Arizona Trivia & Tidbits

When Fort Apache was established in 1870 as a U.S. Army outpost, it bore a different name. First called Camp Ord, the post was renamed Camp Mogollon, then Camp Thomas, and finally Camp Apache. The post was designated Fort Apache in 1879. Abandoned by the Army in the early 1920s, the site south of White-river (pop. 5,220) today is part of a historic park.

Unlike the Grand Canyon with vistas stretching far and wide, the Little Colorado River Gorge, just west of Cameron (pop. 978), is remarkably narrow. Visitors approaching its edge often are astonished at the deep, almost black abyss below where the Little Colorado River flows through a slender channel while descending over the next 30 miles to join the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon.

Bronze sculptures, each uniquely colored and created by J. Seward Johnson, grace the streets of downtown Wickenburg (pop. 5,082). Six large sculptures depict characters from frontier days and include a recording by state historian Marshall Trimble describing the origins of the town. Sixteen smaller pieces-gila monsters, tarantulas, roadrunners and rattlesnakes-are scattered in between.

Cesar Estrada Chavez (1927-1993), a labor activist and leader of the United Farm Workers, was born near Yuma (pop. 77,515). When a severe drought in 1937 forced his father to give up the family farm, the Chavez family packed their belongings and headed to California in search of work. From there, Cesar Chavez went on to become one of this nation's best-known labor leaders.

The Titan Missile Museum in Sahuarita (pop. 3,242) is the only publicly accessible Titan II missile site in the nation. Visitors can tour the underground site with its 3-ton blast doors and 8-foot-thick silo walls, visit the launch control center and experience a simulated launch.

Licensed pest control specialist Nedra Solomon and her husband, Al, share their interest in bugs at the Katydid Insect Museum in Glendale. The museum features thousands of mounted insects, arachnids and reptiles. The Solomons call their museum kid-friendly and invite visitors to interact with live specimens as well, including spiders, snakes and iguanas.

Visitors to the Canyon de Chelly National Monument near Chinle (pop. 5,366) can stay in a hand-built adobe hogan at Spider Rock Campground. Without electricity or running water, the dwellings represent the traditional homes of Navajo who still inhabit and cultivate the valley. The nearby canyon has sheer walls rising to 1,000 feet with many well-preserved Anasazi ruins perched on the canyon walls.

A presidential candidate in 1964 and five-term senator for Arizona, Barry M. Goldwater (1909-1998) also had a distinguished military career. During World War II, Goldwater flew supply missions in the India-Burma theater and across the Atlantic. When the war ended, he helped organize the Arizona National Guard and eventually achieved the rank of major general in the Air Force Reserve. The Goldwater Air Force Range in the southwest part of the state bears his name.

The U.S. Army's Yuma Proving Ground, north of Yuma (pop. 77,515), tests a wide range of military equipment, including helicopters and tanks. At 1,300 square miles, the proving ground is larger than the state of Rhode Island and has the distinction of geographically being one of the largest military installations in the world.

—The original Navajo Bridge across the Colorado River at Marble Canyon, located at the eastern end of the Grand Canyon, was completed in 1929. It cost $390,000 to build and at the time was the highest steel-arch bridge in the United States. It was supplanted by a new steel bridge in 1995 at a cost of nearly $15 million. The original bridge now is used as a pedestrian crossing

—In 1930, a statue of John Campbell Greenway (1872-1926) was placed in Washington, D.C.'s National Statuary Hall by the state of Arizona. A man of many accomplishments, Greenway was a mining, steel and railroad executive, an inventor, a distinguished soldier and a longtime resident of Arizona. He served with Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War and, during World War I, was repeatedly decorated, eventually achieving the rank of brigadier general.

—At least two Arizona schools are named after former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who served as an elected official and a judge in the state earlier in her career. The Sandra Day O'Connor High School, in Phoenix, was dedicated to her in 2002. In 2006, Arizona State University in Tempe honored the retired justice by renaming its law school the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law.

—Army Spc. Lori Piestewa is believed to be the first American Indian servicewoman killed in a foreign war. A member of the Hopi Tribe near the Navajo Reservation town of Tuba City (pop. 8,225), Piestewa was killed in Iraq on March 23, 2003, when her unit was ambushed. She was the daughter of a Vietnam veteran and the granddaughter of a World War II veteran.

—Nancy and Alan Townsend, also known as Mother and Father Goose, travel from their home in Phoenix to Renaissance Fairs teaching people about geese and ducks. It started five years ago when they moved into an apartment that didn't allow dogs. The lease said nothing about ducks, however, and the couple soon had Matilda the Duck and Maggie the Goose. Nancy invented a duck/goose diaper harness and has written a book called Duck, There's a Goose in the House!

—One of Arizona's most colorful characters, William O. "Buckey" O'Neill (1860-1898) was, by turns, a journalist, gambler, miner, judge, sheriff, mayor of Prescott (pop. 33,938), and one of Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders. He commanded a cavalry troop at the Battle of San Juan Hill, and was killed there. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery, where his tombstone bears his words, "Who would not die for a new star on the flag?"

–The San Francisco mountain range known locally as "the peaks," just north of Flagstaff (pop. 52,894), has an unusually wide set of climate zones, with various desert and forested areas around its base, and arctic species on the range's highest point, Humphreys Peak. At more than 12,600 feet, Humphreys Peak is Arizona's highest mountain. Born in Arizona around 1866, Carlos Montezuma, whose birth name was Wassaja, was the first Yavapai and among the first American Indians to earn a medical degree. Besides practicing medicine, Montezuma was a lifelong political activist for American Indians and helped found the journal Wassaja (meaning "signaling" or "beckoning"), which dealt with Indian rights issues. He died in 1923 and is buried at Fort McDowell Indian cemetery.

—Though eclipsed in size since its completion in 1911, the Theodore Roosevelt Dam on the Salt River in Gila County (pop. 51,335) was the world's tallest masonry dam for its time. Despite its size, in 1996 the structure was raised by 77 feet-to a height of 357 feet-to expand the reservoir's capacity and to meet the possibility of greater flooding than anticipated during the dam's planning.

—Among many tasks in astronomy being performed at Kitt Peak National Observatory, the most dramatic is the watch for NEOs, or near-earth-objects. NEOs are asteroids or comets that have potential for colliding with Earth. Since 1989, the University of Arizona-based Spacewatch Project, with telescopes on Kitt Peak, has detected and tracked more than 8,000 such objects.

—Built by Frank Jackson for L.E. Hart in 1926, the Hart store was the first store or commercial building in Sedona (pop. 10,192), and served as the community’s general store and gas station. Recently renovated, including the restoration of its water wheel, the building now is known as the Hummingbird House and was named in 2007 to the National Register of Historic Places.

The name of Hacienda Corona de Guevavi, a bed-and-breakfast inn in Nogales (pop. 20,878), honors Salvador Corona, a Mexican bullfighter and muralist who in the 1940s and 1950s painted the hacienda’s courtyard walls with scenes of rural Mexicans. The hacienda is the former headquarters of the Guevavi ranch, on the site where Juan Bautista de Anza I introduced livestock in the early 1700s.

—Opened in 1927, the Monte Vista Hotel in downtown Flagstaff (pop. 52,894) is one of the few hotels in the United States built entirely with public funds. Long rumored to be haunted, the hotel also is noted for hosting numerous well-known people over the years, including John Wayne, Bing Crosby, Gary Cooper, Jane Russell and Spencer Tracy.

Tuba City (pop. 8,225) is the Navajo Indian Reservation’s largest community. The name of the town honors Toova, a Hopi leader originally from Oraibi, a nearby Hopi village. The Navajo name for Tuba City translates as “tangled water,” probably referring to the many springs below the surface of the ground, which are the source of several nearby reservoirs.

—When two airliners collided over the Grand Canyon the morning of June 30, 1956, 128 people died. The worst airline tragedy of its time, the crash led to a number of changes in aviation, including formation of the Federal Aviation Administration in 1958 and improvement in air traffic control.