The Fred Harvey and Santa Fe Railway companies vigorously promoted tourism to the Southwest through Harvey's grand hotels along the Santa Fe line. Winslow’s proximity to natural and cultural sites made it an ideal tourism destination, and so La Posada opened there in 1930. After the hotel closed in 1957, the building served as Santa […]
In 1921 the Hopi were told that “church people” petitioned Congress to stop their “pagan” dancing. A platform was erected on the U.S. Capitol steps where both Houses of Congress assembled with their families to see the Hopi dancers. Following the performance, Congress passed a Resolution giving the Hopi permission to carry on their dancing […]
Post-war Arizona really popped and added to the pop culture known as Americana. The housing pop for the returning military personnel who were moving to Arizona changed the landscape. Iconic restaurants such as KFC, McDonald’s, and Bob’s Big Boy owe Arizona for their POP culture status. Vestiges of these post-war days are still around and […]
The American Southwest is world-renown for its colorful, modern landscape, but you’ll be amazed to learn what it used to look like. The Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, the Superstition Mountains, and the Petrified Forest hold clues to the fascinating story of how the Southwest was once the site of tropical seas, Sahara-like deserts, coastlines stalked […]
The great West that George Bird Grinnell first encountered in 1870 as a 21-year-old man was shortly to disappear before his eyes. Nobody was quicker to sense the desecration or was more eloquent in crusading against the poachers, the hide-hunters, and the disengaged U.S. Congress than George Bird Grinnell, the “Father of American Conservation.” Grinnell […]
Early traders traveled through Arizona Territory, selling goods from their wagons, but they soon built stores that evolved into trading and social centers where wool, sheep, and Native arts were exchanged for sugar and salt, pots, pans, bridles, and saddles. Navajo trading posts are best known, but trading posts existed on every reservation in Arizona. […]
In 1907, an adventurous young woman from Philadelphia hopped on a train to see the distant Grand Canyon and thus launched an adventure that would change the course of her life. Over the next several years, she visited the mesa-top pueblo of Acoma, explored the Grand Canyon, lived in a rustic cabin, and struck up […]
In 1929 the newly-formed Transcontinental Air Transport (TAT) company launched an ambitious plan to establish the country’s first coast-to-coast airline service from New York to Los Angeles. Assisted by famous pilots Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart, the TAT established a series of pioneering airports along the route (including Clovis, Albuquerque, Winslow, and Kingman) and helped […]
A killer camel, a tornado-riding con man, a dead dragon, and a naked horse thief are some of the characters in the quirky stories from Southwest history that Peach loves to share in his original cowboy poetry. Laugh at and learn from these very tall and mostly true tales, like how Arizona forfeited a seaport […]
Join Temple as she presents Elizabeth “Baby Doe” Tabor, the central figure in a western mining frontier saga involving money, divorce, family heartbreak, and pioneer resilience. Baby Doe was admired by miners and hated by “decent” women, yet she captured the heart of the richest man in the West, Horace Tabor. After winning Horace away […]
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