by Ken Lain, the mountain gardener
- Arizona has 3,928 mountain peaks and summits, more mountains than any one of the other Mountain States (Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming).
- All New England plus the state of Pennsylvania would fit inside boundaries of Arizona.
- Arizona became the 48th state and last of the contiguous states on February 14, 1912.
- Arizona’s disparate climate can yield both the highest temperature across the nation and the lowest temperature across the nation in the same day.
- There are more wilderness areas in Arizona than in the entire Midwest. Arizona alone has 90 wilderness areas, the Midwest has 50.
- Arizona has 26 peaks that are more than 10,000 feet in elevation.
- Arizona has the largest contiguous stand of ponderosa pines in the world stretching from near Flagstaff along the Mogollon Rim to the White Mountains region.
- Yuma, Arizona is the country’s highest producer of winter vegetables, especially lettuce.
- Arizona is the 6th largest state in the nation, covering 113,909 square miles.
- Of all the states in the U.S., Arizona has the largest percentage of its land designated as Indian lands.
- The Five C’s of Arizona’s economy are: Cattle, Copper, Citrus, Cotton, Climate.
- More copper is mined in Arizona than all the other states combined, and the Morenci Mine is the largest copper producer in all of North America
- . Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, two of the most prominent movie stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, were married on March 18, 1939, in Kingman, Arizona
- Covering 18,608 sq. miles, Coconino County is the second largest county by land area in the 48 contiguous United States.
- The world’s largest solar telescope is located at Kitt Peak National
Observatory in Sells, Arizona. - Bisbee, Arizona is known as the Queen of the Copper Mines because during its mining heyday it produced nearly 25 percent of the world’s copper and was the largest city in the Southwest between Saint Louis and San Francisco.
- Billy the Kid killed his first man, Windy Cahill, in Bonita, Arizona.
- Arizona grows enough cotton each year to make more than one pair of jeans for every person in the United States.
- Famous labor leader and activist Cesar Chavez was born in Yuma.
- In 1912, President William Howard Taft was prepared to make Arizona a state on February 12, but that was Lincoln’s birthday. The next day, the 13th was considered bad luck so it was delayed until the following day. That’s how Arizona became known as the Valentine State.
- When England’s famous London Bridge was replaced in the 1960s, the original was purchased, dismantled, shipped stone by stone, and reconstructed in Lake Havasu City, Arizona where it still stands today
- Mount Lemmon, in the Santa Catalina Mountains, is the southernmost ski resort in the United States.
- Rooster Cogburn Ostrich Ranch in Picacho, Arizona is the largest privately-owned ostrich ranch in the world outside of South Africa.
- If you cut down a protected species of cactus in Arizona, you could spend more than a year in prison.
- The world’s largest to-scale collection of miniature airplane models is
housed at the library at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona.