found silver instead.

In what year did the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral take place?

The 30-second shootout actually happened in a vacant lot near the corral, and left Tom and Frank McLaury and Billy Clanton dead.

Which Apache leader surrendered to General Nelson Miles at Skeleton Canyon, Arizona, in September 1886?

He spent the rest of his life as a prisoner of war and died at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in 1909.

Which copper town on Cleopatra Hill was called 'the wickedest town in the West' in 1903?

Its mines closed in 1953 and the near-ghost town reinvented itself as an artists' colony, becoming a National Historic Landmark in 1967.

Which Cochise County seat is home to the Copper Queen Mine and the Lavender Pit?

In 1917 more than 1,000 striking miners there were rounded up at gunpoint and shipped out of state by rail.

Cavers Gary Tenen and Randy Tufts squeezed through a sinkhole crack in 1974 and found which Arizona attraction?

The cave holds a 58-foot column called Kubla Khan and one of the world's longest soda-straw stalactites, at over 21 feet.

How many crew members were sealed inside Biosphere 2 for its first two-year mission from 1991?

It remains the largest closed ecological system ever built, and the University of Arizona has owned it since 2011.

Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright's winter home and studio from 1937, is in which Arizona city?

It is now headquarters of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation and became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2019.

Roughly how old is a saguaro before it grows its first arm?

Some never grow arms at all, and harming a saguaro is a crime under Arizona state law.

What is Arizona's official state bird?

It was adopted in 1973, the same year the state picked its official neckwear.

Arizona is one of the few states with an official state neckwear. What is it?

New Mexico and Texas later followed suit with the same choice.

Which green-barked desert tree has been Arizona's state tree since 1954?

Its name is Spanish for 'green stick', and its bark can photosynthesize even when the tree drops its leaves in drought.

Which bright orange-red crystal, adopted in 2017, is Arizona's official state mineral?

Its finest specimens come from the Red Cloud Mine near Yuma; the state gemstone, turquoise, was chosen back in 1974.

In 2018 Arizona named which sauropod, first found in the Sonoran Desert, its state dinosaur?

The idea came from an 11-year-old who lobbied the legislature for it.

Which nocturnal, striped-tailed relative of the raccoon is Arizona's state mammal?

Sometimes called a miner's cat because prospectors kept them to catch mice, it was adopted in 1986 along with the state fish, reptile and amphibian.

What is Arizona's state motto?

The Latin means 'God enriches' and dates from 1864, when the territory was formed.

How many rays of red and gold fan across the top half of the Arizona state flag?

They stand for the original colonies, while the copper-colored star in the middle nods to the state's mining industry.

Along with copper, cattle, cotton and citrus, what was the fifth of Arizona's 'Five Cs'?

The fifth C stood for tourism, and copper still accounts for about two-thirds of national output.

The Arizona Diamondbacks won the 2001 World Series in their fourth season by beating which team?

Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling shared the series MVP award, and the win ended the opponents' run of three straight titles.

Who blooped the walk-off single off Mariano Rivera that won Game 7 of the 2001 World Series for Arizona?

The soft floater barely reached the outfield grass over a drawn-in infield, scoring Jay Bell.

What unusual amenity sits in right-center field at Chase Field, the Diamondbacks' ballpark?

The park was also the first in the U.S. with a retractable roof over natural grass.

Which Phoenix Suns point guard won back-to-back NBA MVP awards in the mid-2000s?

The Suns have reached the NBA Finals three times without a title, more than any other franchise.

The Cardinals, the oldest continuously run pro football franchise, moved to Arizona in 1988 from where?

The team began in Chicago in 1898 and now plays in Glendale, where it lost its only Super Bowl in the final seconds.

In 2024 the Arizona Coyotes' players, staff and picks moved to a new club in which state?

The franchise had begun as the original Winnipeg Jets and spent its last two seasons in a college arena that seated about 5,000.

How many Major League Baseball teams hold spring training in Arizona each year?

All of them train within the Phoenix metropolitan area; the rest of the league goes to Florida.

In what year was the Territorial Cup, college football's oldest rivalry trophy, first awarded?

It goes to the winner of the Arizona State versus Arizona game, and was lost for decades until it turned up in a church vault in 1980.

Arizona State University was founded in 1885 as the Territorial Normal School in which city?

Its mascot is Sparky the Sun Devil, and the school predates statehood by 27 years.

Which Phoenix-born senator was the Republican nominee for president in 1964?

His family founded Goldwater's, an upscale Phoenix department store, and he lost to Lyndon B. Johnson in a landslide.

Which first woman on the U.S. Supreme Court grew up on a 198,000-acre cattle ranch near Duncan, Arizona?

Before Reagan nominated her in 1981 she was Republican leader in the Arizona Senate, the first woman to lead a state senate majority anywhere.

Where was John McCain, Arizona's senator from 1987 to 2018, born?

He was born at a naval air station where his father was posted, and later spent more than five years as a prisoner in Hanoi.

Which labor leader, born in Yuma in 1927, co-founded the union that became the United Farm Workers?

He also died in Arizona, in San Luis in 1993, and received a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom the next year.

How many crewmen died when the USS Arizona exploded at Pearl Harbor?

A bomb set off the forward magazines, and the wreck still leaks more than two quarts of oil into the harbor every day.

Which Jesuit missionary founded Mission San Xavier del Bac in southern Arizona in 1700?

The gleaming white church that stands there today, nicknamed the White Dove of the Desert, was built decades later by Franciscans.

Where does Arizona rank among the 50 states by land area?

It sits just behind New Mexico and ahead of Nevada, yet only about 15% of its 113,998 square miles is privately owned.

Arizona is one of only two US states that skip daylight saving time. Which is the other?

Within Arizona, the Navajo Nation in the northeast is the exception and does change its clocks.

Which president signed the bill that fixed the name 'Arizona' on the new territory?

Rejected alternatives included Gadsonia, Pimeria, Montezuma and Arizuma.

Which church leader dispatched the settlers who founded Mesa, Snowflake and Safford?

Latter-day Saints sent from Salt Lake City also settled in the Phoenix Valley in the mid-to-late 19th century.

The Mogollon Rim, a 1,998-foot escarpment across central Arizona, is the southwestern edge of what?

The 2002 Rodeo-Chediski Fire, the worst in state history until 2011, burned along the Rim.

After WWII the Maytag appliance family bought a former German POW camp site and turned it into what?

A separate Japanese-American internment camp had operated on Mount Lemmon outside Tucson.

Which Spanish Franciscan became the first European to contact Native Americans in Arizona, in 1539?

He probably met the Sobaipuri; Coronado's expedition followed a year later.

In which year did Major League Baseball spring training first come to Arizona?

Bill Veeck, who had bought the Cleveland Indians, helped start what became the Cactus League.