Arizona has stories as peculiar as its stunning landscapes. The Lost Dutchman's rumored cache of gold sparked a legendary feud. Kidnapping victim Larcena Pennington Page survived two weeks alone in the wilderness, and her first request upon rescue was for a chaw of tobacco. Discover how the town of Why got its name, how the government built a lake that needed mowing and how wild camels ended up in North America. Author Marshall Trimble unearths these and other amusing anomalies, outstanding obscurities and compelling curiosities in the state's history.
Arizona has stories as peculiar as its stunning landscapes. The Lost Dutchman's rumored cache of gold sparked a legendary feud. Kidnapping victim Larcena Pennington Page survived two weeks alone in the wilderness, and her first request upon rescue was for a chaw of tobacco. Discover how the town of Why got its name, how the government built a lake that needed mowing and how wild camels ended up in North America. Author Marshall Trimble unearths these and other amusing anomalies, outstanding obscurities and compelling curiosities in the state's history.
State Oddities takes a different kind of look at the American nation, spotlighting the fun foibles, peculiarities, and twists in each of the 50 states that are (mostly) united under the Stars and Stripes. State Oddities is a fascinating trip through the 50 states for students studying America, teachers planning classroom activities, and general readers who will enjoy an eye-opening journey through the nation's fun side. It offers a compelling look at the character of America through the individuality of 50 very distinct states that together form the USA. This book paints a picture of the broad sweep of the American story, offering a gateway to the country as it developed into one nation filled with individual states that can be remarkably different from each other, yet unified under such national symbols as the American flag and "The Star-Spangled Banner." The author of State Oddities has become known as a master of "painless history," telling America's story in a sparkling style along with the historian's eye for fascinating detail. On the book's cross-country journey, the reader will find that it differs from other works by taking a fresh look at stories we think we know.
Wyatt Earp is one of the most legendary figures of the nineteenth-century American West, notable for his role in the gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. Some see him as a hero lawman of the Wild West, whereas others see him as yet another outlaw, a pimp, and failed lawman. Roy B. Young, Gary L. Roberts, and Casey Tefertiller, all notable experts on Earp and the Wild West, present in A Wyatt Earp Anthology an authoritative account of his life, successes, and failures. The editors have curated an anthology of the very best work on Earp—more than sixty articles and excerpts from books—from a wide array of authors, selecting only the best written and factually documented pieces and omitting those full of suppositions or false material. Earp’s life is presented in chronological fashion, from his early years to Dodge City, Kansas; triumph and tragedy in Tombstone; and his later years throughout the West. Important figures in Earp’s life, such as Bat Masterson, the Clantons, the McLaurys, Doc Holliday, and John Ringo, are also covered. Wyatt Earp’s image in film and the myths surrounding his life, as well as controversies over interpretations and presentations of his life by various writers, also receive their due. Finally, an extensive epilogue by Gary L. Roberts explores Earp and frontier violence.
The bestselling author of Dispatches from Pluto and The Deepest South of All turns his sharp wit and observational powers on the epicenter of America’s most divisive issues: Arizona. When Richard Grant and his wife moved with their four-year-old daughter back to Tucson, Arizona, where the couple first met, he expected to easily rekindle his love of the region. Instead, he found a housing market gone haywire, rampant election conspiracies, and right-wing political violence alarmingly close to his home and family. Undocumented immigration was surging, and the state was also on the front lines of climate change, breaking heat and drought records, and running out of long-term water supplies. Under these circumstances, Grant wondered how he might raise a happy, well-adjusted child who believes in the future. Yet these concerns weren’t keeping people away: Arizona was simultaneously experiencing some of the nation’s highest population growth. In A Race to the Bottom of Crazy, Grant mixes memoir, research, and reporting in a quest to understand what makes Arizona such a confounding and irresistible place. He visits the world’s largest machine-gun shoot; takes a sunset boat cruise with a US Congressman and a group of far-right patriots; rides through the desert with a Border Patrol agent; and goes camping with his family in breathtaking mountain ranges that rise out of the desert like islands in the sky. Interspersed with these adventures are recollections of his previous stint in the state, including his friendship with cult writer Charles Bowden and years living off the grid with smugglers, dope farmers, and outlaws on the Mexican border. Ultimately, Grant arrives at the conclusion that Arizona has always been a scattershot improvisation, with bizarre and extreme behavior in its DNA. This book is an entertaining, illuminating, and essential guide to understanding modern America at its most overheated.
Arizona Myths and Legends explores unusual phenomena, strange events, and mysteries in Arizona’s history, like the story of Pearl Hart or the ghosts that live in the Hotel Vendome. Each episode included in the book is a story unto itself, and the tone and style of the book is lively and easy to read for a general audience interested in Arizona history.
At the end of the 19th century, outlaws opined they would rather kill themselves than be taken alive to certain slow-boiled death in the caldron of Yuma's territorial prison, known nationally as "The Hell Hole." But to the pioneer residents of Yuma, the prison was the finest structure in town, sitting atop a breezy hill. When the prison was closed, Yuma's citizens used the abandoned structure as a school. That Yuma's residents lived happily where the West's most notorious outlaws feared to die is just one testament to the profound strength and perseverance of the first settlers of the community. This photographic history pays tribute to those men and women-Quechan, Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo-who looked past the arid landscape to envision a thriving river port, then a mining center, and finally, a verdant valley and winter playground.
True stories of the wild and dangerous world of the Arizona Territory—includes photos. A refuge for outlaws at the close of the 1800s, the Arizona Territory was a wild, lawless land of greedy feuds, brutal killings and figures of enduring legend. These gunfighters included heroes as well as killers, and some were considered both. Bandit Pearl Hart committed one of the last recorded stagecoach robberies in the country, and James Addison Reavis pulled off the most extraordinary real estate scheme in the West. But with fearless lawmen like C.P. Owens and George Ruffner at hand, swift justice was always nearby. In this collection of true stories, Arizona’s official state historian and celebrated storyteller Marshall Trimble brings to life the rough-and-tumble characters from the Grand Canyon State’s most terrific tales of outlawry and justice.
“War means fighting, and fighting means killing,” Confederate cavalry commander Nathan Bedford Forrest famously declared. The Civil War was fundamentally a matter of Americans killing Americans. This undeniable reality is what Jonathan Steplyk explores in Fighting Means Killing, the first book-length study of Union and Confederate soldiers’ attitudes toward, and experiences of, killing in the Civil War. Drawing upon letters, diaries, and postwar reminiscences, Steplyk examines what soldiers and veterans thought about killing before, during, and after the war. How did these soldiers view sharpshooters? How about hand-to-hand combat? What language did they use to describe killing in combat? What cultural and societal factors influenced their attitudes? And what was the impact of race in battlefield atrocities and bitter clashes between white Confederates and black Federals? These are the questions that Steplyk seeks to answer in Fighting Means Killing, a work that bridges the gap between military and social history—and that shifts the focus on the tragedy of the Civil War from fighting and dying for cause and country to fighting and killing.
