AZ: The History of Arizona podcast

Mar 09 2025 214 ep. 30 mins 92
AZ: The History of Arizona podcast artwork

A podcast tracing the history, events, people and places that made the Grand Canyon State.

  History  Education
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Episode 209: The Colorado River Compact, Part V: The Swing-Johnson Bill

Mar 09 2025 30 mins  
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…

Episode 208: The Colorado River Compact, Part IV: The Six State Solution

Mar 02 2025 31 mins  
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.

Episode 207: The Colorado River Compact, Part III: Hoover Will Run Up Against a Brick Wall

Feb 23 2025 30 mins  
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.

Episode 206: The Colorado River Compact, Part II: Upper Basin, Lower Basin

Feb 09 2025 38 mins  
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?

Episode 205: The Colorado Compact, Part 1: Stalemate

Feb 02 2025 38 mins  
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.

Episode 204: The League of the Southwest

Jan 26 2025 38 mins  
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?

Episode 203: Imperial Dreams

Jan 19 2025 33 mins  
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.

Episode 202: The Mother of Highways

Dec 22 2024 29 mins  
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.

Episode 201: How to Build a Highway

Dec 19 2024 35 mins  
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.

Episode 200

Dec 08 2024 51 mins  
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!