Arizona State Facts & Information

Arizona, state in the southwestern United States. It is a land of seemingly limitless space and tremendous vistas. Arizona was the last of the 48 adjoining continental states to enter the Union. From its admission on February 14, 1912, until the admission of Alaska and Hawaii in 1959, it was the youngest state.

Arizona’s landscape is one of great diversity. Sun-swept mountains and valleys, lofty plateaus, narrow canyons, and awesome stretches of desert make it one of the most beautiful states in the nation. This scenic beauty, coupled with an ideal climate, has made Arizona very popular with tourists.

Imperial Spain and, later, independent Mexico once controlled this land, and there the Native American, Spanish, and Anglo-American cultures met and fused. Although most of the Native Americans now live on reservations and Mexico and Spain long ago relinquished control of the area, traces of Arizona’s past still remain. The Native American culture has been preserved on the reservations, and Mexican and Spanish influences may be seen in architectural styles and place-names.

Arizona has undergone great changes since the 19th century, when it was a rough-and-tumble mining and cattle territory. Although it still retains much of the character of the old West for tourists, it is a modern urban and industrial state, with large cities, highly mechanized farms, and rapidly expanding industries. Phoenix is the center of Arizona’s largest urban area and the state’s capital.

While early Spanish explorers came into what is present-day Arizona in the middle 1500s, it was considerably later before settlement began. The only portion to be actually inhabited during settlement was in and around Tucson. Under the Spanish crown, the current state of Arizona was only a part of what is present-day Sonora, and the area was known as Pimeria Alta (land of the Upper Pima).

In their search for the fabled cities of gold, Spanish expeditons encountered the Hopi and Zuni, standstone villages of centuries-old, cliff-dwelling civilizations, and the more recently arrived nomadic Apache and Navajo. Governor Diego Ortiz Parilla established a fort at Tubac in 1753, and Tucson was founded in 1775. Marauding Apaches later forced the Spanish out of the area. The seat of government shifted several times in succeeding years. It was not until 1826 that a garrison would occupy the presidios at Tucson, Tubac, and Santa Cruz. The settlements were precarious because the Apaches did not concede the frontier to Mexico.

Following the Mexican War in 1848, the boundary between the United States and Mexico stood at the Gila River. In 1854 America and Mexico concluded the Gadsden Purchase, and the boundaries of the state of Arizona and Mexico became permanent. In the recent past, much attention has been directed toward preserving, making accessible, and microfilming early Spanish and Mexican records. Manuscript collections of much of the material can be found at the state library and/or state archives at Phoenix, and the Arizona Historical Society holdings at Tucson.

In the late 1800s, by the time U.S. authorities got around to authenticating private land claims, fraud cases were relatively frequent. In 1960 these private land registers were transferred to the National Archives-Southwest Region. The Pima County Recorder's Office at Tucson should be researched for Gadsden Purchase land records, which also include mission claims. All modern-era land holdings are in the respective county recorder's offices.

For more information, see these references:

• The History of Arizona and New Mexico, 1530–1888. San Francisco: History Publishing Co., 1889. By Bancroft, Hubert Howe.
• Spanish and Mexican Records of the American Southwest: A Bibliographical Guide to Archives and Manuscript Sources. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1975. By Beers, Henry Putney.
• Newspapers & Periodicals - The Newspapers & Periodicals Collection lets you discover a wealth of information about your ancestors from many historical newspapers, magazines, and other periodicals. These types of sources can often supplement public records and provide information that is not recorded anywhere else. Here, you can learn more about your ancestor's possible daily activities by placing them in the context of their time.
• Directories & Member Lists - Directories and member lists are typically compilations of information about people who belonged to various associations and groups or lived within city boundaries. They can be thought of as the predecessors to the modern-day phone book and usually list names, addresses, and sometimes the occupations of your ancestors.
• Stories, Memories & Histories - Stories and histories compiled by others researching a person or area can be an amazing source of information about your ancestors. Not only do they generally contain dates and places of vital events like birth, marriage, and death, but they often relate stories and memories that help you really get to know the character of your ancestors.
• Family Trees - Ancestry has thousands of family trees shared by other members. They can help you identify how ancestors are related and give you clues about birth, marriage, and death information. Family trees are an excellent resource for filling in gaps in your research or even to simply know where to begin.
• Pictures - One of the more exciting discoveries in doing family history research is finding a photograph of your ancestors or their residence. Finding historic postcard photos and drawings of towns and important events throughout history can also give you a visual look into your ancestors lives.
• Reference Materials & Finding Aids - Reference materials, including dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other how-to books, can be tremendously helpful in finding and interpreting historical documents. Many of these books can help you learn where to look for more information and how to use what you've already found to uncover more clues.

Arizona County List

 

Four original counties were created in September 1864: Yavapai being the first of the four, followed by Mohave, Yuma, and Pima. In some cases, cities other than the current county seat served as county seats, although the cities have no record collections. These cities are indicated in parentheses below the county and address. Historically they should be considered for migration reasons. Dates given for land, probate, and court holdings are those reported by the counties themselves. Occasionally there may be earlier records interspersed with later ones. Earlier dates for some of these materials are catalogued by the Arizona State Archives. The county recorder's office at the county seat's address should be contacted for land records. Marriages, divorces, probate, and court records are at the county superior court clerk's office.

Arizona Discontinued Counties

 

This section provides an list of Arizona counties that no longer exist. They were established by the state, provincial, or territorial government. Most of these counties were created and disbanded in the 19th century; county boundaries have changed little since 1900 in the vast majority of states.

• Pah-Ute County - is a former county in the northwest corner of Arizona Territory, created from the division of the existing Mohave County on December 22, 1865. Much of Pah-Ute County was in the small triangular section of what is now the southern part of the U.S. state of Nevada. The county seat was the town of Callville, which is now occupied by a part of Lake Mead. Pah-Ute was the historical spelling of the Indian tribe that is today referred to as the Paiute. A short time later, on May 5, 1866, all of Pah-Ute County west of the Colorado River and west of 114 degrees latitude became part of the new state of Nevada, over the protest of the territory of Arizona. The remaining portion of Pah-Ute County in Arizona was so underpopulated that no viable county government could be formed, and on February 18, 1871, the remainder of Pah-Ute County was absorbed back into Mohave County. Most of modern Clark County, Nevada, was once Pah-Ute County, Arizona, including Nevada's largest and most famous city, Las Vegas. To this day, some textbooks still refer to the Pah-Ute as Arizona's "Lost County".

Arizona Burned Courthouses

 

The destruction of courthouses greatly affects genealogists in every way. No only are these historic structures torn from our lives, so are the records they housed: marriage, wills, probate, land records, and others. Once destroyed they are lost forever. Even if they have been placed on mircofilm, computers and film burn too. The most heartbreaking side of this is the fact that many of our courthouses are destroyed at the hands of arsonist. However, not all records were lost.

Below is a list of Arizona Counties and the years the Courthouses were subjected to a disaster. This does NOT mean that ALL RECORDS were lost. Often, folks took their documents again in for recording after a disaster and later deeds will contain long chains of title, etc.

• ? County - ?