With the exception of the most ardent collectors and older generation, the influence and legacy of the big bands is largely forgotten despite their overwhelming popularity and significant role in early radio. Join Larson as he revisits the sounds America listened and danced to for more than three decades. Learn how iconic artists like Glenn […]

Knowing one’s culture implies being educated about who you are, what social order expects of you, and it provides the primary steps to individual identity.  Stories of the Emergence, Trotting Coyote, First Man and Spider Woman, among others, teach the past, suggest the present, and create a pathway to a satisfying future.  Through recurring themes […]

Known as the Little Lady of the Governor’s Mansion, Hall was a poet, activist, politician, and Arizona’s first territorial historian. One of the West’s most remarkable women, she was in love with the state of Arizona and, if not for her efforts, much of the state’s history may have been lost. Beginning in 1927, she […]

Sharlot Mabridth Hall was an unusual woman for her time: a largely self-educated but highly literate child of the frontier. Born October 27,1870, she traveled with her family from Kansas to the Arizona Territory in 1882. Her impressions of this journey remained with her all of her life. She loved ideas and the written arts […]

During WWII a select group of young Navajo men enlisted in the Marines with a unique weapon.  Using the Navajo language, they devised a secret code that the enemy never deciphered.  For over 40 years a cloak of secrecy hung over the Code Talker’s service until the code was declassified and they were finally honored […]

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 […]

Winnie Ruth Judd, Eva Dugan, Dr. Rose Boido, and Eva Wilbur Cruz all shared one thing in common. They were all incarcerated at the Arizona State Prison in Florence.  These women were players in both the sensational stories that made national headlines and local stories that made Arizona history. Who were these women and how […]