Arizona
Arizona is a state in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the Western United States and of the Mountain West states. It is the sixth largest and the 15th most populous of the 50 states.
- ABBREVIATION: AZ
- NICKNAME: The Grand Canyon State
- POPULATION: 6,626,624 (2013 est.)
- CAPITAL: Phoenix
- STATE BIRD: Cactus Wren
- STATE FLOWER: Saguaro Cactus Blossom
- AREA: 113,990 sq. mi.
- TIME ZONE: Most of state Mountain: UTC -7 (no DST) – Navajo Nation Mountain: UTC -7/-6
- ENTERED UNION: Feb. 14, 1912
- ALTITUDE: High 12,637 ft. Humphreys Peak
- CLIMATE: Clear air, nearly constant sunshine, low humidity, low rainfall. Hot summers, winters generally mild.
In 1858 Congress noted: “The region is all together valueless”, “after entering Arizona there is nothing left to do but leave”. Of course nobody thinks of Arizona that way today, it’s a well appreciated region of the United States that attracts millions of tourist every year. An arid yet beautiful land of plunging gorges like The Grand Canyon, varicolored deserts, erosion-carved buttes, mountains and parched yellow sands nurturing only such desert life as Gila monsters and Saguaro Cactus, Arizona is, paradoxically, one of the fastest growing areas of the nation.
In addition to the huge mining and cotton industries, the endless sunshine and open spaces have lured thousands of small and large manufactures to the urban areas in the last 50 years, nourishing a highly productive industrial boom.
Due to its numerous golf courses, Arizona is home to several stops on the PGA Tour, most notably the Phoenix Open, held at the TPC of Scottsdale, and the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club in Marana.
FUN FACTS:
- London Bridge, which once spanned England’s River Thames, was purchased for Lake Havasu City in the 1960’s. The bridge was shipped across the Atlantic and reconstructed in the Arizona desert.
- Lake Powell, the nation’s second largest reservoir, is named for John Wesley Powell, the one-armed Civil War veteran who was the first white person to successfully navigate and map the Grand Canyon.
- The federal government owns 88 percent of Arizona’s land, including 21 Indian reservations. Of these, the Navajo Nation Reservation is the largest.
- Pluto, once classified as a planet, was discovered from the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff in 1930.
- Arizona’s largest lizard, the Gila monster, is the only poisonous lizard in the United States.
- The amount of copper on the roof of the Capitol building is equivalent to 4,800,000 pennies.