AZ: The History of Arizona podcast

In 1930, a young man from Kansas working in Flagstaff noted an object move 3.5 millimeters between two photographic plates. And our understanding of the Solar System has never been the same.

While you can’t talk about Percival Lowell without mentioning his views on Mars, you also have to discuss his other great obsession - finding the hypothetical ninth planet hiding on the fringes of the solar system.

During the first two decades of its existence, Lowell Observatory furthered both one of the great astronomical misconceptions and breakthroughs of the 20th century.

In May 1894, a rich, globetrotting, and brilliant mathematician from Boston came to Flagstaff for a special purpose - finding evidence of life on Mars.

The Great Depression is a historical period best told through on-the-ground stories. Here is just a smattering of what it looked like in Arizona.

In 1932, FDR pledged to bring his “New Deal” to the American people. You can debate its effectiveness, but in Arizona in general and Phoenix in particular you can see remnants and effects of the New Deal programs to this very day.

Delays in the present, but plans for the future!

During the 1930s, millions of migrant workers and their families fled from the Dust Bowl. Tens of thousands of them drifted into Arizona, lured by the promise of plenty of work in the cotton fields. These workers would find themselves taking the place of displaced Mexican workers, both economically and socially.

In October 1929, the bottom fell out of the stock market, and three of Arizona’s famous 5 C’s each took massive hits in the ensuing depression. But the downturn didn’t just hit people’s pocketbooks; in the case of many Mexican nationals or Mexican-Americans, it affected their ability to live in Arizona at all.

In 1930, thousands of Arizonans came together to celebrate the official dedication of the unique Coolidge Dam. It was the culmination of years of work to get a dam on the Gila River, but its legacy remains a bit complicated. But, hey, at least it gave us one really funny joke.

After getting through the House and the Senate on unanimous votes, the bill to build the San Carlos Dam had to clear its final obstacle - the potential bill killer known as "Silent Cal."

After more than a decade of trying and only getting a portion of the San Carlos project funded, Hayden and his allies set their sights on one big push to get the San Carlos Dam funded. The first step? Getting it through the Senate.

Throughout the 1910s, Carl Hayden and others failed to get their storage dam on the Gila River. However, in the early 1920s they were able get a smaller reclamation project approved. Too bad it would do little, if anything, to help the water-strapped Maricopa and O’odham living on the Pima Reservation.

In which someone suggests a radical idea - actually collecting hard data on and documenting the impact of upstream diversions to the O’odham living along the Gila River.

The end to the decades-long saga of trying to divide the Colorado River.

With both versions of the Colorado River Compact seeming to hit brick walls, proponents switched their focus to helping California pass the Swing-Johnson Bill, which would basically enforce the terms of the compact. But guess which state and its leaders really had a problem with this bill…

After growing tired of Arizona’s refusal to ratify the Colorado River Compact, the other states contemplated how to move forward. Their best solution was to just ignore Arizona completely.

The Colorado River Compact had been signed by the commission delegates, but soon enough a whole new round of squabbling started in the individual state legislatures. And the biggest roadblock of all would turn out to be Arizona and its forceful governor, George W. P. Hunt.

When the Colorado River Commission reached an impasse, Delph Carpenter proposed an idea. To get around the myriad of competing entrenched interests, he went with something both simple and (eventually) problematic - why not avoid talking about individual states all together?

By 1922, everyone along the Colorado River agreed to get together and decide how to split up the water amicably. Unfortunately, their first attempt would only last four days.

Throughout the 1910s, states came together and fell apart as they all discussed differing visions for the use of the Colorado River. Finally, in 1920, one lawyer from Colorado had a brilliant idea — Why didn’t everyone just sit down, come to a final agreement and put it all into writing?

By the 1920s, everyone was thinking that it was time to tap the Colorado River for irrigation. However, before we cover that, I think we need to go over the ground rules for water rights in the Western United States. Also, just for fun, let’s look at the disaster that followed one of the earliest attempts to harness the Colorado for agriculture.

As automobiles grew more popular in the 1920s, Arizona suddenly had to invest a lot into building the infrastructure that would allow them to get around. From bridges to tunnels to actual highways, let’s look at some of the first projects to cater to the car-loving crowd.

Let’s take a trip down some dusty history by examining how Arizona went from a territory of wagon trails to a state of highways. Hint - it involves a lot of hand-wringing over how to pay for everything.

To celebrate 200 episodes of getting together to talk all things Arizona history, here’s a jumbo-sized episode where I take your suggestions for what we should cover!

With tourism exploding across Arizona in the 1920s, the state had to make sure its new visitors had some very nice places to stay … even if those places ostensibly raised cattle.

It's a bad news/good news situation

As tourism exploded across Arizona in the 1920s, everyone was suddenly interested in Amerindian culture, much to the benefit and detriment of the state’s native population.

The Grand Canyon might be Arizona’s greatest asset for tourism. But between 1900 and 1926, one man tried every legal and extralegal means he could to control access to this wonder of the world.

With no cure for their respiratory ailments, people flocked to dry, warm places like Arizona in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Some did find the healing they sought, but many more found only poverty, prejudice, and an early grave.

By the end of the 1920s, there were plenty of new, exciting ways to get to Phoenix. But depending on if a person new to the city was a minority or not, their experience living in Arizona’s capital could vary greatly.

Phoenix saw phenomenal growth during the 1920s, with new homes and new neighborhoods rapidly expanding outward. Phoenicians also wanted to make sure that no one would mistake their tree-lined city for something as base as a desert.

With the cotton boom happening across Arizona in the late 1910s and the early 1920s, the demand for cheap labor during the harvest season increased exponentially. To meet that demand, large-scale farming operators turned to both Amerindian and Mexican labor to get the job done.

The demands of World War I included an insatiable hunger for cotton. Arizona farmers would cash in on this need, but they would wind up going a little too far in betting on this white, fluffy gold.

World War I may be one of America's more forgotten conflicts, but you don't have to look too hard to find Arizona's memorials to its famous, high-flying, balloon-busting native son.

In 1917, the U.S. went to war, and men and women across the country - including Arizona - jumped to do their part. However, when two brothers refused to be drafted, it set off the largest manhunt in state history.

In the waning years of the Mexican Revolution and after the outbreak of World War I, the international border with Mexico was transformed from the more open and lax line to the fenced, patrolled boundary we know today.

In 1916, Pancho Villa made the rash move of attacking the U.S. in order to get back into the revolutionary game. All this got him was a swift reprisal from the U.S. Army.

The second phase of the Mexican Revolution kicked off in 1913 after the death of President Francisco Madero. This meant a stronger - though still woefully deficient - presence of troops along the Arizona border and the rise of a certain famous bandit turned revolutionary.

In 1910, Mexico suddenly erupted in violence and chaos. Though it was (mostly) an internal rebellion, it definitely impacted the communities sitting just across the international boundary line.

The time has finally come to carry out my threat to do a whole episode about early state historian James H. McClintock, plus two other state historians, just for good measure.

The saga of the Bisbee Deportation comes to an end. By 1920 everyone behind the illegal measure had gotten off scot free and by 1925 the Wobblies as an organization were pretty much dead. For all intents and purposes, Arizona was now in the hands of the copper companies.

Following the immediate aftermath of the Bisbee Deportation, we move into the weeks and months that followed and the response on a national level. It turned out to be just as anemic and apathetic as the local level.

In the aftermath of the Bisbee Deportation, the exiled men demanded help returning home, but were mostly met with apathy from officials. Meanwhile, Bisbee itself went into something of a paranoia-fueled lockdown.

After rounding up a couple thousand of their neighbors and acquaintances during the morning of July 12, 1917, the citizens of Bisbee held them at a local ballpark before stuffing the majority into the cattle cars of an eastbound train. About 15 hours later, the deported men founxd themselves abandoned, cold, thirty and starving in the middle of New Mexico.

On the evening of July 11, 1917, a group of roughly 100 men gathered at the Phelps Dodge medical dispensary to discuss what to do about striking miners in town. At 6:30 a.m. on July 12, these men and 1,900 more began a systematic program of arrests, beatings and thefts to round up any and all undesirables - whether they were participating in the strike or not.

Just two days before the eruption of the major historical set piece that is the Bisbee Deportation, a dress rehearsal of sorts was occurring in Jerome. And this smaller instance of vigilantism would show the copper companies exactly how much they could get away it.

In a fit of passion, the IWW decided to launch a strike in Bisbee in June 1917. Unfortunately, this just set up the dominoes perfectly for the copper companies to prepare their counterattack.

As we move into discussing one of the big black marks on Arizona history, we first must talk about Bisbee and that one time when the Western Federation of Miners was able to just barely gain a foothold in the company town.

After the U.S. entered World War I in the spring of 1917, another wave of strikes erupted across Arizona. But the owners of the state’s copper mines had learned a trick or two and were able to brand unions as anti-American agitators. Eventually the heavy hammer of company authority would fall everywhere , even in places as staunchly pro-labor as Globe and Miami.