Sage Memorial Hospital, in the Navajo Nation town of Ganado, has been a pioneering medical facility for nearly a century. It’s a place that made history, too — 90 years ago, it became the first accredited nursing school in the United States for American Indian women.
He came to Arizona in 1909, fresh from Yale University, where he'd earned a degree from the first forestry school in the United States. Like many young college graduates, Aldo Leopold expected to leave his mark on the world. And he did. Through his experiences and writings, Leopold became a leading voice against America's indifference to ecology.
Tourism. It's a multibillion-dollar industry in Arizona. But the state wasn't always just a destination for people looking for a sunny getaway. During the early 20th century, it was also a haven for people who suffered from tuberculosis.
Some well-heeled patients stayed at hospitals like Desert Sanatorium and The Desert Inn Sanatorium — a sort of precursor to the resorts that would eventually go up. Sadly, the majority of patients were poor, having spent what little they had to make the journey west. Penniless and sick, they were relegated to tent cities.
It's something we take for granted every time we food shop — piles of citrus fruit waiting to be plucked from produce departments. But there was a time when citrus was more than just supermarket flotsam. Citrus was king. It was the driving force behind the state's economy, and one of Arizona's Five C's, ranking right up there with cotton, copper, cattle and climate.
There's one more reason to indulge in Girl Scout Cookies this year: In 2012, the Girl Scouts of the USA celebrates its 100th birthday. Juliette Gordon Low formed the Girl Guides in 1912, modeling the organization on England's Girl Guides and Boy Scouts. Low changed the name to Girl Scouts in 1914, after she was informed that scouts were sent out first and guides second — she believed her girls would be "second to none."
Del Webb, like so many of the people who move into his communities, was not an Arizona native.
An avid baseball player, Webb — who grew up in California and would later own the New York Yankees — had a promising career until he fell ill with typhoid fever. He moved to the Phoenix metropolitan area in 1928 for the dry climate, and began working as a carpenter.
You might say Flagstaff was built on exaggerations. In 1876, a man named Samuel Woodworth Cozzens wrote a book titled The Marvelous Country. "You'd call it a travel book today," says Leslie Roe, director of the Pioneer Museum and Riordan Mansion in Flagstaff. Unfortunately, the book was more fiction than fact. "It made a lot of claims and he told it in the first person, as though he experienced it," he says. It later came to light that Cozzens had never visited Northern Arizona. Despite that, the author ventured to cities like Boston, where he promoted his book.
School might be out for good at the Strawberry Schoolhouse, which opened in 1886, but it still gets its fair share of visitors during the summer months, when the classroom opens it doors to the public. "People come to see the schoolhouse and say, 'I went to a school just like this,' " says Margaret Parker, president of the Pine-Strawberry Historical Society. "It's amazing."
In the early 20th century, women in Arizona were treated like second-class citizens at the voting booth. Frances Willard Munds wasn't comfortable with that, and she made it her mission to do something about it.
The former schoolteacher's fight for women's suffrage began in Prescott, where she joined the Arizona Women's Christian Temperance Union. In addition, she became a member of the Arizona Equal Suffrage Association in 1903, later serving as its president. Munds even petitioned the Territorial legislature numerous times and spoke at the Arizona Constitutional Convention.
