Arizona Quotes | The Quote Garden

Quotations about Arizona

Welcome to the quotes about my home state, Arizona. My family has been here since the 1940s, originally in Tucson, and I was born in Phoenix in the early 1970s. Enjoy these quotations featuring the beauty, humor, heat, and eccentricity that is AZ! —tg

SEE ALSO: GRAND CANYON, DESERTS, SUN, HOT WEATHER, SCORPIONS, SUNRISE & SUNSET

There's something wonderfully healing in Arizona air. ~Zane Grey, The Call of the Canyon, 1924

...the sweet, sun-purified, sun-vivified air of the desert... ~George Wharton James, Arizona, the Wonderland, 1917

Tell me: have you ever seen stars in a more black-velvety sky, or seen them so large, vivid and intense? Was ever mountain coloring more tender, soft, alluring than at dawn, or more richly radiant than at sunset? ~George Wharton James, Arizona, the Wonderland, 1917 [a little altered –tg]

This country is geology by day and astronomy at night. It offers a broad view of what is happening generally in the solar system, with no particular reference to Man. But it has a magnificent routine. The early mornings, in winter, are cold, very fresh and pure. Then, under the burning noons, the red cardinals and the blue-birds flash among the cotton-woods, as if nature had turned outrageously symbolic. The afternoons are simply so much sunlight and aromatic air. But at sunset, the land throws up pink summits and saw-toothed ridges of amethyst, and there are miracles of fire in the sky. Night uncovers two million more stars than you have ever seen before; and the planets are not points but globes. ~J. B. Priestley, Midnight on the Desert: A Chapter of Autobiography, 1917

Land of extremes. Land of contrasts. Land of surprises. Land of contradictions. A land that is never to be fully understood but always to be loved by sons and daughters sprung from such a diversity of origins, animated by such a diversity of motives and ideals, that generations must pass before they can ever fully understand each other. That is Arizona. ~Arizona: A State Guide, compiled by Workers of the Writers' Program of the Work Projects Administration in the State of Arizona, 1940

She was actually learning to love Arizona. The beauty and color and solitude, the vastness of it had called to something deep in her. First she had complained of the dust, the wind, the emptiness, the absence of people. But she had forgotten these. ~Zane Grey, The Water Hole, 1927

"It's only a desert!" Yes, I know.
Sometimes I think God left it so,
That mortals, weary of their strife
Could breathe its air, and feel new life
Come pulsing from these solitudes
So calm, so grand in all their moods.
~Flossie Edna Ritzenthaler Cole Wells (1889–1987), "Coconino Wilderness"

I saw stretching far below me the beautiful vista of rocky gorge, and level, cacti-studded flat, wrought by the moonlight into a miracle of soft splendor and wondrous enchantment. Few western wonders are more inspiring than the beauties of an Arizona moonlit landscape; the silvered mountains in the distance, the strange lights and shadows upon hog back and arroyo, and the grotesque details of the stiff, yet beautiful cacti form a picture at once enchanting and inspiring; as though one were catching for the first time a glimpse of some dead and forgotten world, so different is it from the aspect of any other spot upon our earth. ~Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars, 1917

Few countries in the world present so marvellous a variety of scenic features as does Arizona... the youngest of the American States, and yet one of the oldest lands of the whole continent... What a wonderland of wild cactus growth, of solitude, of mystery, of silence it is!... Miles and miles of such weary, cactus-strewn, alkali solitude... ~George Wharton James, Arizona, the Wonderland, 1917

She looked out of her window. How blue the sky. The mountain peaks stood up like dark spears. Patches of snow shone in the sunlight, running down to the edge of the vast green belt of forest land... Arizona! There was no place in the world so full of romance and beauty, and the natural things that stirred the soul. ~Zane Grey, The Water Hole, 1928 [One does tend to feel this way in the pines; in the more arid areas, not so much. Dust isn't very romantic. –tg]

When the ancient myth-maker conjured out of the depths of his vivid imagination the story of the phœnix, classic bird of the ancients prior even to his time, that it had the power inherently within itself to rise from its own funeral pyre, he little dreamed he was preparing a name for the Capital City of the last great State of the American United States. Unlike Tucson and Prescott, she was not born in the early days of strife, race-conflict, and the thrill of newly-discovered great mines. She is a sister of the later day. The first comers who roamed over the valley of the Rio Salado of the Spaniards, soon found scattered here and there the remains of a prehistoric people. Great irrigation canal systems led from village to village, and clearly indicated that a prehistoric race long before had seen and utilized the agricultural advantages of this highly favored region. So, when the settlers came together and decided to start a city, one of them, an Englishman familiar with his classics, suggested that as the new city of the new civilization was to rise on the ruins, the ashes, of a former civilization, he deemed Phœnix an excellent name. ~George Wharton James, Arizona, the Wonderland, 1917

We've had Eastern tenderfeet here before. And never was there a one of them who didn't come to love Arizona. ~Zane Grey, The Call of the Canyon, 1924

You know that Arizona is going to really be understood and get somewhere some day. ~Will Rogers, 1932

Have you slept in a tent alone—a tent
Out under the desert sky—
Where a thousand thousand desert miles
All silent round you lie?—
The dust of the aeons of ages dead,
And the peoples that trampled by?
Have you looked in the desert's painted cup,
Have you smelled at dawn the wild sage musk,
Have you seen the lightning flashing up
From the ground in the desert dusk?
Have you heard the song in the desert rain
(Like the undertone of a wordless rhyme)?
Have you watched the glory of colors flame
In its marvel of blossom time?...
If you have, then you know, for you've felt its spell,
The lure of the desert land,
And if you have not, then I could not tell—
For you could not understand.
~Madge Morris Wagner (1862–1924), "The Lure of the Desert Land," c.1909 ["Mrs. Wagner has not written of the desert from a car window. On the contrary she knows and she loves the desert as a sailor knows and loves the ocean. Her tent is there season after season, and the mercury is above par. For she and her enterprising husband, Harr Wagner, believe in Arizona..." ~Joaquin Miller, 1892 –tg]

I leaped quickly through the opening into the starlight of a clear Arizona night. The crisp, fresh mountain air outside the cave acted as an immediate tonic and I felt new life and new courage coursing through me... I lifted my head to fill my lungs with the pure, invigorating night air of the mountains. ~Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars, 1917

Then the wind blew cool through the pinyons on the rim. There was a sweet tang of cedar and sage on the air and that indefinable fragrance peculiar to the canyon country of Arizona. ~Zane Grey, The Call of the Canyon, 1924

And the sunshine, too, of Arizona is equal to the atmosphere. It is direct, positive, unadulterated. The clarity of the air allows it to reach man and the earth just as it was divinely intended it should, and the result is it brings healing, strength and power on its wings. Pure air, pure atmosphere, pure and unadulterated, unrestrained sunshine bless every inhabitant, making the strong stronger, and bringing new hope, new brightness, new life to the weak and ailing. ~George Wharton James, Arizona, the Wonderland, 1917

Arizona mesas are arid and barren — broad plateaus of wild, rugged, waterless deserts; the marvelous mountains are rugged, ragged, rough, red, and rude — barren to summit and bleak to every sense. The shadeless mesquite is not essentially handsome or inviting; the valde-verde tree, with its mockery of leafless branches, is not an object of delight; the clouds of hot alkali dust that arise are not agreeable to eye or taste... the numerous varieties of the grotesque cactus, from the little cotton-like bulb of the smallest that hugs the earth, to the monstrous columnar fungus that outlines itself against the sky, are not especially inviting specimens of the freaks in which dame Nature occasionally indulges. Yet, and yet, the wonderful atmosphere that bends above and embraces us, is the most marvelous of magicians. ~Richard J. Hinton, "Over Valley and Mesa," The Hand-Book to Arizona, 1877

What ideal, immutable Platonic cloud could equal the beauty and perfection of any ordinary everyday cloud floating over, say, Tuba City, Arizona, on a hot day in June? ~Edward Abbey, Vox Clamantis in Deserto, 1989

So you think of going way out West to Arizona. I suppose Tucson is miny and hot. I am sure you will feel much freer and happier. ~Laura L. Livingstone (Herbert Dickinson Ward), Lauriel: The Love Letters of an American Girl, 1901

Tucson is perhaps the most liveable town in Arizona. ~Winifred Hawkridge Dixon, Westward Hoboes: Ups and Downs of Frontier Motoring, 1921

Five miles more, and the reason for Roosevelt Dam lay before our eyes. Five miles of blistering country, so dry, as a guide said, that "when you spit you can't see where it lands"; a country burnt to a crisp by withering sunshine so intense that shadows, sharp-edged as razor blades, look vermilion purple. Only horned reptiles, poisonous and thorny-backed, can exist here, and plants as ungracious, compelled to hoard their modicum of moisture in iron-clad spiny armament. And then, a line of demarcation the width of a street, and the Water-God has turned this colorless ache of heat to emerald green. Thwarted cactus gives way to long rows of poplars and leopard-spotted eucalyptus bordering blue canals... We were in the famous Salt River Valley, the boast of parched Arizona. ~Winifred Hawkridge Dixon, Westward Hoboes: Ups and Downs of Frontier Motoring, 1921

Maricopa County in some respects may be called the banner county of Arizona... What the next fifty years will develop in the Salt River Valley can not now be realized. This county contains other flourishing cities besides Phœnix. Tempe is a beautiful city on the Salt River's southern bank... and bids fair to be a city of importance. ~Sidney R. DeLong, The History of Arizona, 1905

If you are of the temperament which takes as much pleasure in the spring showing of your garden, as in the summer's full florescence, go look about at Phœnix, Arizona, where the young shoot is in tender leaf. ~Mary Hunter Austin, The Land of Journeys' Ending, 1924 [a little altered —tg]

Now Phoenix has paved streets and electric lights and a Chamber of Commerce, a State House and a Governor. But somehow, Phoenix had no charm for us. Phoenix may be Arizona, but it is Arizona denatured. All Salt River Valley seemed denatured. It had taken its boom seriously, and the arch crime of self-consciousness possessed it. ~Winifred Hawkridge Dixon, Westward Hoboes: Ups and Downs of Frontier Motoring, 1921

It was now morning, and, with the customary lack of dawn which is a startling characteristic of Arizona, it had become daylight almost without warning. ~Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars, 1917

...the royalty of the Arizona pageant of hues... ~Robert Haven Schauffler, Romantic America, 1913

On the desert southwest of Valentine changes of weather effect sudden and complete transformation. Under a clear blue heaven this is a land of tawny yellows and reds; when there are clouds they throw dark purple shadows on the ground and intensify the golden glow of the sunlight; but as columns of rain advance over the mesas it is a world of blue and gray-green shadows. ~Arizona: A State Guide, compiled by Workers of the Writers' Program of the Work Projects Administration in the State of Arizona, 1940

A broken reef of purple clouds appeared beaten upon by contending tides of silver and rose. Through a ragged rent the sinking sun sent shafts of radiant light down behind the horizon. In the east the panorama was no less striking and beautiful. The desert sent its walls and domes and monuments of red rock far up into the sky of gorgeous pink and white clouds. Cherry drew a deep full breath. Yes, Arizona was awakening her to something splendid and compelling. How vast and free and windswept this colored desert. ~Zane Grey, The Water Hole, 1927

Apart in my rock-hewn pathway, where the great cliffs shut me in,
The storm-swept clouds were my brethren, and the stars were my kind and kin.
~Sharlot Mabridth Hall (1870–1943), "The Song of the Colorado," Cactus and Pine: Songs of the Southwest, 1910

Arizona and New Mexico, they are similar in lots of respects. They have great climates, almost any kind you like. They are both States that kinder wear well on you. Don't just look out of the train and condemn 'em. It just looks like nothing couldent live by looking out of a sleeper window. ~Will Rogers, 1933 [a little altered –tg]

Never have I seen such lavishness of cactus in bloom. The prickly pear creeps with its giant claws across the sand... ~Winifred Hawkridge Dixon, Westward Hoboes: Ups and Downs of Frontier Motoring, 1921

Well, the trip from then on across Arizona and east of Los Angeles was just one Oasis after another. You can just throw anything out and it will grow there. I like Arizona. ~Will Rogers

Phoenix, Arizona: an oasis of ugliness in the midst of a beautiful wasteland. ~Edward Abbey, Vox Clamantis in Deserto, 1989

I like Jackrabbit as a place, but especially as a name. Town names in Arizona have a realistic ring to them, probably because they were settled by realistic people. Oh, there are towns called Carefree and Friendly Corner and Eden in Arizona, even Inspiration and Paradise. And, of course, Phoenix. Chamber of Commerce names. But most of those old settlers told it like it was, rough and rocky. They named their towns Rimrock, Rough Rock, Round Rock, and Wide Ruins, Skull Valley, Bitter Springs, Wolf Hole, Tombstone. It's a tough country. The names of Arizona towns tell you all you need to know. ~Charles Kuralt, Dateline America, 1979

Arizona is young and daring. She is not tied to precedent, to convention, to other states' ways of doing things... She is bent on making her own ways, and in her own way. Her mistakes will be her own, and her triumphs likewise. ~George Wharton James, Arizona, the Wonderland, 1917

The windmills stare at the sun.
The yellow earth cracks and blisters.
Everything is still.
In the afternoon
The wind takes dry waves of heat and tosses them,
Mingled with dust, up and down the streets...
~John Gould Fletcher (1886–1950), "The Windmills" (Arizona Poems), 1915

Let us hover over the bad lands of the Painted Desert, El Desierto Pintado. Here and there and everywhere, are patches of red, green, blue, yellow, madder, lake, orange, green, violet, pink and every color known to man. It is as if this was the place where divine thoughts were tested for man's benefit, and then the pallet-board was left for man to see, to wonder at and revere. ~George Wharton James, Arizona, the Wonderland, 1917 [a little altered –tg]

God must have made the desert,
The sun-clad desert,
The age-old desert—
The rugged rimmed, and gray-green land,
By solitude and silence spanned.
God gave the brush to nature,
"Paint," said he,
"This myst-ry-hidden, wondrous land for me."
~Maggie Reed Windes (1849–1936), "God in Nature," 1923

The home of timeless canyons,
Whose splendor stills the soul;
While triumphant in strength amid beauty,
Foaming the cataracts roll.
A sea of radiant mountains,
Where sunshine plays with clouds,
And the slopes of dead craters at twilight
Rest in their cinderous shrouds.
A song of light at evening
Where silent deserts lie;
All the myriad hues of the spectrum
Filling the earth and the sky.
The soul of a mystic! beholding
The heart of God and His hand
As He painteth through ages and ages
His Arizona land!
~George Logie (1868–1958), "His Arizona Land" [I call him Reverend Geology because his name was typically published as "Rev. Geo. Logie." –tg]

They climbed into the high country of Arizona, and through a gap they looked down on the Painted Desert... They crawled up the slopes, and the twisted trees covered the slopes. Holbrook, Joseph City, Winslow. And then the tall trees began, Flagstaff, and that was the top of it all. ~John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, 1939

Here, one sees the Painted Desert with its fantastic coloring, the petrified forests, deep lateral cañons, the great Cohonino Forest, through which one may ride for five days without finding a drop of water except during the rainy season. Truly, it is a wonderland, and in the Grand Cañon one can think of nothing but the Abomination of Desolation. There is no place in the world at present so accessible, and at the same time so full of the most romantic interest, as are the territories of Arizona and New Mexico. ~John G. Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 1891 [A little altered. Description is from 1874 travels, when it was the Arizona Territory. G. W. James paraphrases Bourke: "Arizona is the Wonderland of the Southwest." –tg]

Saw-toothed ranges, high and stormy, snow-topped, shadowed our trail. The wide amphitheater of our golden valley was encircled with mountains of every size and color; blue, rosy, purple, and at sunset pure gold and transparently radiant. The gray sage turned at sun-down to lavender; mauve shadows lengthened on the desert floor; gorges of angry orange and red cliffs gave savage contrast to the delicate Alpine glow lighting white peaks; a cold, pastel sky framed a solitary star, and frosty air, thinned in its half-mile height to a stimulating sharpness, woke us keenly to life. We felt the enchantment that Arizona weaves from her grey cocoon toward sunset, and wondered at eyes which could look on it all, and see only sand and cactus. Show them the unaccustomed, and they would doubtless have been appreciative enough. A green New England farm with running brooks and blossoming orchards would have spelled Paradise to them, as this Persian pattern of desert did to us; beauty to the parched native of Arizona is an irrigation ditch, bordered by emerald cottonwoods. ~Winifred Hawkridge Dixon, Westward Hoboes: Ups and Downs of Frontier Motoring, 1921

Arizona... the air-cooled-by-nature pine clad northern area... the air-cooled-by-man desert area... ~Thomas T. Tormey, 1940

The morning was, like nearly all Arizona mornings, clear and beautiful. ~Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars, 1917

Cactus, mesquite, and greasewood;
Greasewood, cactus, mesquite;
The turquoise blue of the heavens
That the age-worn mountains meet...
~Ida Flood Dodge, "One of Us," 1920

If you were a giant and wanted to eat the state of Arizona, you would find that, roughly, it would make three large and widely differing mouthfuls.
Starting at the northeast corner (the only point in the United States where four states meet — Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona), you would bite out a large quarter circle, sinking your dental work in to encompass the Little Colorado River. This corner takes in the vast Navajo and Hop Indian reservations — a wildly beautiful land where the prehistoric dinosaurs roamed and left their tracks behind — where Indians dwell in picturesque canyons and atop high plateaus. It includes the Painted Desert... and the famous Petrified Forest.
The second mouthful in this mystical meal would serve as a complete "greens" course. Here you would chew off a huge crescent consisting almost entirely of pine forest — the largest unbroken expanse of virgin Western Yellow Pine in America. The northern tip of the crescent is slashed through by a mile deep gash — the Grand Canyon.
The remaining bite would be a mouthful even for a giant. It is that portion of the state which most people think is typical of the whole — the so-called "desert." But if you think this desert is of the Sahara variety, then you've got a shock coming. Cacti? Yes, cacti — millions of 'em — growing in veritable forests. Cacti an inch tall — or forty feet. But in the "desert" are also irrigated valleys where farms order their rainwater by phone — and get it — where lettuce, grapefruit and resort hotels "grow" in profusion.
Here then are your three bites of Arizona; a mouthful of Indian Country, a great swath of pine forest and, for dessert, the desert. ~Reg Manning (1905–1986), "Arizona, in Three Bites,"Cartoon Guide of Arizona, 1938

I had a partner, down that way — Arizona way — he's down there yet. I came back east. He'll never come back east. He's planted...
Some folks don't last ten minutes out there. But those ten are lively; yes, they're lively. ~Marion Hill, "Just Like That," 1909

In the silence, slowly picking my way, I thought about this Arizona country. The New World! It seemed to me the oldest country I had ever seen, the real antique land, first cousin to the moon. Brown, bony, sapless, like an old man's hand. ~J. B. Priestley, Midnight on the Desert: A Chapter of Autobiography, 1917

Europe has nothing to recommend it but its old age, and the Petrified forest in Arizona makes a Sucker out of it for old age. Why, that forest was there and doing business before Nero took his first Violin lesson. ~Will Rogers

Welcome to Arizona, where summer spends the winter — and hell spends the summer. ~Local saying, modified from a booster slogan in the 1930s

The Devil was given permission one day,
To select him a land for his own special sway;
So he hunted around for a month or more
And fussed and fumed and terribly swore,
But at last was delighted a country to view
Where the prickly pear and the mesquite grew.
With a survey brief, without further excuse
He took his stand on the banks of the Santa Cruz...
An idea struck him and he swore by his horns
To make a complete vegetation of thorns...
He saw there was one more improvement to make,
He imported the scorpion, tarantula and rattlesnake...
He fixed the heat at one hundred and seven
And banished forever the moisture from heaven,
But remembered as he heard his furnace roar,
That the heat might reach five hundred or more...
And now, no doubt, in some corner of hell
He gloats over the work he has done so well,
And vows that Arizona cannot be beat,
For scorpions, tarantulas, snakes and heat.
For with his own realm it compares so well
He feels assured it surpasses hell.
~Charles O. Brown, "The History of Arizona: How It Was Made, And Who Made It," c.1876

How time now has altered the devil's great scheme!
For the olden conditions have gone like a dream.
Rich mines in the mountain, rich farms on the plain,
Fine fruits in the orchard, in the field golden grain;
Where the devil's waste acres existed one day
The flowers and shade-trees are holding their sway —
And the healthiest, happiest folks on the sphere,
The best of God's sunshine receive all the year.
~Anonymous, "Arizona—1905 A.D." [in response to Charles O. Brown's above "History of Arizona," entitled by this author "Arizona—4000 B.C." –tg]

McGee: Looks like we just went from a snowball's chance in hell of getting out of here, to a snowball's chance in—
Gibbs: Arizona.
~NCIS, "House Divided," 2017, written by Steven D. Binder [S15, E1]

Arizona's getting to be as tied up as New York. It doesn't look that way, but it is. ~Marion Hill, "Just Like That," 1909 [You should see it now! —tg, 2009]

The climate in winter is incomparably finer than that of Italy. It would scarcely be possible to suggest an improvement... Perhaps fastidious people might object to the temperature in summer, when the rays of the sun attain their maximum force, and the hot winds sweep in from the desert... I have even heard complaint made that the thermometer failed to show the true heat because the mercury dried up. Every thing dries; wagons dry; men dry; chickens dry; there is no juice left in any thing, living or dead, by the close of summer. Officers and soldiers are supposed to walk about creaking; mules, it is said, can only bray at midnight; and I have heard it hinted that the carcasses of cattle rattle inside their hides, and that snakes find a difficulty in bending their bodies. ~J. Ross Browne, "A Tour Through Arizona," in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 1864 (Fort Yuma travels)

The arid country! I look out over the sagebrush plain, panting and parched, and sense its long thirst for the rain... Does its soul stifle when the hot winds blow and the burning sands beat down? Is its throat cracked and aching in the alkali heat? Does it know a yearning as deep as death for the sound of a purling stream? ~Muriel Strode (1875–1964), "A Soul's Faring: XXVII," A Soul's Faring, 1921 [Strode was born in Illinois and later lived in California, New York, and other places, but she lived her final 35 years in Tucson. –tg]

Northern Arizona... surrounded by a fragrant piney forest under a peaceful turquoise sky... what a perfect retreat, he thought, from the pace and pressure of modern living. ~Paul Harvey, "The Ghost and Don Dedera," December 1972

Flagstaff... situated in the grand pine forests of Arizona. The beautiful scenery from this point at sunset, snow-capped mountains whose sides are all clothed in tall pines upward of one hundred feet high, and the soft light of the setting sun in the distance, form a view which must be seen to be appreciated. ~E. E. A. from Ohio, "Some Notes of a Trip to California," in Success with Flowers, February 1898

The paloverde... is well named. Its branches are as green as its leaves. In late spring it is covered with lemon-yellow lacy blossoms that make it fairly blaze. When the paloverde is in bloom, it changes the whole color scheme of the desert. ~Reg Manning (1905–1986), "The Paloverde," Cartoon Guide of Arizona, 1938

Yellow.
Freaking.
Everywhere.
~Terri Guillemets, "Poem of the April Palo Verde," 2012

Queer how the stars hang down in Arizona. There's no house to measure them against, and they seem to bulge right out of the sky and get in the way of your eye-lashes. ~Marion Hill, "Just Like That," 1909

The cold, clear, silent night brought back the charm of the desert. How flaming white the stars! The great spire-pointed peaks lifted cold pale-gray outlines up into the deep star-studded sky. ~Zane Grey, The Call of the Canyon, 1924

Aloof as aged kings,
Wearing them like the purple,
The mountains ring the mesa
Crowned with a dusky light;
Many a time I watched
That coming-on of darkness
Till stars burned through the heavens
Intolerably bright...
~Sara Teasdale, "Day's Ending (Tucson)"

Many are repelled by the desert's vast stretches of mesas and buttes with their sagebrush and yucca; by its gigantic masses of sharp, broken rock; and by its wind-beaten wastes, so still at times beneath the blazing sun that the wavering heat vibrations are the only movement. Under the withering summer heat, the cacti droop, the desert fauna seek the shade of the mesquite; only the lizard, skirting swiftly over the parched floor, braves the sun's glare... Yet the desert has a compensatory beauty. The cacti bear brilliant flowers... Under clouds and oppressive heat the sky often glows with carmines, chrome-yellows, magentas, pinks, grays, and browns and at times these are reflected on the desert floor till it becomes a symphony of color. ~Arizona: A State Guide, compiled by Workers of the Writers' Program of the Work Projects Administration in the State of Arizona, 1940

She noted, too, that the whites and yellows of earth and rock had begun to shade to red — and this she knew meant an approach to Arizona. Arizona, the wild, the lonely, the red desert, the green plateau — Arizona with its thundering rivers, its unknown spaces, its pasture-lands and timber-lands... ~Zane Grey, The Man of the Forest, 1920

Desert rains are usually so definitely demarked that the story of the man who washed his hands in the edge of an Arizona thunder shower without wetting his cuffs seems almost credible. ~Arizona: A State Guide, compiled by Workers of the Writers' Program of the Work Projects Administration in the State of Arizona, 1940

If I tint these pages with too many sunsets, it is not from unawareness of my weakness, but because without them a description of Arizona does not describe. In the afternoon hours, between four and eight, the country wakes and glows, and has its moment, like a woman whose youth was plain but whom middle age has touched with charm and mystery. ~Winifred Hawkridge Dixon, Westward Hoboes: Ups and Downs of Frontier Motoring, 1921

sand-dust with cream
intensely mauve'd rust
velvety blue-grey-indigo —
layers of early winter's
desert dawn horizon
~Terri Guillemets, "Muted striations," 2019

the seam between desert and night
glows pastel to neon to clear blue light
~Terri Guillemets, "Phoenix sunrise," 1996

Hardly enough rain falls in a year to puddle the dust on the panting plants. ~“In the Illini Vineyard: Robert H. Forbes, ’92, and his Arid Arizona,” The University of Illinois Alumni Association Quarterly & Fortnightly Notes, 1917

Governor Glasscock of West Virginia, while traveling through Arizona, noticed the dry, dusty appearance of the country. "Doesn't it ever rain around here?" he asked one of the natives. "Rain?" The native spat. “Rain? Why, say, pardner, there's bullfrogs in this yere town over five years old that hain't learned to swim yet.” ~“Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree,” Everybody's Magazine, 1909

Can we give a true picture by describing a typical, or average, Arizonan? No, for there is no such person... When one speaks of an Arizonan, does he mean one of the 46,000 Indians whose ancestors were here first? Does he mean one of the 145,000 Mexicans, who may be descended from seventeenth century invaders or have crossed the international line only yesterday as an immigrant? Does he mean a grizzled pioneer... or those who have come in the last decade from every other state in the Union and from almost every country on the face of the earth? ~Arizona: A State Guide, compiled by Workers of the Writers' Program of the Work Projects Administration in the State of Arizona, 1940

"I had a pard who came from Arizona. All day long and half the night that broncho buster would rave about Arizona. Well, he won me over. Arizona must be wonderful."
"But Pan, isn't it desert country?"
"Arizona is every kind of country..."
~Zane Grey, Valley of Wild Horses, 1947

Arizona is a land of contrasts geologically, racially, socially, and culturally. Its mountains tower a mile or more into the air; the rivers have cut miles deep into the multicolored earth. Snow lingers on the peaks while the valleys are sweet with the fragrance of orange blossoms. Here are sere deserts and the largest pine forest in the world. Here are fallen forests turned to stone, and forests of trees that have survived the slow change from jungle to desert by turning their leaves to thorns. ~Arizona: A State Guide, compiled by Workers of the Writers' Program of the Work Projects Administration in the State of Arizona, 1940

It is doubtful if any other area of equal extent in the world has greater diversity of natural phenomena than Arizona. From desert tracts to valleys of extraordinary fertility; from torrid heat to frigid cold, from lowland to highland, from plains as level as a floor to a succession of frightful gulches and cañons that amaze the beholder; from solitude to populous cities... from the simplest plant to the giant cactus, from rainfall to brightest sunshine... almost anything that can be imagined can be found in this delightful clime. ~A Historical and Biographical Record of the Territory of Arizona, 1896

Arizona, land of contrasts and contradictions, never to be fully understood by the most understanding, always to be loved by those who know the state. ~Arizona: A State Guide, compiled by Workers of the Writers' Program of the Work Projects Administration in the State of Arizona, 1940

Then we left the made road, and meandered up and down bumpy paths through forests of the finest, most varied cacti we had seen anywhere. Steep slopes were covered with the giant sahuara, standing bolt upright and pointing a stiff arm to heaven, like an uncouth evangelist. Demon cholla forests with their blurred silver gray haze seemed not to belong to this definite earth, but to some vague, dead moon. Among them wavered the long listless fingers of the ocotilla, and the many-eared prickly pear clambered over the sands like some strange sea plant. In this world of unreal beauty, tawny dunes replaced green slopes, and such verdure as appeared was pale yet brilliant, as if lighted by electricity. ~Winifred Hawkridge Dixon, Westward Hoboes: Ups and Downs of Frontier Motoring, 1921

...the great king cactus, the sahuaro... ~Mary Hunter Austin, The Land of Journeys' Ending, 1924

Marching together against rose-and-vermilion evening, they have a stately look, like the pillars of ruined temples. ~Mary Hunter Austin, The Land of Journeys' Ending, 1924 [saguaros —tg]

a shrug, a hug
 touchdown, letdown
waving, curling, sprouting
disco, vogue; praise, prayer
 bird-pecked, green-specked
 skeletonized, or multiplied
flower and fruity fingered
 flipped, frail, or fallen off
perfected, nested, crested
~Terri Guillemets, "Saguaro arms," 2020

He'd always had a quickening of the heart when he crossed into Arizona and beheld the cactus country. This was as the desert should be, this was the desert of the picture books, with the land unrolled to the farthest distant horizon hills, with saguaro standing sentinel in their strange chessboard pattern, towering supinely above the fans of ocotillo and brushy mesquite. Because there had been some winter rain, the desert was in bloom. The saguaro wore creamy crowns on their tall heads, the ocotillo spikes were tipped with vermilion, and the brush bloomed yellow as forsythia. ~Dorothy Belle Hughes (1904–1993), The Expendable Man, 1963

...it is counted a crime to destroy a sahuaro. ~Mary Hunter Austin, The Land of Journeys' Ending, 1924

The flower of the giant cactus, or saguaro, is Arizona's State Flower. That this should be so is very appropriate, for no other plant means "Arizona" to so many people. The saguaros are the great drawing card of our arboreal desert and rank along with the Grand Canyon and Painted Desert in appeal to visitors in the Land of Sunshine. Arizona shares its giants with Sonora, but with no state in the Union except for a few strays growing on the California side of the Colorado River.
The great giants stand out on the desert landscape like huge exclamation points, mutely proclaiming to all the world that this is Arizona... Saguaros never grow tiresome, each one being a distinct individual, and their variation in form is infinite. ~R. H. Peebles and Harvey Parker, "Watching the Saguaro Bloom," Arizona Highways, March 1941

Cactus of many kinds is found all over the Southwest, but it is not until one approaches the center of Sonora that it attains its most imposing development, and becomes a giant forest in every sense of the term. A walk took me to the heart of the giant cactus forest, the big-spined trunks seeming magnified in the moonlight, and casting strange shadows. The cactus forest completely captivated me. Mountain ranges and peaks rose over the cactus-trees and the edge of the world and came into life, like ships at sea.
From the slope of the various peaks which environ the delta, the vast plain appears covered with brush; but once on the level, and in it, the verdure resolves itself into a cactus forest of extraordinary attraction and solidity. I can compare it only to some artificial scene in a riotous extravaganza, where the artist in striving for scenic effect has drawn liberally upon his imagination to produce weird shapes, brilliant tints, and strange contrasts of color, unreal and fantastic.
The largest and most persistent was the saguaro, a gigantic cactus, a splendid, fluted column, rising erect, sometimes in a single pillar forty or fifty feet, with symmetrical, branching arms forming a colossal candelabrum. The trunks of the largest saguaros were over three feet in diameter, richly fluted, and savagely spined in long, regular lines. Nature had painted them in greens of an entrancing variety, tone, and tint. The blossoms were a rich yellow, and clinging to them here and there were large woodpeckers. ~Charles Frederick Holder, "Motoring in a Cactus Forest: A Trip Through the Giant Cactus of the Yaqui River," in The Century Magazine, 1910 [a little altered —tg]

There's a solitude deeper than the rest.
It's the muted ring of moonlit silence
Heard across a space of desolation
Where gaunt saguaros lift their frigid forms
Like stark hands thrust up through shapes of sand.
It's the lone sign of slow life amid grim
Protrusions from geological graves,
Frozen in fate of final surrender.
~Cave Outlaw (1900–1996), "The Saguaro," Autumn Walk, 1974

Foremost in the cactus family is the well known candelabra cactus by Mexicans called sahuaro. This plant, with its enormously tall, pale green and prickly body, from which extend at different places in different specimens gigantic arms, reaches at times the incredible height of fifty feet, although the average may be stated as from twenty to thirty feet. On the hillsides, among very rocky ground, where it flourishes in spite of all reasonable expectation, it hardly ever exceeds over twenty feet, while on the high tablelands, where it receives more nourishment from the sandy ground mixed with loam, it attains its most majestic proportions. ~Richard J. Hinton, The Hand-Book to Arizona, 1878

The cactus most outstanding in scenic appeal is the gigantic saguaro, the largest succulent in the United States. The flowers are nocturnal, opening between 9 and 12 o'clock at night. They open slowly, full expansion requiring about two or three hours; and persist in full flowering stage until late the following afternoon when they begin to close and wither. The large and beautiful white flowers are not fragrant but have an odor like that of ripe melon. The white-wing dove feeds largely on the seeds of the sahuaro during the fruiting season. ~Thomas H. Kearney and Robert H. Peebles, Flowering Plants and Ferns of Arizona, 1942 [a little altered —tg]

Here is a master's etching
In the crimson flood of dawn—
A thousand monks are marching
With a prayer to cheer them on.
Their pleading arms are reaching
Ever upward thru the haze;
I think they must be preaching
For the souls of other days…
~Don Maitland Bushby (1900–1969), "Desert Monks (Impressions of the Sahuarro)," c.1958 [Bushby was adopted as "Chief Whispering Pine." –tg]

The saguaro, or giant cactus, is one of nature's rare and curious productions. It has appropriately been named "The Sentinel of the Desert." Its fruit is delicious and has the flavor of fig and strawberry combined. When the tree dies its pulp dries up and blows away and there remains standing only a spectral figure composed of white slats and fiber that looks ghostly in the distance. ~Joseph A. Munk, "Some Desert Plants," Arizona Sketches, 1905 [a little altered —tg]

If your idea of a desert is a sandy waste, with not more than one tuft of grass growing every hundred square miles, you'll have to revise your mental picture when you see the "desert" that blankets Southern Arizona. After a study of the government reports of rainfall in this region, it is hard to believe that anything could grow on such a stingy ration of water, but Nature has brought in a tremendous number of plants that seem to get along O.K. almost without liquid. As a matter of fact, these plants do require water, but they are so constructed that they can save up excesses from a rainy spell and stretch it out over the long dry periods. Outstanding example is the saguaro...
Usually the arms point up, but often they are twisted around like a man trying to reach the itchy spot in his back... Trunks and branches are corrugated top to bottom, which allows the plant to expand ah-la-accordion, to store more water in its pulpy interior during the rainy season. In this way it can retain enough water to last as long as four years without a refill. What an idea that'd make for a new fountain pen. ~Reg Manning (1905–1986), "The Saguaro," Cartoon Guide of Arizona, 1938

Sahuaro flowers are handsome, whitish and waxen, and very perfect in form. ~George Wharton James, "The Flora of Arizona," Arizona the Wonderland, 1917

With fruity-fingered arms, I hug the sky. ~Terri Guillemets, "Summer saguaro," 2018

Frequently the vacated woodpecker apartments of the sahuaro skyscraper will be occupied by the pygmy owl... ~Mary Hunter Austin, The Land of Journeys' Ending, 1924

But the final, most successful experiment of the Vegetative Spirit on its way up from the sea-borders to the driest of dry lands, is the great sahuaro, Carnegea gigantea.
In the economy of the sahuaro, branch and twig have been reduced to spines, the green of its leaves absorbed into its skin. The need of woody fiber has been perfectly met by the stiff but stringy hollow cylinder of semi-detached ribs that hold the stem erect, and its storage-capacity rendered elastic by the fluted surfaces, swelling and contracting to the rhythm of evaporation and the intake of the thirsty roots. After successive wet seasons, new flutings are let into the surfaces, like gores in a skirt; or, after shortage, taken up with the neatness of long experience... I salute it in the name of the exhaustless Powers of Life. ~Mary Hunter Austin, The Land of Journeys' Ending, 1924

The dark and jagged ramparts of Arizona stood up against the sky, and behind them the huge tilted plain rising toward the backbone of the continent again. ~John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley, 1962

She flung her query out to the winds of the desert. But the desert seemed too gray, too vast, too remote, too aloof, too measureless. It was not concerned with her little life. Then she turned to the mountain kingdom. It seemed overpoweringly near at hand. It loomed above her to pierce the fleecy clouds. It was only a stupendous upheaval of earth-crust, grown over at the base by leagues and leagues of pine forest, belted along the middle by vast slanting zigzag slopes of aspen, rent and riven toward the heights into canyon and gorge, bared above to cliffs and corners of craggy rock, whitened at the sky-piercing peaks by snow. ~Zane Grey, The Call of the Canyon, 1924

In the average opinion Arizona is hot — all of it and all the time. In truth the climate of Arizona is so varied that a man may, by a few miles travel, choose what he likes as much as if it were made to order. The northern half of Arizona is cool in the summer and cold in winter, varying with locality and altitude, and subject to snows. About midway of Arizona, north and south, the mountain plateau breaks down to broad valleys and broken plains and declines in altitude toward the south. This is the Arizona of the average imagination; of the health-seeker who would turn winter into summer; the Arizona of semi-tropic products and deserts covered with strange cactus and unfamiliar plants. Winters are mild and delightful; summers are hot but dryer than the moister lands of other parts of the United States. ~Sharlot M. Hall, "Arizona," 1906 [a little altered –tg]

And how hot it is! It seems a veritable Sahara, for it is midsummer, and the heat rises from this vast plateau as from a fiery furnace. ~George Wharton James, Arizona, the Wonderland, 1917

One hundred sixteen degrees… I live in the Sun Belt... To spell it out for you, I haven't been able to cross my legs at the knee since the last of May... If any of you has an ounce of charity for your fellow person, you will indulge me while I share with you an Arizona summer. It's where a woman puts on a pair of oven mitts so she can touch her steering wheel... Where deodorant ads are considered fiction. Where you cultivate fat friends so you'll always be around shade. ~Erma Bombeck, "An Arizona Summer" (At Wit's End column), July 1979

Fort Yuma is probably the hottest place on earth. The thermometer stays at one hundred and twenty in the shade there all the time — except when it varies and goes higher. It is a U. S. military post, and its occupants get so used to the terrific heat that they suffer without it. There is a tradition... that a very, very wicked soldier died there, once, and of course, went straight to the hottest corner of perdition, — and the next day he telegraphed back for his blankets. ~George Derby, quoted in Mark Twain, Roughing It, 1872

The great desert of Arizona... quivering in the heat of the southern sun. ~Mark Daniels, "Mesa Verde and Casa Grande National Parks," in American Forestry, 1916

When the East and Midwest are suffering through the brutal winters, no one is interested that we are having good weather. It's depressing and considered bad taste to talk about it. When we are suffering through agonizing heat waves and droughts, no one cares. During the snowstorms last year in the East our papers were filled with stories of sacrifice, hardship, and devastation. During our summer, we get an occasional page-one picture of a blonde with three ounces of clothing on her back... frying an egg on the sidewalk. ~Erma Bombeck, "An Arizona Summer" (At Wit's End column), July 1979

We rode from daybreak; white and hot
The sun beat like a hammer-stroke
On molten iron; the blistered dust
Rose up in clouds to sere and choke...
~Sharlot Mabridth Hall (1870–1943), "The Trail of Death," Cactus and Pine: Songs of the Southwest, 1910 [Jornado del Muerto, the desert trail across southern New Mexico and Arizona –tg]

But it's a dry heat… ~Arizona saying

All other seasons in Phoenix are just hyphenated summers: spring-summer, autumn-summer, winter-summer. ~Terri Guillemets, "A dash of heat," 1994

Winter in Phoenix is springtime
Spring is summer askew
Summer is torturous hellfire
Autumn is summer part II
~Terri Guillemets, "Sonoran seasons," 1993

Santa Cruz County... Climatically the region is one of the highly favored districts for which Arizona has already become world famed. One neither roasts, fries, bakes, or frizzles in summer nor freezes, crystallizes, or solidifies in winter. ~George Wharton James, Arizona, the Wonderland, 1917

In Phoenix, Jack Frost doesn't nip — he tickles. ~Terri Guillemets, terriguillemets.com

Between Tucson and Phœnix, south of the paved road, there is a vast cactus garden that I can never pass without crossing my fingers against its spell. Often in the midst of other employments I am seized with such a fierce backward motion of my mind toward it as must have beset Thoreau for his Walden when he had left it for the town. So that if I should disappear some day unaccountably from my accustomed places, leaving no trace, you might find me there in some such state as you read of in monkish tales, when one walked in the woods for an hour and found that centuries had passed. ~Mary Hunter Austin, The Land of Journeys' Ending, 1924

You are between vast walls, that rise a quarter of a mile or less apart, made of brilliant red sandstone, the walls reaching up to the very stars... A thousand, two thousand, feet high, the walls surely must be. Wonderful. Awe-inspiring. Majestic. You see a Navaho camp-fire and dancers; the song you hear is a death chant, sung to aid the spirit on its long journey to the other world beyond. You are in the Canyon de Chelly, the home of the ancient Cliff-Dwellers and also of the present-day Navahos. ~George Wharton James, Arizona, the Wonderland, 1917

Like to Lillith's hair down-streaming, soft and shining, glorious, golden,
Sways the queenly palo verde robed and wreathed in golden flowers;
And the spirits of dead lovers might have joy again together
Where the honey-sweet acacia weaves its shadow-fretted bowers.
~Sharlot Mabridth Hall (1870–1943), "Spring in the Desert," Cactus and Pine: Songs of the Southwest, 1910

Where the shimmering sands of the desert beat
In waves to the foot-hills' rugged line,
And cat-claw and cactus and brown mesquite
Elbow the cedar and mountain pine...
~Sharlot M. Hall, "Two Bits," 1902 [a sad poem of the death of Two Bits, an old race horse –tg]

A mesquite, that strange desert tree that gives shade, shelter, firewood, flour, sugar and horse-feed... ~George Wharton James, Arizona, the Wonderland, 1917

The completion of the dam made Salt River Valley realize that the climate she had always possessed, crowned with fruit and flowers, made her California's rival. She began to cultivate oranges, pecans and a professional enthusiasm for herself. ~Winifred Hawkridge Dixon, Westward Hoboes: Ups and Downs of Frontier Motoring, 1921

Arizona... a land where a good spring is far better than a gold mine... ~E. E. A. from Ohio, "Some Notes of a Trip to California," Success with Flowers, 1898

If it crosses your mind that water running through hundreds of miles of open ditch in a desert will evaporate and end up full of concentrated salts and muck, then let me just tell you, that kind of negative thinking will never get you elected to public office in the state of Arizona. When this giant new tap turned on, developers drew up plans to roll pink stucco subdivisions across the desert in all directions. ~Barbara Kingsolver, "Called Home," Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, 2007, barbarakingsolver.net

For Phœnix is not merely well supplied with water; she is extravagantly supplied, since she joined forces with Uncle Sam's practical scientists, who, guided years ago by that greatest of America's practical geniuses, Major John Wesley Powell, arrested the melted snow-waters of the peaks of Central Arizona, and stored them for man's use. ~George Wharton James, Arizona, the Wonderland, 1917

Today's threats of Camelback development, upon which the public chokes, are like gnats compared with the camel to be swallowed tomorrow... The Chamber of Commerce values an unspoiled Camelback. Surrounding resorts plead for a scenic mountain. Horsemen and climbers want Camelback left alone, and everybody living in sight of it seemingly wants it natural, and all over Arizona are people wishing for preservation... Just as surely as God sculpted a three-mile-long camel cartoon out of granite and sandstone, man is going to brand its hide... Unlike its living facsimile, Camelback is dry in the humps. Water will not run up hill... But what will drastically change the appearance of the old camel, make it look like a zebra or a skunk, are roads... This, then, is the present and the prediction: An economy and society pressing prices and people upward. ~Donald Everett Dedera (1929–2020), "Phoenix Upmanship: Camelback's Tops," in The Arizona Republic, 1963 [American West saying: "Water flows uphill towards money." —tg]

We followed these shady canals into Phoenix, bumping over dismally paved roads, and making wide detours where some irrigator greedy for water had flooded the street. ~Winifred Hawkridge Dixon, Westward Hoboes: Ups and Downs of Frontier Motoring, 1921

The Developers... They cannot see that growth for the sake of growth is a cancerous madness, that Phoenix and Albuquerque will not be better cities to live in when their populations are doubled again and again. They would never understand that an economic system which can only expand or expire must be false to all that is human... Time and the winds will sooner or later bury the Seven Cities of Cibola — Phoenix, Tucson, Albuquerque, all of them — under dunes of glowing sand... ~Edward Abbey, "Water," Desert Solitaire, 1968

God bless the cottonwood trees, whose ranks
Still spread their shade along the banks
Of old canals, and country ways!
God give them strength, and length of days!
And save them from the vandal hand
Which moves to cut them from the land,
Or mar their native form and grace
For sordid ends, or commonplace!
Give each its meed of soil and sun;
About their roots let waters run:
Let each forever be a psalm
Of living praise, in storm and calm...
~V. O. Wallingford (b.1876), "The Cottonwood Trees"

...shining Arizona athirst in the sun... ~Harriet Monroe, "America," in Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, 1918

I hope you'll like this country... It gets a little hot here sometimes, but it's real healthy. ~Eleanor Ecob Sawyer, "Unencumbered Bachelor," 1922 [In this story, they find each other via classified advertisements and when they meet in person for the first time, he is very disappointed because she doesn't look anything like the photograph she had mailed him of herself! Guess this happened even before dating apps, hahaha. —tg]

Castle Dome, which looks down on the Colorado River from Western Arizona, is a turret of granite — gray, red, brown, rock-colored, whatever color you please. With that antecedent knowledge in mind how difficult it is for us to believe the report of our eyes which says that at sunset the dome is amethystine, golden, crimson, or perhaps lively purple. ~John C. Van Dyke, The Desert, 1901

There are miles and miles of land purely desert, and clothed only with thorny cacti and others of that ilk. ~John G. Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 1891

He was tired of heat, glare, dust, bare rock, and thorny cactus. ~Zane Grey, Tappan's Burro, 1923

The jumping cactus, or cholla... has the worst reputation of any desert plant. Really it is most affectionate. With the slightest encouragement it will become very attached to you... There is one sure way to tell which cacti are cholla. Just take a short run through the desert — all those pieces sticking to your shins will be cholla. ~Reg Manning (1905–1986), "The Jumping Cactus," Cartoon Guide of Arizona, 1938

A shadowy dance,
While pixies prance,
And chollas sway.
Weirdly whirling,
Black arms swirling,
As west winds play.
~Gertrude J. Hager (b.1886), "Dancing Cholla"

Seen close at hand, there is nothing very attractive about these hills, so prickly with cactus, or the savage rocky peaks behind them. There is no foreground prettiness here... The vast distances do the trick. The air seems to act like a powerful stereoscopic lens. Everything far away — and you can see scores of miles — is magically moulded and coloured. The mountains, solidly three-dimensional ranges and peaks, are an exquisite blue in the daytime and then turn amethyst at sunset. Things near at hand are dusty green, greyish, brownish, rather drab, but everywhere towards the far horizon rise chunks of colour unbelievably sumptuous. ~J. B. Priestley, Midnight on the Desert: A Chapter of Autobiography, 1917

We live in an Arizona desert town
where winter is brown and green
and summer is green and brown
with 300 annual days of sunscreen
our autumn's unreasonably warm
and springtime is mostly too hot
here we live for every rainstorm
and the seasons—well, they're not.
~Terri Guillemets, "Unreasonably warm in Phoenix," 2014

...the University of Arizona, a very fine school, well liked and spoken of by everybody that knows about it. ~Will Rogers (1879–1935)

The Tempe Normal School is the oldest Territorial educational institution in Arizona, being established in 1885. Tuition is free to all students who enter the Normal with the intention of completing the work leading to graduation in either the professional or the academic course. A fee of $5 per quarter, payable in advance, is due from all students who desire to engage in work of a special or irregular nature. The necessary outlay for books and stationery varies from $10 to $15 per year. Examination paper, pens, ink, pencils, and the like are furnished the students without expense. It will be noted from the foregoing that the Territory of Arizona provides the advantages of a first-class education at an expense to the student not greatly in advance of that incurred by the average young man or woman at home. ~Twenty-Sixth Annual Catalogue of The Tempe Normal School of Arizona for the School Year 1911–1912 [Renamed in 1958 to Arizona State University, or ASU, the Sun Devils. Available athletics for the 1911 school year were tennis, basketball, track, and baseball. Quotation a little altered. –tg]

The Arizona Normal College at Flagstaff has an invigorating climate at an altitude of 7,000 feet and at the foot of the San Francisco Mountains, surrounded by the most beautiful scenery, prehistoric ruins, and its nearness to the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, Canyon Diablo, and the petrified forest and other natural scenic wonders to which excursions are made, make it an especially attractive place for a summer school. ~Annual Report of the Governor of the Territory of Arizona, 1911 September 15th [Northern Arizona University, or NAU, the Lumberjacks –tg]

The University of Arizona is ably conducted and has achieved an excellent reputation, not only throughout Arizona, but in neighboring States. It is located near Tucson, one of the largest towns in the Territory. The university was established in 1885 and opened to students in 1891. The site selected is upon high ground about a mile from the business center of the city. On every side it commands a view of mountain scenery of remarkable extent and grandeur. There is no charge for tuition in the university. All students are required to pay upon entrance a matriculation fee of $5. ~Report of the Governor of Arizona to the Secretary of the Interior, 1900 September 1st [That sure wasn't the tuition when I went to the UofA 90 years later! –tg]

The purpose of the University of Arizona is to provide the inhabitants of this Territory with the means of acquiring a thorough knowledge of the various branches of literature, science, and the arts, and so far as possible a technical education adapted to the development of the peculiar resources of Arizona — agriculture, the mechanic arts, mining, and metallurgy. ~Report of the Governor of Arizona to the Secretary of the Interior, 1904 August 18th

The first big college football game ever staged in Phoenix took place at the Indian School today, the contestants being the University of Southern California and the University of Arizona. The U. of A. team was accompanied by a large number of students who came on a "Wildcat" special with the University band. The pupils were all admitted free and sure enjoyed the treat. The yelling of the Arizona rooters was a joy to the fans. The best yell was the imitation of a wildcat which was a hair-raiser. The Arizona yell leaders made quite a hit in the morning parade in town, giving Phoenix a taste of college life. ~P. A. V., "Big Football Game at Phoenix," The Native American, 1916 December 9th [Go Wildcats! —tg]

The University of Arizona is situated in the newer part of the town. Its buildings are of classic architecture, well proportioned, their simple, dignified lines suited to the exuberance of nature surrounding them. Still new, its landscape gardening has been happily planned in a country which aided the gardener rapidly to achieve his softening effect. ~Winifred Hawkridge Dixon, "Tucson," Westward Hoboes: Ups and Downs of Frontier Motoring, 1921

Desert springtime, with flowers popping up all over the place, trees leafing out, streams gushing down from the mountains. Great time of year for hiking, camping, exploring, sleeping under the new moon and the old stars. At dawn and at evening we hear the coyotes howling with excitement — mating season. ~Edward Abbey (1927–1989)

The Painted Desert is not painted — it is dyed. Quite a few million years ago, this country was the floor of the ocean. Successive layers of sediment were stained or "dyed" by the mineral laden waters... The result is a wild land of mounds and bluffs, that looks like someone had gathered all the rainbows from the sky, boiled 'em like spaghetti, then spilled the whole kettle full all over the desert. ~Reg Manning (1905–1986), "The Painted Desert," Cartoon Guide of Arizona, 1938

late June, monsoon — kaboom!
patter, splatter, fat drops gather
splats, taps, windowpane raps
wind whips, swish, whish —
summer's rumbling thunder
flash, crash, lightning dash
plash, splash, sky unlashed
~Terri Guillemets, "Summer wonder," 2007

The dark thunder-clouds that occasionally gather over the desert seem at times to reserve all their stores of rain for one place. The fall is usually short-lived but violent... In a very short time there is a great torrent pouring down the valley... It is a yellow, thick stream that has nothing but disaster for the man or beast that seeks to swim it...
The desert rainfall comes quickly and goes quickly. The sands drink it up... ~John C. Van Dyke, The Desert, 1901

The sun is rolling slowly
Beneath the sluggish folds of sky-serpents,
Coiling, uncoiling, blue black, sparked with fires.
Above the smell of scorching, oozing pinyon,
The acrid smell of rain.
And now the showers
Surround the mesa like a troop of silver dancers:
Shaking their rattles, stamping, chanting, roaring...
~John Gould Fletcher (1886–1950), "Rain in the Desert" (Arizona Poems), 1915

phoenix monsoon storm
haboob isn't dirty word
it is dusty though
~Terri Guillemets

In July and August on the high desert the thunderstorms come. Mornings begin clear and dazzling bright. By noon, however, clouds begin to form over the mountains, coming it seems out of nowhere, out of nothing, a special creation. The sound of thunder is heard over the sun-drenched land. Anvil-headed giant clouds emerge with glints of lightning in their depths. The storm clouds continue to spread, gradually taking over more and more of the sky, and as they approach a battle breaks out. Lightning streaks like gunfire through the clouds, volleys of thunder shake the air. A smell of ozone. While the clouds exchange their bolts no rain falls, but now they begin bombarding the buttes and pinnacles below. Forks of lightning — illuminated nerves — join heaven and earth. The clouds roll in, unfurling and smoking billows in malignant violet, dense as wool. Most of the sky is lidded over but the sun remains clear halfway down the west, shining in under the storm. The clouds thicken, then crack and split with a roar like that of cannonballs tumbling down a marble staircase; their bellies open and the rain comes down. ~Edward Abbey, "Water," Desert Solitaire, 1968 [Of the Utah–Colorado area. Text a little altered. –tg]

monsoon winds tell tales
lightning dances thunder sings
rain is main event
~Terri Guillemets

Unlike her next door neighbor California, where rain in summer is an almost unheard-of thing, Arizona has a distinct summer "rainy season," which usually begins about the first of July and may extend to the middle of September or later. The rain is not continuous or unpleasant but merely a series of heavy showers that in a few days transform the country into a great green garden, so that Arizona really has two springs in her year and the most beautiful one follows the summer rain. ~Sharlot M. Hall, "Arizona," 1906

Chandler is typical of the whole Valley. Sand-besieged from the north, it sets a flame of verdure to meet the devastating onslaught of the desert, blossoming defiantly till the air is saturated with perfume. ~Winifred Hawkridge Dixon, Westward Hoboes: Ups and Downs of Frontier Motoring, 1921

All through the summer's drouth and heat,
How many hearts have found retreat
And comfort, in the friendly shade
Which these old cottonwoods have made...
With tenderness
They gently spread a checkered shade
O'er swelling bud and springing blade...
~V. O. Wallingford (b.1876), "The Cottonwood Trees"

"It's only a desert!" Yes, I know.
But then, the dear God made it so,
And since His work is always good
He must have loved it, else how could
He scatter flowers far and near,
Or keep trees green thruout the year?
He must have loved these mighty rocks
That came thru fire and earthquake shocks,
The mountains and the little hills,
The murmur of the dwindling rills;
He must have loved the deep blue sky,
The glistening cloud-bands floating by,
The gorgeous splendor, when the day
Is passing on its westward way.
~Flossie Edna Ritzenthaler Cole Wells (1889–1987), "Coconino Wilderness"

...the Hassyampa. This is a river inconsiderable except that its waters have a virtue by which, after having drunk them, you see the world all rainbow-colored, as all poets and most Arizonians see it. ~Mary Hunter Austin, The Land of Journeys' Ending, 1924

Once we made a day's excursion to Casa Grande, forty miles away, over the Maricopa reservation. No spot could look more untouched by human life than this wind-ribbed and desolate palimpsest of sand on which layer on layer of history has been scratched. ~Winifred Hawkridge Dixon, Westward Hoboes: Ups and Downs of Frontier Motoring, 1921

Arizona owes much of its color and individuality to the Mexicans, who largely retain their own culture and customs in an environment constantly growing more alienized. ~Arizona: A State Guide, compiled by Workers of the Writers' Program of the Work Projects Administration in the State of Arizona, 1940

At times we would march for miles through a country in which grew only the white-plumed yucca with trembling, serrated leaves; again, mescal would fill the hillside so thickly that one could almost imagine that it had been planted purposely; or we passed along between masses of the dust-laden, ghostly sage-brush, or close to the foul-smelling joints of the "hediondilla." The floral wealth of Arizona astonished us the moment we had gained the higher elevations of the Mogollon and the other ranges... The flowers of Arizona are delightful in color, but they yield no perfume, probably on account of the great dryness of the atmosphere. ~John G. Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 1891

Superstition Mountains loomed clear and cold on our left. But what caught and held our eyes in this pastel land was a riot, a debauch of clear orange-gold. Born overnight of a quick shower and a spring sun, a million deep-centered California poppies spread a fabulous mosaic over the dull earth, fairy gold in a fairy world, alive, ablaze. ~Winifred Hawkridge Dixon, Westward Hoboes: Ups and Downs of Frontier Motoring, 1921

Most roads in Arizona are amphibious; to be ready for all emergencies, a motor traveling in that region of surprises should be equipped with skates, snow-shoes and web-feet. ~Winifred Hawkridge Dixon, Westward Hoboes: Ups and Downs of Frontier Motoring, 1921

Arizona's vale of mountain-temples... ~Robert Haven Schauffler, Romantic America, 1913

The bleak and thorny mesquite is transformed by masses of feathery leaves, and its heavily pollened yellow catkins fill the narrow valley with a scent like lilies and willow sap. ~Winifred Hawkridge Dixon, Westward Hoboes: Ups and Downs of Frontier Motoring, 1921

The aspect of much of the scenery along this gray valley road, bleak, rocky mesa track, lined on either side by volcanic ranges of jagged peaks and serrated slopes, so brown and sere, and with not a growing thing to relieve the barrenness of their sides, is not of a character to be desired for a steady landscape. But it has its own beauty — rare, because it is so different from what one sees elsewhere — and possessing charms that are all its own, unique and captivating. The graceful mesquite and malverde trees grow everywhere, and the numberless varieties of the cactus make the scene still stranger to an unaccustomed vision. ~Richard J. Hinton, "Over Valley and Mesa," The Hand-Book to Arizona, 1877

Beyond the canyon the cedared desert heaved higher and changed its aspect. The trees grew larger, bushier, greener, and closer together, with patches of bleached grass between, and russet-lichened rocks everywhere. Small cactus plants bristled sparsely in open places; and here and there bright red flowers — Indian paintbrush, Flo called them — added a touch of color to the gray. Glenn pointed to where dark banks of cloud had massed around the mountain peaks. The scene to the west was somber and compelling. ~Zane Grey, The Call of the Canyon, 1924

Arizona... the best of it is the January sunshine. The air is enchanting, quite unlike any I have known before, being crystal clear and faintly but persistently aromatic. ~J. B. Priestley, Midnight on the Desert: A Chapter of Autobiography, 1917

A "star" — celestial, not movie — is buried in Arizona. Whenever anyone sees a shooting star, the thought often pops into mind, "I wonder what would happen if one of those babies was to smack into Earth head on?" 20 miles west of Winslow is the answer... Meteor Crater.
Throw a rock into smooth mud and it will make a hole with puckered edges. Magnify that hole in your mind's eye till it measures almost a mile from rim to rim, (4000 feet to be technical,) by 500 feet deep, and you get a pretty fair idea of what this crater looks like. Only it is gouged out of solid rock instead of mud. The "pucker" raises its rim a hundred feet above the surrounding plain. ~Reg Manning (1905–1986), "Meteor Crater," Cartoon Guide of Arizona, 1938

I cannot imagine your living in such a place, fit only for scorpions and Gila monsters... ~Laura L. Livingstone (Herbert Dickinson Ward), Lauriel: The Love Letters of an American Girl, 1901

Sometimes a saguaro looks like it's giving the middle finger to the world, an "F you, it's hot out here!" ~Terri Guillemets, "Take a hike," 1996

A two-toned ensemble,
A rhythmic Levantine pose;
Coral-pink and black,
From pert cocked head,
To tips of polished toes.
~Margaret Wheeler Ross (1867–1953), "Spring Styles on the Desert: The Gila Monster"

Camelback Mountain... A mountain entirely surrounded by mansions... ~Reg Manning (1905–1986), "Things to See in the Salt River Valley," Cartoon Guide of Arizona, 1938

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