President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1942 WWII Executive Order 9066 forced the removal of nearly 125,000 Japanese-American citizens from the west coast, incarcerating them in ten remote internment camps in seven states: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming. Government photographers Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, and Ansel Adams documented the internment, and artists Toyo Miyatake, […]

From the story of humanity’s first home in the Garden of Eden, gardens have been a favorite setting for stories, paintings, poetry, and works of music.  This talk examines the ways that painters, poets, and musicians use gardens as settings.  What do those gardens tell us?  Using wide-ranging examples from such writers as William Shakespeare, […]

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 […]

In 1924-1925, a collection of unusual lead artifacts which contained mysterious inscriptions were discovered deeply buried near Silverbell Road in Tucson. These artifacts --  crosses, crescents, batons, swords, and spears -- generated considerable interest  around the world when it was learned that the inscriptions contained Christian, Muslim, Hebraic, and Freemasonry symbols.  The artifacts were initially […]

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 […]

Written in Thread: Arizona Women’s History preserved in their Quilts traces the history of Arizona through women who recorded pieces of their lives in their needlework.  The colorful patterns of women’s quilts added a spot of brightness to their homes and their lives. They also celebrated and recorded special events with their quilts. Beginning with […]

Arizona is the only state in the Union that has been documented as having Africanized bees in every single county. The story of Africanized bees in Arizona is very much a story about the Southwest, and its distinct differences from the rest of the United States. The bees show us that we are living and […]

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 […]