How Can We Get Better?

We need your thoughts.

Supporters and members of the Central Arizona Chapter of the Arizona Historical Society are invited to a special meeting to voice their ideas on how the Society can do a better job. We are interested in hearing about:

• the programs we have or should be having;
• services you appreciate or ones you’d like to see;
• exhibits you’ve particularly enjoyed or would like to see;
• what we do well; and
• what we don’t do well.

The meeting will be on Saturday, January 16, 2010 at 2:00 at the Arizona Historical Society Museum at Papago Park (1300 South College Avenue in Tempe). It will last approximately one hour although we’ll be willing to stay afterwards to continue the discussion.

Right now, we have no idea how many people will show up for the meeting. [You and I may be the only ones in the room.] But any group that wants to succeed needs to know the hopes and expectations of its customers. This is a start.

We look forward to seeing you.

The Border: Circa 1900

The above photo is from the Pimeria Alta Historical Society in Nogales, Arizona. It is a street scene in Nogales, circa 1900. Note the marker for the border.

Books of the Southwest in Electronic Text

Here's a great resource for Arizona history buffs!

You can read several notable Arizona history books on-line at the University of Arizona Library’s Books of the Southwest electronic text project. Click here.

The Blue Tattoo

Margot Mifflin will make a presentation and will be signing copies of her new book, The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman, at 7:00 p.m. on January 14, 2010 at the Arizona Historical Society Museum at Papago Park, 1300 N. College Ave., Tempe, Arizona.

The event is free to the public. Copies of the book will be available for purchase.

Mifflin's book is the first modern biography of Olive Oatman, a Mormon pioneer who was captured, tattooed, and raised by Mohave Indians in the 1850s.

Novelist Elmore Leonard notes, “Margot Mifflin has written a winner… The Blue Tattoo offers quite intense drama along with thorough scholarship.”

UPDATE: Here's a related article in True West magazine.

Luminarias

How does the Desert Botanical Garden light and then snuff out all of those luminarias?

A short video on the secret.

[HT: Arizona Tourism]

Ghost Towns

There is a web site for everything. Click here for one on Arizona ghost towns.

December 24, 1915

"Phoenix Business Association opens campaign to sell Congress on the idea of buying land from Mexico on the Gulf of California so that Arizona may build a seaport."

- From An Arizona Chronology, 1913 - 1936, by Douglas D. Martin