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AZArizona Fun Facts
Arizona refuses to change its clocks, with one exception that creates the strangest time map in the country. The Navajo Nation in the northeast corner does observe daylight saving. The Hopi Reservation, which sits entirely surrounded by the Navajo Nation, does not. Drive across that part of the state in July and the hour on your dashboard changes, changes back, then changes again, all without leaving Arizona.
Facts most people get wrong
- The Grand Canyon is not the deepest canyon in the country. It runs roughly a mile deep. Hells Canyon on the Idaho and Oregon border is close to 8,000 feet. The Grand Canyon wins on width, length and exposed rock, not depth.
- Arizona is not all desert. The Mogollon Rim carries the largest continuous ponderosa pine forest in North America, and Flagstaff averages more than 90 inches of snow a year at 7,000 feet.
- The gunfight at the OK Corral did not happen at the OK Corral. The 1881 shootout took place in a vacant lot on Fremont Street in Tombstone, near the corral's back entrance, and lasted about thirty seconds.
- The saguaro does not grow across the Southwest. It grows only in the Sonoran Desert, meaning southern Arizona, a sliver of California and northern Mexico. Any western film with a saguaro set in Texas or Utah got the botany wrong.
- Lake Havasu City did not buy the wrong bridge. Robert McCulloch paid $2,460,000 for London Bridge in 1968 and rebuilt it in the desert by 1971. The story that he thought he was getting Tower Bridge is a joke that outlived the correction.
- Phoenix is not a minor capital. It is the fifth most populous city in the United States and the only state capital with more than 1.5 million residents.
Records and firsts
- Arizona was the 48th state, admitted on February 14, 1912, the last of the contiguous states to join.
- The state mines roughly two thirds of the copper produced in the United States, which is why a copper star sits at the center of the 1917 flag.
- Meteor Crater near Winslow is about 3,900 feet across and some 50,000 years old, the best preserved impact crater on the planet.
- Arizona holds 22 federally recognized tribes, and the Navajo Nation is the largest reservation in the country at more than 27,000 square miles, bigger than West Virginia.
- Petrified Forest is the only national park that contains a stretch of historic Route 66.
- Old Oraibi on the Hopi Third Mesa has been lived in since around 1100, among the oldest continuously occupied settlements in North America.
Geography that surprises
- Arizona stays on Mountain Standard Time year round, so in summer its clocks match Los Angeles and in winter they match Denver. The same phone call lands an hour apart depending on the season.
- Hoover Dam straddles the Arizona and Nevada line, and the two ends of the dam sit in different times for most of the year.
- The Four Corners monument northeast of the state is the only place in the country where four states touch at a single point.
- Elevation swings from about 70 feet on the Colorado River at Yuma to 12,633 feet at Humphreys Peak near Flagstaff, a range of more than two miles.
- Yuma records more sunshine than anywhere else on Earth, close to 90 percent of the daylight hours possible in a year.
Where the name comes from
Arizona almost certainly comes from the O'odham phrase ali sonak, meaning small spring. In the 1730s a silver strike in what is now Sonora, Mexico was recorded at a place Spanish writers spelled Arizonac, and the name migrated north with the mining district. When Congress carved the territory out of New Mexico in 1863, the shortened form stuck.
The version most people repeat, that Arizona means arid zone, is a folk etymology built backward from English words. It cannot be right, because the name appears in Spanish records long before any English speaker was describing the region's climate. A competing theory points to the Basque phrase aritz ona, good oak, since Basque ranchers worked the area in the same period. Either way the name is older than the state by nearly two centuries.
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Frequently asked questions
What is Arizona known for?
The Grand Canyon, copper and the Sonoran Desert. Arizona mines roughly two thirds of United States copper, holds the only saguaro cactus habitat in the country, contains 22 federally recognized tribes including the Navajo Nation, and was the 48th state, admitted on February 14, 1912.
Why does Arizona not change its clocks?
Arizona opted out of daylight saving in 1968 because an extra hour of summer evening sun in a place that hits 110 degrees is a cost, not a benefit. It stays on Mountain Standard Time all year, matching Los Angeles in summer and Denver in winter. The Navajo Nation observes daylight saving, and the Hopi Reservation inside it does not.
What is the weirdest law in Arizona?
The Arizona Native Plant Law protects the saguaro cactus, so cutting down or damaging one on public or private land without a permit can bring criminal charges and fines. The widely shared claim that donkeys may not sleep in bathtubs is folklore, not statute.
Is the Grand Canyon the deepest canyon in the world?
No, and it is not even the deepest in the United States. The Grand Canyon averages about a mile deep, while Hells Canyon on the Idaho and Oregon border reaches close to 8,000 feet. The Grand Canyon leads on length, width and the amount of geological time exposed in its walls.
What is the oldest town in Arizona?
Old Oraibi on the Hopi Third Mesa, lived in since roughly 1100, which makes it one of the oldest continuously occupied settlements in North America. Among towns founded after European contact, Tubac dates to a Spanish presidio built in 1752.