Today, February 14, you might be thinking about getting flowers for your sweetheart, or birds picking their mates, or buying marked-off chocolate tomorrow. You may not have realized that today is the 110th anniversary of Arizona’s statehood. New Mexico and Arizona were admitted to the union in 1912, after a long delay; Arizona was the last contiguous state to join the United States.
Arizona’s history extends back to 10,000 BCE with the prehistoric residents of the land mass; the Anasazi settled in Four Corners ca. 1200 BCE. Indigenous people have been living there continuously since that time at least. Today 22 Indigenous sovereign nations live on their traditional lands in the area called Arizona, which likely takes its name from the O’odham name Alĭ ṣonak (place of small spring). Coronado claimed these lands for Spain