Geography and Industry

When you think of Arizona, what do you think of? The Grand Canyon? Lots and lots of desert, and rocks, and maybe a few mountains? Well, Arizona has all of those things, but it has so much more! There are forests and large rivers in Arizona, and the state has farms that produce lots of food.

The northern part of the state, where the Grand Canyon is, is part of the Colorado Plateau, and is very rugged and mountainous. It's also covered in several places, including part of the southern rim of the Grand Canyon, with evergreen forests, especially Ponderosa Pines. The Colorado River system (including the Little Colorado River) runs both through the Grand Canyon, which it has carved over millions of years, and through the north central and northwestern parts of the state.

The southern part of the state is mostly extremely dry desert plains with a few mountains rising on either side of the Gila River valley. The Gila is a large river that runs east to west across the state and empties into the Colorado.

Like many of the western states, Arizona has a lot of beautiful scenery, so tourism is a major industry in the state. In addition to the Grand Canyon, there are other popular areas such as the Painted Desert, the Native American pueblo ruins at places like Canyon de Chelly in the northeastern part of the state, the Petrified Forest National Park, and the Mogollon Rim.

Just like in the other western states, cattle-ranching and crop-raising are very important industries in Arizona. The main crops raised are broccoli, cauliflower, cotton, lettuce, and sorghum.

History

Before the Spanish began exploring the region during the sixteenth century, there were many different tribes of Native Americans living in what is now Arizona. An early culture we know as the Hohokum (“hoh-HOH-kem”) lived in pit houses dug into the earth and covered with thatched mud roofs. They were farmers who irrigated their fields with water from neighboring rivers. They flourished for nearly 1,000 years, from 500 A.D. to 1450 A.D.

The Spanish explorer Francisco Vasquez de Coronado visited Arizona, discovering the Grand Canyon in 1540. Although many Spanish soldiers came to the region over the next 100 years, they were exploring — looking for gold, not interested in settling the area. The first Spanish visitors to settle permanently in Arizona were Spanish priests who came as missionaries to convert the local Native Americans to Christianity. These friars established the first permanent settlements near Nogales and Tucson in 1692.

Mexico briefly controlled Arizona before losing it as part of the Mexican Cession to the United States in 1848. In 1853, the United States bought more territory from Mexico and added it to the New Mexico Territory. This land was south of the Gila River, and the United States hoped to build a railroad through it out to California. It later became part first of the Arizona Territory (1863), then of the state of Arizona.

During the forty-nine years that Arizona was a territory, it had quite a colorful history. Several tribes of the Apache nation maintained an on-again, off-again war with the U.S. government. Such great Apache leaders as Mangas Coloradas (whose name in Spanish means “Red Sleeves,” referring to the color of his favorite shirt), Cochise, and Geronimo fought the U.S. Cavalry to a standstill for decades.

The Apache were skilled at the art of guerilla warfare. They struck in one place, and faded away like smoke. They would also raid a site and then slip across the border into Mexico, where they knew the soldiers weren't allowed to chase them. Even after they agreed to move to reservations, many young Apache braves would slip off the reservation, raid several settlers' farms, and then slip back on to the reservation before their absence had been noticed. The government's solution was to remove such warriors as the great Geronimo from Arizona and send them to a reservation in Oklahoma. (Geronimo was eventually sent all the way to Florida!)

Beginning in the 1870s, large copper mines sprang up in the hills around Tucson. In 1877, silver was discovered in Cochise's old stomping grounds in the Dragoon Mountains near Tombstone, which was a boom town east of Tucson. Miners flooded into the area, and so did gamblers, saloon-keepers, gun-fighters, and other people right out of a Western movie!

Arizona became a state in 1912, just a few months after neighboring New Mexico. From 1940 to 1960, Arizona's population increased by 100 percent, the fastest growth-rate in American history! To this day, people are moving to the state for its warm climate and mild winters.