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 The
tourism industry in ARIZONA has, literally, one colossal advantage - the
Grand Canyon of the Colorado River. It's the single most awe-inspiring
spectacle in a land of unforgettable geology, and one of the few places
in the world that you absolutely have to see at least once in your life.
However, the Grand Canyon is by no means the most interesting or
memorable destination in the state. Indeed, in comparison to its inhuman
scale, other parts of Arizona have a more abiding emotional impact,
precisely because of the sheer drama of human involvement in this
forbidding but deeply resonant desert landscape.
Over a third of the state still belongs to the Native Americans who have
lived here for centuries, and who outside the cities form the majority
of the population. In the so-called Indian Country of northeastern
Arizona, the reservation lands of the Navajo Nation hold the stupendous
Canyon de Chelly and dozens of other marvellously sited Ancestral
Puebloan ruins , as well as the stark rocks of Monument Valley . The
Navajo surround the homeland of one of the most stoutly traditional of
all Native American peoples, the Hopi , who live in remote mesa-top
villages . The third main tribal group are the Apache , in the harshly
beautiful southeastern mountains - the last Native Americans to give in
to the overwhelming power of the white American invaders.
Away from the reservations, Wild West towns like Tombstone , site of the
famed gunfight at the OK Corral, give a clear sense of Arizona's
characteristically rough-and-ready, pioneer mentality; this was the last
of the lower 48 states to join the Union, in 1912. The cities , however,
are not much fun. In Phoenix , the capital, well over a million souls
are scattered over a 500-square-mile morass of shopping malls and tract-house
suburbs; Tucson is a bit more civil, but still wears thin after a day or
so.
Though the open spaces of southern Arizona can be harsh and violent -
most of the southwestern quarter, along the parallel I-8 and I-10
highways, is used as a bombing range - the bleakness is balanced
somewhat by the many nature reserves which protect its amazing flora and
fauna, such as Saguaro National Park , just outside Tucson, with its
giant cactuses, real-life roadrunners and rare Gila monsters.
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| Bisbee |
Flagstaff |
Jerome |
Lake Havasu City |
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Crammed into a narrow gorge
25 miles south of Tombstone, the town of
BISBEE is rivaled only by Jerome, near Sedona,
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Redolent with the charm of boththe nineteenth-century Wild West and
the
twentieth-century
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The former mining town of JEROME , high above the Verde Valley on US-89A
about thirty miles south of Sedona,
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Forty miles southwest of Kingman, ten miles from the California
border, a detour south brings
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Nogales |
Phoenix |
Sedona |
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The direct route to the North Rim, now US-89A, crosses the Colorado
at last over the single arch of Navajo Bridge ,
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Twenty miles south of Tumacácori, an hour from Tucson, sits the
largest of the Arizonan-Mexican
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The state capital and largest city in Arizona, PHOENIX holds only
minimal appeal for tourists. When it began life
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Though local boosters make much of its setting, amid some definitive
Southwestern canyon scenery, the New Age resort of
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Tombstone |
Tucson |
Window Rock |
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Perhaps the most famous town in the Wild West, TOMBSTONE lies 22
miles south of I-10 on US-80, 67 miles southeast of Tucson.
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After serving as a colonial outpost under the Spanish and Mexicans,
and then as territorial capital for both the
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The seat of the Navajo Tribal Council, the reservation's governing
body, is on its eastern edge, along the New
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