Arizona’s official story is Grand Canyon, copper, and our 1912 statehood as the great state 48. Here are ten historical bits that usually stay off the tourism brochures: 1. The U.S. Army imported camels to Arizona in the 1850s: Jefferson Davis, then Secretary of War, thought camels would beat mules in desert heat. About 75 were shipped in; they worked well enough, but the Civil War killed the program and the animals were sold or turned loose. Folklore later produced the “Red Ghost,” a camel supposedly seen carrying a human skeleton across the Arizona desert. 2. Arizona once fielded a navy, against California: In the 1930s, during the fight over Parker Dam and Colorado River water, Arizona sent a tiny “navy” of boats to harass construction. One boat ran aground and had to be rescued by California workers. The standoff is one of the stranger interstate water wars on record. 3. London Bridge now stands in the Arizona desert: In 1968, chainsaw magnate Robert McCulloch bought the 1830s London Bridge for about $2.46 million, had its 10,246 granite blocks numbered, shipped, and rebuilt over a lagoon in Lake Havasu City. It opened in 1971 as a tourist magnet in a town that barely existed before he invented it. 4. The first McDonald’s drive thru opened in Sierra Vista in 1975: Soldiers from Fort Huachuca were not allowed off-post in uniform to go inside a restaurant. The local McDonald’s cut a window so they could stay in the vehicle. The rest of the country copied it. 5. The chimichanga was born in a Tucson kitchen by accident: At El Charro Café (open since 1922), Monica Flin dropped a burrito into hot oil. Instead of the Spanish curse that almost came out, she yelled “chimichanga!” A nonsense word that stuck. Tucson still claims the invention. 6. Show Low is named after a card game: Two ranch partners, Corydon Cooley and Marion Clark, decided the White Mountains weren’t big enough for both of them. They played seven-up until Clark said, “Show low and you take the ranch.” Cooley turned the deuce of clubs. The town kept the name. 7. The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral did not happen at the O.K. Corral: On October 26, 1881, the Earps and Doc Holliday shot it out with the Cowboys in a vacant lot on Fremont Street, between Fly’s Photograph Gallery and the Harwood house. The corral was nearby; the name just sounded better in the papers. Wyatt Earp was not the town marshal, his brother Virgil was. 8. The first tequila made in the United States came out of Nogales in 1936: San Andres Distillery rolled its first barrel that June, years before most Americans treated tequila as anything but a border curiosity. Arizona beat the rest of the country to legal domestic production. 9. Kartchner Caverns stayed a secret for four years: Cavers Gary Tenen and Randy Tufts found the living cave in 1974 and told almost no one until 1978, fearing souvenir hunters and vandals would destroy the formations. The owners and the state eventually turned it into a protected park instead of another ruined hole in the ground. 10. Arizona’s flag was designed for a rifle team that felt left out: In 1910, before statehood, an Arizona sharpshooting squad competing in Ohio had no banner. Colonel Charles W. Harris sketched the copper star and sunburst rays so the team would look official. The design later became the state flag. President Taft had already delayed statehood because he thought Arizona’s constitution, especially the part about recalling judges, was “legalized terrorism.” Bonus: Phoenix started as a hay camp for Camp McDowell in 1866, the westernmost Civil War fight in the continental U.S. was at Picacho Pass in 1862, and mail still goes into the Grand Canyon village of Supai by mule, the last mule train route in the entire country. Arizona’s history is drier, stranger, and funnier than the postcard version.

🚨 ⭐️ Drug Mules ⭐️This is how fast drug smugglers jump up and over the border wall everyday right in front of the Border Patrol units. If you watch one video today watch and share this. I took the time to translate for you guys. If this camera crew had not been out there, these drugs would’ve made it in to the USA, I’m sure they made it in a few hours later… Our border are a joke, if we don’t have men occupying the territories this will only get worse. Just wait until November…. Tic toc ⏰ This was filmed the first week of September. Follow and turn on notifications I am being heavily shadow banned.

In 1990, Dolly Parton went on vacation in Ireland. She walked into a local pub in County Kerry and delivered a flawless performance of Coat of Many Colors. A heart of pure gold who made people smile across oceans.

California politicians wanted to make sure fast-food employees earned their “fair share”—and that’s when 557,000 workers across 30,000 restaurants got an economic reality check.