One of Tucson’s first restaurants open in 1870 and was known as the “Shoo Fly Restaurant” It was named this because the restaurant was plagues by flies, which constantly buzzed around the diners.  To keep the flies at bay, two boys were paid to walk around the establishment, swatting as many as they could. 

The food must have been fairly good, for despite the fly problem, the restaurant was reported to have been fairly popular.

Arizona has a number of redundant place names.  Among the most notable are:

• Rillito is Spanish for “little river”  Tucson’s Rillito River mean “Little River River".”
• Picacho is Spanish for “peak”  Between Tucson and Phoenix, one of the most notable landmarks is Picacho Peak.  So it’s “Peak Peak.”
• Mesa is Spanish for “table.”  North of Phoenix you will find Table Mesa.  The name would be “Table Table.”

During the 1800s, the town of Wickenburg decided that instead of building a jail they would just chain prisoners to a Mesquite tree located on a street corner in town.  One night they arrested a rather burly drunkard who was “tearing up the town.” The “Jail Tree” was already full of other prisoners so they chained him to a huge log nearby.  The next morning the  prisoner and the log was missing.  They found both of them in a nearby saloon. 

Where is the world’s largest rose bush.  Right here in Arizona. It is located in Tombstone, the “Town Too Tough to Die.” The rose bush “Too Tough to Die” is of a variety known as Lady Banks’ rose. 

It was believed to have been planted in 1885 by Mary Gee, a boarding house owner, and continues to thrive today.  It covers 8,000 square feet and the trunk has a circumference of 13 feet.

It is located at the Rose Tree Museum and Books in Tombstone, Arizona (520-457-3326).

We all know the Grand Canyon is big.  That is obvious just by looking at it.  However, few people really understand how big it is.  The Grand Canyon is about 18 miles across at its widest part and averages between 4,000 and 6,000 feet deep.  To put that in perspective, recall that a mile is 5,280 feet.  Its length is also truly amazing.  It is over 280 miles long.  The National Park that encompasses much of the canyon covers 1.2 million acres.  Compare that to Yosemite National Park is only about 760,000 acres in size.

The Grand Canyon is the most popular natural attraction in Arizona.  About 5 million people visit it each year.  Almost 1 out of every canyon visitors are from outside of the United States.   Of the visitors from the United States it may be surprising to learn that Arizona is not where most of the come from. In fact, more Californians visit Grand Canyon than Arizonans.

The most popular private/man-made attraction is Tempe Town Lake which draws about 2.7 million visitors each year.  This two mile long lake was formed when a giant rubber dam was placed in the Salt River.  The inflatable dams are designed to be deflated should flooding occur in the Salt River.  It takes less than one hour to inflate or deflated the dam system.

Sources: Arizona Department of Tourism, Wikipedia, Town Lake Operations Center.

The dome of Arizona’ Capital building, located in Phoenix,  is covered in fifteen tons of copper.  How much copper is that?  You could make 4,800,000 pennies from it!

When Engineers designed Coolidge Dam to form San Carlos Lake behind it, they dramatically underestimated the flow of the Gila River and other regional runoff. They had assumed that the water flow would be about 460 thousand acre feet per year. They based their calculation on runoff they had observed in recent years. However rainfall was unusually plentiful during this time.  As the dam was being built, rainfall in the region decreased. The actual flow was closer to 200 thousand acre feet per year. When the dam was dedicated in March 1930, San Carlos Lake, which was supposed to be a massive 1,3000,000 acre-foot reservoir, looked more like a shallow, weed-choked swamp. 

Humorist Will Rogers, who attended the ceremony, looked out over the lake and quipped, “If this was my lake, I’d mow it.

It would take almost 50 years for the lake to reach capacity.

Source: Arizona, A History – Thomas Sheridan. Photo credit:  US Bureau of Reclamation

In theory, that could have been the name of Phoenix’s Pro Basketball team.  When the City of Phoenix was being founded, several  suggestion for the name were considered. Among the top picks were:

• Pumpkinville
• Millville
• Selinas
• Stonewall

Luckily, none of these names was chosen.  Instead the founders decided to call the city “Phoenix” after the mythical bird that rose from its own ashes. As you may know, Phoenix is located on the site where the Hohokam civilization once flourished before mysteriously vanishing. 

Historians disagree on the person that suggested “Phoenix.”  Some say that it was a colorful character name Bryan Phillip Darrell Duppa, or as he called himself, “Lord” Duppa.  Other historians credit Jack Swilling with coming up with the name.  Regardless of who suggested it, we should be thankful he did.  Phoenix sounds much better than Pumpkinville.

When one thinks about volcanoes in the US, states in the Northwest, like Washington or Alaska,  come to mind.  However, Arizona might be the next location of America’s next big eruption.

The San Francisco Volcano Field is an 1800 square mile area, with Flagstaff near its center.  Almost 600 volcanic cinder cones are located within the area. The most recent eruption was only 900 years ago, which is a”blink of an eye” in geologic time.  Scientists expect more eruptions to occur in the area.  

Sunset Crater, one of the more prominent, and best preserved, of these, is a National Park.  If you haven’t been there, it’s well worth a visit.

Source: Volcanoes of Northern Arizona by Wendell Duffield.