Compiled
by Kathy Engle
Green Valley
News
Now
the day is over
The Millennium
is drawing nigh
Shadows
of before years
Steal across
the sky.
-------Joyce
Esterbrook
Green Valley
Arizona
has a unique history, one full of memorable, inspiring and
ignoble events. Here, in honor of the millennium, is a capsule look back
over the landscape of time.
•1770s
First Spanish presidio established along the banks of the Santa Cruz
River at Tubac. With the soldiers come the first women settlers.
•1775 Col.
Hugo O’Conor, Irish mercenary serving in the Spanish Army, established
a presidio (fort) that was to become the modern city of Tucson. Capt Juan
Bautista de Anza II leads 240 colonists from Tubac to found what is now
the city of San Francisco.
•1780s Aggressive
military campaigns against the Apaches, and appeasement policy, result
in a peace agreement that lasts nearly half a century. Spanish ranchers
and miners move into Southern Arizona. Missions are built at San Jose de
Tumacacori and San Xavier del Bac.
•1821 Mexicans
wins independence. Tomas and Ignacio Ortiz, owners of the Arivaca Ranch
purchase the San Ignacio de la Canoa land grant for approximately
$250.
•1824 First
Americans, including mountain man and scout Kit Carson arrive in Arizona
to trap for beaver along the rivers.
•1835 Apaches
go back on the warpath. With the exception of small settlements at Tucson
and Tubac, Arizona is just about deserted.
•1848 War breaks
out between U.S. and Mexico.
•1850-53 Arizona
becomes part of New Mexico Territory.
•1854 U.S.
Congress ratifies the Gadsden Purchase, including the lands south of the
Gila River to the present border with Mexico, completing the boundaries
of today’s continental United States.
•1859 Arizona’s
first newspaper, The Weekly Arizonan, first printed at Tubac.
•1860s Gold
discovered in Arizona’s central mountains.
•1863 Arizona
Territory founded.
•1869 John
Wesley Powell and fellow adventurers ride down the Colorado River in boats,
becoming what some say are the first explorers in the Grand Canyon. This
remains a disputed claim.
•1877 Ed Schieffelin
discovers silver near Tombstone which quickly mushrooms into
a boom town larger than San Francisco.
•1881 Shootout
at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone really takes place near the corner of Fremont
and 3rd Stret between the Earp brothers and the Clantons and McLary’s,
the most famous gunfight in the history of the West.
•1886 Chiricahua
Apache Chief Geronimo and his band surrender, ending one of the longest
wars in U.S. history.
•1881 Southern
Pacific Railroad crosses Arizona
•1889 Phoenix
becomes Arizona’s permanent capital.
•1899
War with Spain. Many Arizonans join with Rough Riders to follow Teddy Roosevelt
in the charge up San Juan Hill in Cuba. Tucson’s first horseless carriage
arrives after Dr. Hiram Fenner has it shipped by train.
•1900 Arizona
claims about 120,00 residents. Pearl Hart, the famed “Girl Bandit”, is
sentenced to five years in prison for her part in a stagecoach robbery
in 1899.
•1901 Theodore
Roosevelt becomes president. Santa Fe Railroad completes 64-mile rail line
from Williams to the Grand Canyon. Fare: $3.95.Arizona Rangers formed to
combat cattle rustlers
•1902 Famed
Western writer Zane Gray, trained as a dentist, visits Arizona. The area
between the Arizona Strip and the North Rim of the Grand d Canyon which
is to become the setting for his most famous novel, “Riders of the Purple
Sage” and several others.
•1905 Fred
Harvey Company opens what is described as the world’s “grandest” hotel,
El Tovar, perched on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.
•1906 Arizona
Rangers called out to quell a riot of striking miners in Morenci
in what is remembered as the largest strike in American history prior to
World War I. Flagstaff rocked with a series of earthquakes. A few months
later, a massive quake destroys the city of San Francisco.
Mule-drawn street car makes its final run in Tucson, replaced by an electric
car.
•1907 Territorial
Legislature passes law banning women from entering saloons.
•1908 City
of Tucson passes ordinance prohibiting spitting on the sidewalks. Tucson
ends era of all-night saloons when City Council decides they must all close
by midnight. Baron and Josephine Goldwater become proud parents of a son
they name Barry. 1908 President Teddy Roosevelt declares the Grand Canyon
a national monument.
•1909 Chiricahua
Apache leader Geronimo dies at 80. Artist Frederic Remington dies of acute
appendicitis at age 48. Began his career in the 1880s when he came to Arizona
to cover the Geronimo campaigns for Harper’s Weekly. Silent movie star
Tom Mix wins National Rodeo Championship at Prescott’s Frontier Days Rodeo.
Mix went on to star in more than 300 silent movies, most filmed near Prescott.
•1910 Arizona’s
first flight takes place on Feb. 12, when Charles Hamilton, billing himself
as the “Man Bird” flies his bamboo and silk airplane in a race against
a Studebaker car at the state fairgrounds.
•1912 Arizona
gains statehood Feb. 14. Famed orator William Jennings Bryant marks the
occasion with a two-hour speech, sans microphone or megaphone, at
the state capital for a crowd of 5.000. Lewis Tewanima, the
Hopi distance runner from Second Mesa, wins the Silver Medal in the 10,000-meter
run during the Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden.
•1915 Five
years before passing of Prohibition (18th Amendment in 1920) Arizona
goes dry on Jan. 1.
•1916 Pancho
Villa crosses the border, attacks the town of Columbus, N.M.. taking a
military post and catching U.S. forces by surprise, President Wilson sends
a Punitive Expedition after Villa led by Gen John J. “Black Jack” Pershing.
In the state gubernatorial election Republican Tom Campell and Democrat
George W. P. Hunt finished in a virtual tie. “For 11 months the state has
two governors and things were still a mess,” writes State Historian Marshall
Trimble. Arizona’s first cotton king, Paul Lichfield, with the Goodyear
Tire and Rubber Company, buys 24,000 acres in Chandler and plants long
staple cotton, replaced shortly afterwards by Egyptian cotton.
•1917 U.S.
declares war on Germany. More than 1,000 striking miners deported by rail
and dumped in New Mexico during the Bisbee Deportation, the
most notorious event in Arizona’s labor history.
•1919
Tucson pioneers in aviation, building the nation’s first municipally owned
airport.
•1920s More
than 300 acres of concrete roads, 16 feet wide are built in Maricopa County
to help farmers get their goods to market.
•1922 Arizona’s
first licensed radio station, KFAD, later changed to KTAR, goes on the
air.
•1927 Charles
Lindbergh dedicates Arizona’s new Davis-Monthan Airfield in Tucson, landing
in his famous monoplane, “The Spirit of St. Louis.”
•1926 Babe
Ruth travels through Phoenix. Spots some kids playing baseball, steps off
train, picks up a bat and starts hitting baseballs into a field about 400
feet away.
•1928
Heard Museum is founded in Phoenix by Maie Bartlett and Dwight
B. Heard, president and publisher of the Arizona Republican.
•1929 Revolution
breaks out again in Mexico. A bombing raid on Naco, Ariz., led by American
pilot Patrick Murphy who offered his services to the Mexican
rebels. marked the only time the U.S. have been under air attack from a
foreign power. Stock market crashes Oct. 24. Detroit Tigers conduct spring
training in Tucson.
•1930 Flagstaff’s
Lowell Observatory makes major news with the discovery of the planet Pluto.
•1931 The Arizona
Highway Patrol, forerunner of the Department of Public Safety and the first
state-wide police force, is created by the Legislature.
•1932 Tucson
police pull off a major coup by arresting the notorious John Dillinger
and his gang without firing a shot.
•1933 Isabella
Selmes Greenway, widow of former Rough Rider and former copper magnate
John C. Greenway, is elected the first woman in Arizona to serve in Congress.
•1936 The two
oldest Kennedy brothers, Joseph and future president John F., come to Arizona
to work as cowboys at the J-6 Ranch near Benson.
•1940 Cowboy
silent movie idol Tom Mix dies after he crashes his Ford auto in
a shallow arroyo near Florence.
•1941 Japanese
attack Pearl Harbor. U.S.S. Arizona battleship takes the worst hit with
1,177 crew members killed.
•1942 War Department
authorizes the relocation of Japanese Americans from military installations
in California to some in Arizona.
•1943 Arizona’s
first state historian Sharlot Mabridth Hall, dies in her hometown of Prescott.
•1949 Jacque
Mercer, Miss Arizona, becomes first Arizona woman to be crowned Miss America.
Emay Sekaquaptwea, a Hopi from Oraibi, becomes the first full-blooded Native
American to receive an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West
Point.
•1949 Rex Allen,
“The Arizona Cowboy” from Willcox makes his movie debut. In schools across
the state children are trained to get under their desks to avoid begin
injured by an atomic bomb after Russia explodes Joe One.
•1950 Ana Frohmiller,
12 times elected state auditor, becomes the first women to serve as a major
party (Democratic) candidate for governor. She lost to Republican Howard
Pyle.
•1951 The world
champion New York Yankees come to Phoenix to train at the old Phoenix Municipal
Stadium.
•1953 Phelps
Dodge closes down the mines at the “Billion Dollar Copper Camp” of Jerome.
•1955-58 Astronomers
look at more than 150 mountain peaks in the Southwest before choosing Kitt
Peak, near Tucson, as the site of a new astronomical observatory.
•1959 Marty
Robbins of Glendale records his signature song “El Paso.” Arizona State
College at Tempe becomes Arizona State University.
•1961 Rep.
Stewart L. Udall is named Secretary of the Interior in the administration
of John F. Kennedy. He was replaced in Congress by his younger brother
“Mo”
•1963 Arizona
wins Supreme Court decision in dispute with California over Arizona’s share
of Colorado River Water.
•1964 Barry
Goldwater accepts Republican Party nomination for president of the
United States at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. He loses to Lyndon Johnson
in November.
•1965 Interstate
10 between Phoenix and Tucson completed. World famous group of painters
who dub themselves Cowboy Artists of America is created in Sedona at the
Oak Creek Tavern. Astronaut Frank Borman of Tucson, and Jim Lovell spend
two weks in ordit in Gemini 7. They execute the first manned space rendezvous
in orbit, linking up with Gemini 6.
•1966 U.S.
Supreme Court issues ruling regarding Miranda v. Arizona requiring
officers to read suspects their rights and warn them that anything they
say can be held against them in a court of law.
•1966 Gov.
Sam Goddard names Arizona folksinger Dolan Ellis as the state’s official
balladeer.
•1968 Astronaut
Frank Borman pilots Apollo 8 into the first moon orbit.
•1970 Pioneer
Hotel in Tucson burns to the ground, killing 29 people. A 15-year old boy
with a juvenile record is arested and convicted for the crime and sentenced
to life in prison.
•1974 Attorney
General Richard Kleindienst, a longtime Arizonan, is forced to resign as
U.S. Attorney General and face charges along with others in the Nixon administration
regarding the Watergate scandal.
•1976 Arizona
Republic reporter Don Bolles in killed in a car bombing in June. The prosecution
failed to prove that organized crime was involved. The exact details remain
a mystery.
•1978 Tyson
gang escapes from prison in Florence and goes on a 12-day ramage and killing
spree.
•1979 the Archaelogical
Resources Protection Act, a new federal law, steps up efforts to deal with
those who loot archaelogical sites. Law carries a possible fine of $10,000
and a year in prison for the first offense and up to a $100,000 fine and
five years in prisons for subsequent offenses.
•1981 President
Ronald Reagan nominates Sandra Day O’Connor of Arizona to the U.S. Supreme
Court, the first woman appointed.
•1984 After
60 years in the making, the Central Arizona Project begins delivering water
to the Salt River Valley in Phoenix, a few years later CAP reaches its
final destination in Tucson.
•1988 Former
Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt makes an unsuccessful run for the Democratic
nomination for president of the United States. NFL St. Louis Cardinals,
now known as the Arizona Cardinals, move to the state. Arizona Gov. Evan
Mecham, a Republican, is impeached and removed from office. He is
replaced by Rose Mofford, Democrat, long-time secretary of state.
•1992 Bruce
Babbitt named as Secretary of the Interior in the Clinton Administration.
•1996 Tucson
gymnst Kerri Strug leads her team to a gold medal at the Summer Olympic
Games, despite a serious injury to her ankle.
•1997 Lute
Olson and the University of Arizona Wildcats win the state’s first NCCA
national basketball championship after beating Kentucky 84-79.
Republican
Gov. Fife Symington is convicted on seven felony counts and forced from
office. Secretary of State Jane Dee Hull is sworn in by Supreme Court Justice
Sandra Day O’Connor.
1998 Barry
Goldwater, “Mr. Arizona” dies at his home in Paradise Valley.
•1999 “Fab
Five” Jane Dee Hull, governor; Betsey Bayless, secretary of state;
Janet Napolitana attorney general; Carol Springer, treasurer; and
Lisa Graham Kegan, superintendent of public instruction, sworn into the
top posts in Arizona government. A sixth woman, Brenda Burns, is elected
president of the Arizona Senate. Rex Allen dies in an accident at his home
in Tucson.
•2000 Arizona
Sen. John McCain, Republican, Arizona, continues his campaign for the Republican
nomination for president of the United States.