Are you ready to celebrate a birthday?! Well, it’s time, Arizonans, because it’s ours! And don’t forget, it’s Valentine’s Day, too. Yes, 113 years ago, on February 14, Arizona became the 48th state, so let’s enjoy the festivities!
The long road to statehood
The process wasn’t easy, and it took a long time (just like it took a long time for Oro Valley to become its own town), but it was worth it. Politics was involved, with the Hamilton Bill in the U.S. Congress making a case to have the territories of Arizona and New Mexico join the United States as one state instead of two, and President Teddy Roosevelt was in favor of that.
Sharlot Hall’s fight for Arizona's independence
However, an Arizona woman wanted none of that, believing Arizona should be its own state. The first female territorial historian, Sharlot Mabridth Hall, a Prescott resident, wanted to keep Arizona history alive. When she heard about the movement in Congress, she wrote a poem, “Arizona,” possibly her most famous. Parts of it are reprinted here.
Excerpts from Sharlot Hall's poem, "Arizona"
"Link her, in her clean-proved fitness, in her right to stand alone—
Secure for whatever future in the strength that her past has won—
Link her, in her morning beauty, with another, however fair?
And open your jealous portal and bid her enter there
With shackles on wrist and ankle, and dust on her stately head,
And her proud eyes dim with weeping? No! Bar your doors instead
And seal them fast forever! but let her go her way—
Uncrowned if you will, but unshackled, to wait for a larger day..."
"…Yet we are a little people—too weak for the cares of state!”
Let us go our way! When ye look again, ye shall find us, mayhap, too great.
Cities we lack—and gutters where children snatch for bread;
Numbers—and hordes of starvelings, toiling but never fed.
Spare pains that would make us greater in the pattern that ye have set;
We hold to the larger measure of the men that ye forget—
The men who, from trackless forests and prairies lone and far,
Hewed out the land where ye sit at ease and grudge us our fair-won star."
Arizona's journey to statehood
In this poem, she shows the beauty of our land, the adventurous pioneer spirit of the Arizona territory, and our willingness to wait until we can become a state on our own, while shaming government officials who do not recall that where they now live was once a land as open and free as the territory they deem not worthy of statehood on its own.
Valentine’s Day statehood
The complete poem was read into the Congressional record, and an amendment was added to the bill subject to popular vote. It still took about seven years, but on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 1912, the Arizona we love became our 48th state.
A legacy of powerful feelings
Sharlot Hall would probably have agreed with William Wordsworth who said, “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” We are grateful for Sharlot Hall’s powerful feelings.
Explore Arizona’s history at Pusch House Museum
Current exhibit in the Pusch House Museum is All in A Day’s Work – Life on the Ranch, and beginning on February 15, our exhibit will be Arizona from Territory to Statehood. Visit on Saturdays from 9 a.m. – noon to see Oro Valley history come alive!
Plan your visit
Steam Pump Ranch, 10901 N. Oracle Road, Oro Valley, FREE, visit website for hours, www.ovhistory.org
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Next time you are in Prescott, visit the Sharlot Hall Museum on 415 W. Gurley St.