Arizona is no place for amateurs!
Wyatt Earp
1863 - New Mexico was partitioned in half; Territory of Arizona is created
The name Arizona
Many answers have been posed for this question. Some suggested that it came from "arid zone," but much of Arizona is not arid, and Spanish grammar would have dictated "Zona Arida," putting the adjective last. The next suggestion attributed it to an O'odham Indian phrase, "Ali Shonac" meaning shallow, brackish water or spring. However, recent writings present the best cause for the Basque phrase "Aritz ona[c]" meaning the good oak tree or trees. The name was first applied to a huge silver discovery southwest of modern day Nogales, Arizona, an area where oak trees grow. The fact that there are several more areas with the same name in Central and South America led the most credence to the Basque origin.
The earliest archaeological records to date, unearthed at the Lehner Ranch near the Mexican border, indicate that the mammoth hunting Clovis Culture, circa 10,500 BCE, were the first to inhabit the area.
As early as 1824, Mountain Men such as Jereemiah Johnson, Kit Carson, Bill Williams, and Paulino Weaver trapped beaver along the Gila, Verde, and many other rivers in Arizona. By 1840, silk hats came into fashion in the East and the market for beaver pelts disintegrated. The Mountain Men explored a great deal of central and northern Arizona and later served as scouts for U.S. military troops and prospectors, several making large strikes themselves.
In 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ceded lands north of the Gila River to the United States. Then on June 30, 1854, the United States annexed “southern Arizona” with the stroke of a pen. For some, the Gadsden Purchase represented a celebration of diverse cultures coexisting on good terms with dreams of a prosperous future; for others, it drastically impacted their lives and homelands
President Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna needed money to protect his government from impending revolution, but agreed to sell only enough land for the U.S. transcontinental railroad. Mexican officials to denied the sale of any seaport lands on the Gulf of California. Negotiators signed the Tratado de Mesilla (known in the United States as the Gadsden Purchase) on December 30, 1853
The new boundary had no immediate effect on the O’odham and Mexican populations, but the long-term effect was considerable. Without consulting the Indians of the region, Washington, D.C. and Mexico City split traditional Indian lands in half. Tohono O’odham residing on the Sonoran side of the border became Mexican citizens. Indians on the northern part of the border, however, were not considered citizens until 1924, when all Indians in the United States were given citizenship.
Raymond Belcher
Frank Belcher
Arizona Belcher Research
Lost Pegleg Mine