Arizona Timeline
12,000 BC Paleo Indians migrated to Arizona
2000 BC Natives began farming.
300 BC The Hohokam settled in Arizona.
1276 AD A great drought began.
1539 Marcos de Niza, a Franciscan priest, was the first white person to enter the Arizona region. He was on his way to hunt for the Seven Cities of Cibola.
1540 Francisco Vasquez de Coronado entered the Arizona region in search of the cities. He visited Hopi and Zuni villages.
1600s The Roman Catholic Church sent priests to establish missions.
1687 A mission was established in Arizona.
1752 The first white settlement was established at Tubac by the Spanish.
1776 Tucson was made into a Spanish fort.
1821 Mexico won its independence from Spain. The Arizona region became a part of Mexico.
1846 The United States went to war with Mexico.
1848 The United States took control of the Arizona region when the war ended in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
1853 The United States made the Gadsden Purchase. It added the region south of the Gila River. It formed the present boundary between the United States and Mexico.
1861 A 25 year war with the Apache Indians began.
1862 During the Civil War the Confederacy sent troops to occupy the New Mexico and Arizona territory. Union troops defeated the confederates.
1863 The Confederate government created the Confederate territory of Arizona. Because of the previous defeat, this action meant little.
27 December 1863 John N. Goodwin became the territorial governor.
1864 Kit Carson led a campaign that defeated the Navajo.
1867 Farmers began irrigating their fields
1869 John Wesley Powell explored the Grand Canyon.
1870s Ranching became a large-scale business.
30 September 1877 The Southern Pacific Railroad entered Arizona.
4 September 1886 Geronimo, and Apache chief, surrendered after many years of attacks from both the Native Americans and the white settlers.
1911 The Theodore Roosevelt Dam was completed
14 February 1912 Arizona became a state.
1912 Women gained the right to vote.
1919 The Grand Canyon National Park was established
1930 Pluto was discovered at Lowell Observatory.
1936 The Hoover Dam was completed.
1941 World War II sparked a boom in Arizona economics.
1948 Arizona Native Americans won the right to vote.
1963 The Supreme Court gave Arizona the rights to 2,800,000 acre feet of water a year from the Colorado River.
1965 Lorna Lockwood was elected as the chief justice of the Arizona Supreme Court. She was the first woman in the United States to head a state supreme court.
1969 The Navajo Community College opened.
1974 The Central Arizona Project began. The project built a system of canals, tunnels, and pipelines to ensure a sufficient water supply.
1974 Congress gave the Hopi and Navajo Indians half of a 1,800,000 acre reservation in northeastern Arizona.
1981 Sandra Day O'Connor, from Arizona, was appointed to be the first woman on the United States Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan.
1988 Even Mecham, the governor, was removed from office by the state legislature for illegally lending state money to an automobile dealership. He was officially impeached.
1991 The Central Arizona Project was completed.
1997 Fife Symington, the governor, was convicted of fraud for filing false financial statements to banks. He was forced to resign.
1998 Symington appealed his conviction.
1999 Symington's conviction was overturned
2001 The Arizona Diamondbacks won the World Series for the first time.
Works Cited
"Arizona History." Azcentral.com.
Burg, B. R. "Arizona." Worldbookonline.com.