50 Fun Facts About Southwestern United States

Which River Thames crossing was sold in 1968, shipped across the Atlantic and rebuilt in Lake Havasu City, Arizona?

London Bridge was bought by developer Robert McCulloch to draw home buyers to the desert town he had founded. Only its outer granite blocks made the trip, to face a new structure.

Which New Mexico city became a byword for UFOs after the Army said in 1947 it had recovered a flying disc?

Roswell lent its name to the incident even though the debris fell on ranchland about 75 miles to the north. It came from a secret balloon built to detect Soviet nuclear tests.

Which fire-prevention mascot got a living namesake in 1950, when a young survivor was pulled from a New Mexico blaze?

Smokey Bear the poster character dates from 1944, six years before the real cub. The rescued black bear was first called Hotfoot Teddy, then lived at the National Zoo in Washington.

Which state capital sits about 7,000 feet above sea level, higher than any other in the United States?

Santa Fe is also the oldest state capital in the country, picked by Spain as a provincial capital in 1610. Denver, the famous Mile High City, sits well below it.

Which Texas city is the radio call sign of NASA's Mission Control, which guided Apollo astronauts to the Moon?

Houston has run American crewed spaceflights since Gemini 4 in June 1965. Earlier missions were controlled from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

Which plant, a symbol of the Old West on screen, is really a Russian import that arrived in contaminated flaxseed?

Tumbleweed is mostly Russian thistle, which turned up in South Dakota in the 1870s. The dry plant snaps off at the stem and rolls in the wind, shedding seeds as it goes.

New Mexico's official state question asks diners to choose between which two kinds of chile?

Red or green is asked so often in New Mexico restaurants that it became the official state question. Diners who want both sauces on one plate ask for Christmas.

Which theme park chain takes its name from the nations that have ruled Texas, from Spain to the Confederacy?

Six Flags began in 1961 as a single park in Arlington, between Dallas and Fort Worth. The name counts Spain, France, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, the United States and the Confederacy.

Which state meets Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado at the Four Corners, the only point shared by four American states?

Utah completes the set, so a visitor on hands and knees can be in four states at once. Early surveyors made small errors, yet the markers they placed became the legal borders.

Which federal holiday marks the 1865 day a Union general reached Galveston, Texas, to enforce the end of slavery?

Juneteenth blends June and nineteenth, the date Major General Gordon Granger landed on the island. It became a federal holiday in 2021, the first new one in almost four decades.

Which Arizona gorge, cut by the Colorado River, exposes rocks almost two billion years old in its mile-high walls?

The Grand Canyon is 277 miles long and up to 18 miles wide. Theodore Roosevelt visited in 1903 and became a leading champion of its protection.

Which city in the Valley of the Sun is the most populous state capital in the United States?

Phoenix counted over 1.6 million residents at the 2020 census, far more than any other state capital. Its Valley of the Sun nickname began as a 1930s slogan to boost tourism.

Which giant cactus of Arizona often waits 75 years or more before growing its first arm?

Saguaro cacti often live for more than 150 years, and some never grow an arm at all. Their blossom is the state flower of Arizona.

Which Texas capital draws evening crowds to watch up to 1.5 million bats pour out from under a downtown bridge?

Austin is home to the world's largest urban bat colony, made up of Mexican free-tailed bats. They spend each summer roosting beneath the Congress Avenue Bridge.

Which former Spanish mission in Texas fell to Santa Anna's army in 1836 after a 13-day siege?

The Alamo was avenged within weeks at San Jacinto, a battle that was essentially over in 18 minutes. Santa Anna himself was captured there.

Which New Mexico city hosts the world's largest hot air balloon festival, with over 500 balloons each October?

Albuquerque held its first Balloon Fiesta in 1972 with just 13 balloons, as the highlight of a radio station's 50th birthday. The nine-day event grew to draw hundreds of thousands of visitors.

Which cave system in southern New Mexico holds the Big Room, the largest single chamber in North America?

Carlsbad Caverns was first explored in 1898 by a teenager, Jim White, who climbed down on a homemade wire ladder. The Big Room alone is almost 4,000 feet long.

Which Apache leader surrendered at Skeleton Canyon, Arizona, in 1886 and later rode in a president's inaugural parade?

Geronimo rode down Pennsylvania Avenue on horseback in Theodore Roosevelt's 1905 inaugural parade. The 1886 surrender was his last, after repeated breakouts from the reservation.

Which highway from Chicago to Santa Monica did John Steinbeck call the Mother Road in The Grapes of Wrath?

Route 66 crossed Oklahoma, the Texas Panhandle, New Mexico and Arizona on its 2,448-mile run. It was dropped from the national highway system in 1985 after interstates replaced it.

Arizona has skipped daylight saving time since 1968, but which tribal land inside the state changes its clocks anyway?

The Navajo Nation changes its clocks because it spreads into two neighbouring states that do. The Hopi Reservation, entirely surrounded by it, stays on standard time all year.

Which dam in Black Canyon, on the Arizona–Nevada border, was officially named Boulder Dam between 1933 and 1947?

Hoover Dam was handed to the government in March 1936, more than two years ahead of schedule. Lake Mead had begun filling behind it before the last concrete was poured.

Which Arizona silver-mining town saw the 1881 gunfight at the O.K. Corral, which lasted only about thirty seconds?

Tombstone owes its name to a warning: prospector Ed Schieffelin was told that all he would find out there was his own gravestone. He struck silver instead.

Which landscape of sandstone buttes on Arizona's northern border did John Ford film in Stagecoach and The Searchers?

Monument Valley's largest buttes rise 1,000 feet above the desert floor. John Ford shot so many Westerns there that the place shaped how audiences picture the whole American West.

Which outlaw of New Mexico's Lincoln County War was shot dead by Sheriff Pat Garrett at Fort Sumner in 1881?

Billy the Kid was born Henry McCarty and also used the alias William H. Bonney. He had broken out of jail that April, killing two deputies, and stayed free for more than two months.

Which river crosses New Mexico from north to south and then forms the border between Texas and Mexico?

The Rio Grande runs 1,896 miles, which makes it the fourth-longest river in the United States. South of the border it goes by another name, the Río Bravo.

Which forced march of the 1830s drove the Cherokee and four other nations from the Southeast to what became Oklahoma?

The Trail of Tears uprooted about 60,000 people after the Indian Removal Act of 1830. The Choctaw were the first nation to be removed, in 1831, and set the pattern for the rest.

Which New Mexico national park protects the world's largest field of gypsum dunes, ringed by a missile range?

White Sands holds about 4.5 billion tons of gypsum sand in dunes up to 60 feet tall. The park has been hemmed in by military land since 1941.

Which TV drama about chemistry teacher Walter White was filmed in New Mexico instead of its planned California setting?

Breaking Bad was first written for Riverside, California. Sony suggested the move because New Mexico offered the production better financial terms.

In which Arizona mountain city did Clyde Tombaugh discover Pluto at the Lowell Observatory in 1930?

Flagstaff was picked for the observatory in 1894 for its elevation and dark night skies. In 2001 it was recognised as the world's first International Dark-Sky City.

Arizona became the 48th state, the last of the contiguous ones, on which holiday in 1912?

Valentine's Day 1912 completed the map of the 48 contiguous states. New Mexico had been admitted as the 47th state only five weeks earlier, on January 6.

Which northern New Mexico town takes its name from an adobe village where people have lived for roughly a millennium?

Taos Pueblo, the town's neighbour and namesake, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site that its own people call the place of the red willows. Its adobe complex is the largest multi-storey pueblo building still standing.

What was the code name of the first atomic bomb test, carried out in the New Mexico desert in July 1945?

Trinity melted the desert sand into a mildly radioactive green glass, later named trinitite. The code name is often credited to Robert Oppenheimer and his love of John Donne's poetry.

Which painter of oversized flowers and animal skulls made her home at Ghost Ranch in northern New Mexico?

Georgia O'Keeffe began spending part of each year in the Southwest in 1929 and moved to New Mexico for good in 1949. She has been called the Mother of American modernism.

What name was given to settlers who entered Oklahoma's Unassigned Lands before the 1889 Land Rush officially began?

Sooners who crossed the line at night were also called moonshiners, for entering by the light of the moon. The University of Oklahoma football team took the Sooners name in 1908.

Which soft drink was created by pharmacist Charles Alderton at a drugstore soda fountain in Waco, Texas, in the 1880s?

Dr Pepper was first served at Morrison's Old Corner Drug Store in 1885. Early customers at the soda fountain simply asked for a Waco.

Which ground-dwelling bird, the state bird of New Mexico, hunts scorpions, tarantulas and even young rattlesnakes?

Roadrunners can sprint at 20 miles per hour, the fastest running speed clocked for any bird that can also fly. They belong to the cuckoo family.

Which heavy, slow-moving reptile of the Arizona desert is the only venomous lizard native to the United States?

The Gila monster's venom led to a class of drugs for type 2 diabetes and obesity, the GLP-1 receptor agonists. The animal is named after the Gila River basin.

NASA trained Apollo astronauts inside which privately owned Arizona landmark, formed about 50,000 years ago?

Meteor Crater belongs to the Barringer family, whose forebear was among the first to argue that an impact from space had made it. The family filed mining claims on the site.

The star at the centre of Arizona's state flag stands for which metal, mined there more than in any other state?

Copper output in Arizona has run as high as 74 percent of the national total. The flag's thirteen red and gold rays stand for the original colonies and echo the colours of Spain.

Which 1850s deal paid Mexico ten million dollars for a strip of desert that a southern transcontinental railroad needed?

The Gadsden Purchase was the last substantial enlargement of the contiguous United States. Tucson is the largest city on the land it added to Arizona and New Mexico.

The red sun symbol on New Mexico's yellow state flag is sacred to which Native American people?

Zia belief holds the number four sacred, so the sun has four groups of four rays: for the directions, the seasons, the times of day and the stages of life.

Which desert, the largest hot one in North America, spreads from Mexico into West Texas and southern New Mexico?

Chihuahuan Desert terrain covers about 194,000 square miles, with its largest unbroken expanse south of the border. It also reaches a corner of southeastern Arizona.

Which oil field near Beaumont, Texas, launched the state's oil boom when its Lucas gusher blew in January 1901?

Spindletop blew oil more than 150 feet into the air for nine days, at about 100,000 barrels a day. Gulf Oil and Texaco were both formed to develop the field.

Which 1680 uprising, timed by runners carrying knotted cords, drove Spanish colonists out of New Mexico for 12 years?

The Pueblo Revolt was planned by Popé, whom the Spanish had jailed and released five years earlier. Village leaders untied one knot each morning, and the last knot was the signal to rise.

Which New Mexico radio telescope of 27 giant dishes mounted on railroad tracks appeared in the 1997 film Contact?

The Very Large Array rolls its 230-ton dishes along the tracks to change the shape of the telescope. It stands on the Plains of San Agustin, about 50 miles west of Socorro.

Which Spanish conquistador crossed Arizona and New Mexico in 1540 in search of the mythical Seven Cities of Gold?

Coronado never reached a golden city, yet his expedition pushed on for two years and got as far as present-day Kansas.

Which street fixture made its world debut in Oklahoma City in 1935 at the urging of newspaper publisher Carl Magee?

Parking meter number one went into service on July 16, 1935. The device had been in development since 1933 at Magee's request, and he received a patent for it in 1938.

Which New Mexico site holds Pueblo Bonito, among the largest buildings in North America until the 19th century?

Chaco Canyon's builders hauled timber from great distances and lined up many buildings with the cycles of the sun and moon. Well-built roads radiate from the central canyon.

What Arabic word do Arizona forecasters use for the towering walls of blowing sand kicked up by desert thunderstorms?

Haboob comes from an Arabic root meaning wind or blow, and it only entered common use in Arizona after 1999. The storms form when the downdraft of a thunderstorm hits dry ground.

Which radio quiz show did the New Mexico town of Hot Springs rename itself after in a 1950 vote?

Truth or Consequences host Ralph Edwards had promised to broadcast from the first town to take the name of his show. Residents voted 1,294 to 295 for the change.