Arizona State Parks

The stories of trading posts in the Southwest are a unique snapshot of life almost one hundred years ago. In the early 1900’s, trading posts in the Four Corners flourished. There were over one hundred trading posts on the plateau, but today only five remain. Why did they vanish?

Arizona’s past goes far beyond Hollywood’s Wild West stereotypes of gunslinging cowboys, lawmen, and outlaws. In addition to miners, merchants, and ranchers, faith-based farmers, health seekers and women entrepreneurs of many creeds and cultures braved the West’s harshest and most treacherous territory, working together to forge lasting communities. This presentation describes Arizona history’s notables and notorious characters from common folk to public heroes including U.S. Colonel Sarah Bowman, war hero and innkeeper, and Hi Jolly, the Greco-Syrian camel driver.  

McNamee delves into the tangled history that surrounds the so-called “Apache Wars”, when fully half of the active U.S. Army descended on the territory to combat a relative handful of indigenous warriors. Ironically, the Apache peoples of the Southwest had once welcomed the arrival of the Americans as a buffer against Mexico, which regularly attacked Apache settlements.