AZ: The History of Arizona podcast

After getting through the House and the Senate on unanimous votes, the bill to build the San Carlos Dam had to clear its final obstacle - the potential bill killer known as "Silent Cal."

After more than a decade of trying and only getting a portion of the San Carlos project funded, Hayden and his allies set their sights on one big push to get the San Carlos Dam funded. The first step? Getting it through the Senate.

Throughout the 1910s, Carl Hayden and others failed to get their storage dam on the Gila River. However, in the early 1920s they were able get a smaller reclamation project approved. Too bad it would do little, if anything, to help the water-strapped Maricopa and O’odham living on the Pima Reservation.

In which someone suggests a radical idea - actually collecting hard data on and documenting the impact of upstream diversions to the O’odham living along the Gila River.

The end to the decades-long saga of trying to divide the Colorado River.

With both versions of the Colorado River Compact seeming to hit brick walls, proponents switched their focus to helping California pass the Swing-Johnson Bill, which would basically enforce the terms of the compact. But guess which state and its leaders really had a problem with this bill…

After growing tired of Arizona’s refusal to ratify the Colorado River Compact, the other states contemplated how to move forward. Their best solution was to just ignore Arizona completely.

The Colorado River Compact had been signed by the commission delegates, but soon enough a whole new round of squabbling started in the individual state legislatures. And the biggest roadblock of all would turn out to be Arizona and its forceful governor, George W. P. Hunt.

When the Colorado River Commission reached an impasse, Delph Carpenter proposed an idea. To get around the myriad of competing entrenched interests, he went with something both simple and (eventually) problematic - why not avoid talking about individual states all together?

By 1922, everyone along the Colorado River agreed to get together and decide how to split up the water amicably. Unfortunately, their first attempt would only last four days.

Throughout the 1910s, states came together and fell apart as they all discussed differing visions for the use of the Colorado River. Finally, in 1920, one lawyer from Colorado had a brilliant idea — Why didn’t everyone just sit down, come to a final agreement and put it all into writing?

By the 1920s, everyone was thinking that it was time to tap the Colorado River for irrigation. However, before we cover that, I think we need to go over the ground rules for water rights in the Western United States. Also, just for fun, let’s look at the disaster that followed one of the earliest attempts to harness the Colorado for agriculture.

As automobiles grew more popular in the 1920s, Arizona suddenly had to invest a lot into building the infrastructure that would allow them to get around. From bridges to tunnels to actual highways, let’s look at some of the first projects to cater to the car-loving crowd.

Let’s take a trip down some dusty history by examining how Arizona went from a territory of wagon trails to a state of highways. Hint - it involves a lot of hand-wringing over how to pay for everything.

To celebrate 200 episodes of getting together to talk all things Arizona history, here’s a jumbo-sized episode where I take your suggestions for what we should cover!

With tourism exploding across Arizona in the 1920s, the state had to make sure its new visitors had some very nice places to stay … even if those places ostensibly raised cattle.

It's a bad news/good news situation

As tourism exploded across Arizona in the 1920s, everyone was suddenly interested in Amerindian culture, much to the benefit and detriment of the state’s native population.

The Grand Canyon might be Arizona’s greatest asset for tourism. But between 1900 and 1926, one man tried every legal and extralegal means he could to control access to this wonder of the world.

With no cure for their respiratory ailments, people flocked to dry, warm places like Arizona in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Some did find the healing they sought, but many more found only poverty, prejudice, and an early grave.

By the end of the 1920s, there were plenty of new, exciting ways to get to Phoenix. But depending on if a person new to the city was a minority or not, their experience living in Arizona’s capital could vary greatly.

Phoenix saw phenomenal growth during the 1920s, with new homes and new neighborhoods rapidly expanding outward. Phoenicians also wanted to make sure that no one would mistake their tree-lined city for something as base as a desert.

With the cotton boom happening across Arizona in the late 1910s and the early 1920s, the demand for cheap labor during the harvest season increased exponentially. To meet that demand, large-scale farming operators turned to both Amerindian and Mexican labor to get the job done.

The demands of World War I included an insatiable hunger for cotton. Arizona farmers would cash in on this need, but they would wind up going a little too far in betting on this white, fluffy gold.

World War I may be one of America's more forgotten conflicts, but you don't have to look too hard to find Arizona's memorials to its famous, high-flying, balloon-busting native son.