Tom Jeffords grew up in Ashtabula, OH, without much education and was promoted to lake captain in his early twenties. The lure of making his fortune called Tom west to the Pike’s Peak Gold Rush, the San Juan Rush and to the Colorado River. He scouted and was dispatch rider for the Army during the […]

Cowboy movie star Tom Mix was internationally famous, and many legends and tall tales have been told about his life. This presentation highlights some of the true stories about Mix and his connection to Arizona, debunking some of the Hollywood hype. What brought Mix travel that lonesome highway where he met his death south of […]

Annie Oakley is perhaps the best recognized, but little know personalities that came out of the American West.  Her life story is one which is enmeshed deeply into the fabric of the American character.  However it was not a cookie cutter life.  Oakley defied social norms and cultural mores and expectations of her time while […]

Arriving in the late 1800s Basque sheep ranchers and herders are an overlooked part of Arizona history.  It was a viable early economic activity that since has seen its heyday. They grazed sheep on hundreds of thousands of acres moving them between the high country in the summer and the desert areas in the winter. […]

The Hohokam Native American culture flourished in southern Arizona from the sixth through fifteenth centuries. Hohokam artifacts, architecture, and other material culture provide archaeologists with clues for identifying where the Hohokam lived, interpreting how they adapted to the Sonoran Desert for centuries, and explaining why their culture mysteriously disappeared. In this presentation Dart illustrates the […]

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 hidehunters, and the disengaged U.S. Congress than George Bird Grinnell, the “Father of American Conservation.” Grinnell […]

We are intrigued by unsolved mysteries, because it would seem almost impossible for anyone to totally vanish from the face of the earth at any time. This is especially true in our day and age when a host of computer data tracks everyone; yet bodies do disappear with astonishing frequency. In some cases it may […]

This session features the principle that Hip Hop performs an important social function, and consequently the messaging within it. We will examine why and how something so controversial and marginal could become so mainstream and central, becoming a billion-dollar business today! Using history as a backdrop, we explore particular genres, artists, styles, sounds, images, and […]