Arizona is the 48th state and last of the contiguous states to be admitted to the Union, achieving statehood on February 14, 1912. Historically part of the territory of Alta California and Nuevo México in New Spain, it became part of independent Mexico in 1821. After being defeated in the Mexican–American War, Mexico ceded much of this territory to the United States in 1848, where the area became part of the territory of New Mexico. The southernmost portion of the state was acquired in 1853 through the Gadsden Purchase.
... that former Arizona Cardinals kicker Cedric Oglesby, one of the first African-American kickers in NFL history, received his chance to play when the team's previous kicker injured himself celebrating?
... that half the students of Northern Arizona University left for Christmas early after campus radio station KNAU was pranked?
... that in 1982, a news anchor for Phoenix television station KOOL-TV was held hostage on set for five hours?
...that Arizona SB1070, the state's new immigration enforcement law, has attracted national attention as the broadest and strictest anti-illegal immigration measure in decades within the United States?
... that Dwight B. Heard is credited with making Arizona's cotton industry more competitive after becoming president of the Arizona Cotton Association?
Burnham was born on a Dakota SiouxIndian reservation in Minnesota, in the small village of Tivoli near the city of Mankato; there he learned the ways of American Indians as a boy. By the age of 14, he was supporting himself in California, while also learning scouting from some of the last of the cowboys and frontiersmen of the American Southwest. Burnham had little formal education, never finishing high school. After moving to the Arizona Territory in the early 1880s, he was drawn into the Pleasant Valley War, a feud between families of ranchers and sheepherders. He escaped and later worked as a civilian tracker for the United States Army in the Apache Wars. Feeling the need for new adventures, Burnham took his family to southern Africa in 1893, seeing Cecil Rhodes's Cape to Cairo Railway project as the next undeveloped frontier. (Full article...)
Image 5A map showing the extent of the Ancestral Puebloan, Hohokam, and Mogollon cultures within the American Southwest and Northern Mexico, all three of which were based in what is now Arizona and/or New Mexico in around 1350 CE (from History of Arizona)
Image 20This ornate grain basket by Akimel O'odham dates from the early 20th century, showing the Native American dimension to the state's culture (from History of Arizona)
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