Capital: Phoenix
Largest City: Phoenix
Abbreviation: AZ
Joined the Union: February 14, 1912
Nickname: The Grand Canyon State
Featuring some of the Southwest’s most otherworldly landscapes, Arizona is a land of extremes. As the snow-capped peaks fade into hot desert plains, scenes like the breathtaking Grand Canyon and the prickly fields of Saguaro National Park dominate your view, interrupted only by the vibrant metropolitan sprawl of Phoenix.
Areas to Explore
FLAGSTAFF
PHOENIX
SEDONA
TUCSON
Other Places to Visit
Lake Havasu City
A small lakeside town that grew out of a former Army camp, Lake Havasu City is an oasis resort of sorts. The area often has many seasonal festivals and is a hotspot for boating and watersports, as well as a destination for warmth-seeking snowbirds. Lake Havasu City is most well known, however, for the London Bridge, whose exterior was dismantled from its place on the River Thames in London, England and reconstructed brick-by-brick around a new bridge over the Bridgewater Channel Canal in 1971.
Tombstone
Tombstone is an old mining boomtown, one of the frontier’s final hotbeds for mineral mining. The unusually named place came close to becoming a ghost town, but was saved and persists today as a tourism hotspot, centered chiefly around the events of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral.
Winslow
Famed for its mention in the 1972 track Take It Easy by The Eagles, Winslow celebrates its mini-stardom at Standin’ on the Corner Park, which features a statue, mural and flatbed Ford as nods to the beloved tune. Historically, the desert outside Winslow is notable for the enormous Meteor Crater, an ancient impact site turned tourist attraction.
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