I'm a retired educator (teacher/principal) who moved from Northern California to Payson, Arizona in September, 2010.
This blog will chronicle my adventures as I explore a different ecosystem and build my new home.

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Arizona Fun Facts


Arizona has 3,928 mountain peaks and summits, more mountains than any one of the other Mountain States.

All New England, plus the state of Pennsylvania would fit inside Arizona.

Arizona's disparate climate can yield both the highest temperature across the nation and the lowest temperature across the nation in the same day.


Road runners are not just in cartoons. In Arizona, you'll see them running up to 17 mph away from their enemies.

The longest remaining intact section of Route 66 can be found in Arizona and runs from Seligman to Toprock, a total of 157 unbroken miles.


Billy the Kid killed his first man, Windy Cahill, in Bonita, Arizona.

Prescott, Arizona is home to the world's oldest rodeo, and Payson, Arizona is home to the world's oldest continuous rodeo, both of which date back to the 1800's.

The five C's of Arizona economy are: Cattle, Copper, Citrus, Cotton and Climate.

More copper is mined in Arizona than all the other states combined, and the Morenci Mine is the largest copper producer in all of North America.

The amount of copper utilized to make the copper dome atop Arizona's Capitol building is equivalent to the amount used in 4.8 million pennies.


Out of all the states in the U.S., Arizona has the largest percentage of its land designated as Indian lands.

The best preserved meteor crater in the world is located near Winslow, Arizona.

The average state elevation is 4,000 feet.


The Saguaro cactus is the largest cactus found in the U.S. It can grow as high as a five story building and is native to the Sonoran Desert, which stretches across southern Arizona.

A saguaro cactus can store up to nine tons of water.

If you cut down a protected species of cactus in Arizona, you could spend more than a year in prison.

Rainfall averages for Arizona range from less than three inches in the deserts to more than 30 inches per year in the mountains.


Petrified wood is the official state fossil. The Petrified Forest in northeastern Arizona contains America's largest deposits of petrified wood.

The Sonoran Desert is the most biologically diverse desert in North America.

Kartchner Caverns, near Benson, Arizona, is a massive limestone cave with 13,000 feet of passages, two rooms as long as football fields, and one of the world's longest soda straw stalactites, measuring 21 feet 3 inches.


The only place in the country where mail is delivered by mule is the village of Supai, located at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

You can carry a loaded firearm on your person, no permit required.

Arizona has one of the lowest crime rates in the U.S.

On June 6, 1936, the first barrel of tequila produced in the U.S. rolled off the production line in Nogales, Arizona.


Arizona has 26 peaks that are more than 10,000 feet in elevation.

Arizona has the largest contiguous stand of Ponderosa pines in the world stretching from near Flagstaff along the Mogollon Rim to the White Mountains region.

You could pile four 1,300 foot skyscrapers on top of each other and they still would not reach the rim of the Grand Canyon.


The two largest man-made lakes in the U.S. are Lake Mead and Lake Powell, both located in Arizona.

The 13 stripes on the Arizona flag represent the 13 original colonies of the U.S.

There are 11.2 million acres of National Forest in Arizona, and one-fourth of the state is forested.