Southwestern United States

The Southwestern United States, also known as the American Southwest or simply the Southwest, is a geographic and cultural region of the United States that generally includes Arizona, New Mexico, and adjacent portions of California, Colorado, Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas, and Utah. The largest cities by metropolitan area are Phoenix, Las Vegas, El Paso, Albuquerque, and Tucson. Prior to 1848, in the historical region of Santa Fe de Nuevo México as well as parts of Alta California and Coahuila y Tejas, settlement was almost non-existent outside of Nuevo México's Pueblos and Spanish or Mexican municipalities. Much of the area had been a part of New Spain and Mexico until the United States acquired the area through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 and the smaller Gadsden Purchase in 1854.

While the region's boundaries are not officially defined, there have been attempts to do so. One such definition is from the Mojave Desert in California in the west (117° west longitude) to Carlsbad, New Mexico in the east (104° west longitude); another says that it extends from the Mexico–United States border in the south to the southern areas of Colorado, Utah, and Nevada in the north (39° north latitude). In another definition, the core Southwestern U.S. includes only the states of Arizona and New Mexico; others focus on the land within the old Spanish and Mexican borders of the ''Nuevo México'' Province or the later American New Mexico Territory.

Distinct elements of the Western lifestyle thrive in the region, such as Western wear and Southwestern cuisines, including Native American, New Mexican, and Tex-Mex, or various genres of Western music like Indigenous, New Mexico, and Tejano music styles. Likewise with the sought-after Southwestern architectural styles in the region inspired by blending Pueblo and Territorial styles, with Mediterranean Revival, Spanish Colonial architecture, Mission Revival architecture, Pueblo Deco, and Ranch-style houses in the form of the amalgamated Pueblo Revival and Territorial Revival architectures. This is due to the region's influence by the Native American (especially Apache, Pueblo, and Navajo), Hispano, vaquero, and later American frontier cowboy history.

Regional geography

The geography of the region is mainly made up of four features: the Mojave, Sonoran, and Chihuahuan Deserts, and the Colorado Plateau; although there are other geographical features as well, such as a portion of the Great Basin Desert. The deserts dominate the southern and western reaches of the area, while the plateau (which is largely made up of high desert) is the main feature north of the Mogollon Rim. The two major rivers of the region are the Colorado River, running in the northern and western areas, and the Rio Grande, running in the east, north to south.

Formed approximately 8000 years ago, the Chihuahuan Desert is a relatively dry desert, although it is slightly wetter than the Sonoran Desert to the west. The Chihuahuan Desert spreads across the southeastern portion of the region, covering from southeastern Arizona, across southern New Mexico, and the portion of western Texas included in the Southwest. While it is the second largest desert in the United States, only a third of the desert is within the United States, with the rest in Mexico. El Paso and Albuquerque are the major US cities in this desert, with other smaller cities being Las Cruces and Roswell in New Mexico and Willcox in Arizona.

The elevation in the Chihuahuan varies from about , as there are several larger mountain ranges, such as the Organ Mountains, the Guadalupe Mountains, and the Chiracahua Mountains, plus many smaller mountain ranges contained in the area, namely the Animas, San Andres, and Doña Ana Mountains in New Mexico; and the Franklin, Hueco, and Davis Mountains in Texas. It also reaches up into the foothills of the higher ranges such as the Black Range and Oscura Mountains in New Mexico. High above the desert, these forest-covered and sometimes snow-capped mountains form sky islands, with radically different flora and fauna than the surrounding desert below. The sky islands also supply the surrounding desert foothills with flowing water during the spring runoff and after the summer storms of the New Mexican monsoon season. The Chihuahuan is a "rain shadow" desert, formed between two mountain ranges (the Sierra Madre Occidental on the west and the Sierra Madre Oriental on the east) which block oceanic precipitation from reaching the area. The Chihuahuan Desert is considered the "most biologically diverse desert in the Western Hemisphere and one of the most diverse in the world", and includes more species of cacti than any other desert in the world. The most prolific plants in this region are agave, yucca and creosote bushes, in addition to the ubiquitous presence of various cacti species.

When people think of the desert southwest, the landscape of the Sonoran Desert is what mostly comes to mind. The Sonoran Desert makes up the southwestern portion of the Southwest; most of the desert lies in Mexico, but its United States component lies on the southeastern border of California, and the western 2/3 of southern Arizona. Rainfall averages between per year, and the desert's most widely known inhabitant is the saguaro cactus, which is unique to the desert. It is bounded on the northwest by the Mojave Desert, to the north by the Colorado Plateau and to the east by the Arizona Mountains forests and the Chihuahuan Desert. Aside from the trademark saguaro, the desert has the most diverse plant life of any desert in the world, and includes many other species of cacti, including the organ-pipe, senita, prickly pear, barrel, fishhook, hedgehog, cholla, silver dollar, and jojoba. The portion of the Sonora Desert which lies in the Southwestern United States is the most populated area within the region. Six of the top ten major population centers of the region are found within its borders: Phoenix, Tucson, Mesa, Chandler, Glendale, and Scottsdale, all in Arizona. Also within its borders are Yuma and Prescott Arizona.

The most northwest portion of the American Southwest is covered by the Mojave Desert. Bordered on the south by the Sonoran Desert and the east by the Colorado Plateau, its range within the region makes up the southeast tip of Nevada, the southwestern corner of Utah and the northwestern corner of Arizona. In terms of topography, the Mojave is very similar to the Great Basin Desert, which lies just to its north. Within the region, Las Vegas is the most populous city; other significant population centers include Laughlin and Pahrump in Nevada, St. George and Hurricane in Utah, and Lake Havasu City, Kingman, and Bullhead City in Arizona. The Mojave is the smallest, driest and hottest desert within the United States. The Mojave gets less than of rain annually, and its elevation ranges from above sea level. The most prolific vegetation is the tall Joshua tree, which grow as tall as , and are thought to live almost 1000 years. Other major vegetation includes the Parry saltbush and the Mojave sage, both only found in the Mojave, as well as the creosote bush.

The Colorado Plateau varies from the large stands of forests in the west, including the largest stand of ponderosa pine trees in the world, to the Mesas to the east. Although not called a desert, the Colorado Plateau is mostly made up of high desert. Within the Southwest U.S. region, the Colorado is bordered to the south by the Mogollon Rim and the Sonoran Desert, to the west by the Mojave Desert, and to the east by the Rocky Mountains, the Rio Grande Rift valley, and the Llano Estacado. The Plateau is characterized by a series of plateaus and mesas, interspersed with canyons. The most dramatic example is the Grand Canyon. But that is one of many dramatic vistas included within the Plateau, which includes spectacular lava formations, "painted" deserts, sand dunes, and badlands. One of the most distinctive features of the Plateau is its longevity, having come into existence at least 500 million years ago. The Plateau can be divided into six sections, three of which fall into the Southwest region. Beginning with the Navajo section forming the northern boundary of the Southwestern United States, which has shallower canyons than those in the Canyonlands section just to its north; the Navajo section is bordered to the south by the Grand Canyon section, which of course is dominated by the Grand Canyon; and the southeasternmost portion of the Plateau is the Datil section, consisting of valleys, mesas, and volcanic formations. Albuquerque is the most populous city often considered at the edge of this portion contained in the Southwest region, but Santa Fe, New Mexico and Flagstaff, Arizona, are also significant population centers.

Phoenix, Tucson, and Las Vegas dominate the westernmost metropolitan areas in the Southwest, while Albuquerque, and El Paso dominate the easternmost metropolitan areas.

History

Pre-European contact

Human history in the Southwest begins with the arrival of the Clovis culture, a Paleo-Indian hunter-gatherer culture which arrived sometime around 9000 BC. This culture remained in the area for several millennia. At some point they were replaced by three great Pre-Columbian Indian cultures: the Ancestral Pueblo people, the Hohokam, and the Mogollon, all of which existed among other surrounding cultures including the FremontPatayan. Maize began to be cultivated in the region sometime during the early first millennium BC, but it took several hundred years for the native cultures to be dependent on it as a food source. As their dependence on maize grew, Pre-Columbian Indians began developing irrigation systems around 1500.

According to archeological finds, the Ancestral Pueblo people, also known as the Anasazi (although that term is becoming more and more disused), began settling in the area in approximately 1500 BC. Eventually, they would spread throughout the entire northern section of the Southwest. This culture would go through several different eras lasting from approximately 1500 BC through the middle of the 15th century AD: the Basketmaker I, II, and III phases followed by the Pueblo I, II, III, and IV. As the Puebloans transitioned from a nomadic lifestyle to one based on agriculture, their first domiciles were pithouses. The Mogollon culture developed later than the Puebloan, arising in the eastern area of the region at around 300 BC. Their range would eventually extend deep into what would become Mexico, and dominate the southeastern portion of the Southwest. Their settlements would evolve over time from pit-dwellings through pueblos and finally also incorporating cliff-dwellings. The Hohokam were the last of these ancestral cultures to develop, somewhere around AD 1, but they would grow to be the most populous of the three by AD 1300, despite being the smallest of the three in terms of area, covering most of the southwest portion. Beginning in approximately AD 600, the Hohokam began to develop an extensive series of irrigation canals; of the three major cultures in the Southwest, only the Hohokam developed irrigation as a means of watering their agriculture.

Not long after the Hohokam reached the height of their culture, all three major cultures in the Southwest began to decline for unknown reasons, although severe drought and encroachment from other peoples have been postulated. By the end of the 15th century, all three cultures had disappeared. The modern Indian tribes of the Isleta, Hopi, Zuni, Sandia, Cochiti, Santa Ana, Taos, Acoma, and Laguna trace their ancestry back to the ancestral Puebloans, while the Akimel O'odham and Tohono O'odham claim descent from Hohokam. The area previously occupied by the Mogollon was taken over by an unrelated tribe, the Apache. While it is unclear whether any of the modern Indian tribes are descended from the Mogollon, some archeologists and historians believe that they mixed with Ancestral Puebloans and became part of the Hopi and Zuni.

Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the Southwestern United States was inhabited by a very large population of American Indian tribes. The area once occupied by the ancestral Puebloans became inhabited by several American Indian tribes, the most populous of which were the Navajo, Ute, Southern Paiute, and Hopi. The Navajo, along with the Hopi, were the earliest of the modern Indian tribes to develop in the Southwest. Around AD 1100 their culture began to develop in the Four Corners area of the region. The Navahos migrated from northwestern Canada and eastern Alaska, where the majority of Athabaskan speakers reside. The Ute were found over most of modern-day Utah and Colorado, as well as northern New Mexico and Arizona. The Paiutes roamed an area which covered over 45,000 square miles of southern Nevada and California, south-central Utah, and northern Arizona. The Hopi settled the lands of the central and western portions of northern Arizona. Their village of Oraibi, settled in approximately AD 1100, is, along with Acoma Sky City in New Mexico, one of the oldest continuously occupied settlements in the United States. The Mogollon area became occupied by the Apaches and the Zuni. The Apache migrated into the American Southwest from the northern areas of North America at some point between 1200 and 1500. They settled throughout New Mexico, eastern Arizona, northern Mexico, parts of western Texas, and southern Colorado. The Zuni count their direct ancestry through the ancestral Puebloans. The modern-day Zuni established a culture along the Zuni River in far-eastern Arizona and western New Mexico. Both major tribes of the O'odham tribe settled in the southern and central Arizona, in the lands once controlled by their ancestors, the Hohokam.

Arrival of Europeans

The first European intrusion into the region came from the south. In 1539, a Jesuit Franciscan named Marcos de Niza led an expedition from Mexico City which passed through eastern Arizona. The following year Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, based on reports from survivors of the Narváez expedition (1528–36) who had crossed eastern Texas on their way to Mexico City, led an expedition to discover the Seven Golden Cities of Cíbola. The 1582-3 expedition of Antonio de Espejo explored New Mexico and eastern Arizona; and this led to Juan de Oñate's establishment of the Spanish province of Santa Fe de Nuevo México in 1598, with a capital founded near Ohkay Oweenge Pueblo, which he called San Juan de los Caballeros. Oñate's party also attempted to establish a settlement in Arizona in 1599, but were turned back by inclement weather. In 1610, Santa Fe was founded, making it the oldest capital in United States.

In 1664 Juan Archuleta led an expedition into what is now Colorado, becoming the first European to enter. A second Spanish expedition was led into Colorado by Juan Ulibarrí in 1706, during which he claimed the Colorado territory for Spain.

From 1687 to 1691 the Jesuit priest, Eusebio Kino established several missions in the Santa Cruz River valley; and Kino further explored southern and central Arizona in 1694, during which he discovered the ruins of Casa Grande. Beginning in 1732, Spanish settlers began to enter the region, and the Spanish started bestowing land grants in Mexico and the Southwest US. In 1751, the O'odham rebelled against the Spanish incursions, but the revolt was unsuccessful. In fact, it had the exact opposite effect, for the result of the rebellion was the establishment of the presidio at Tubac, the first permanent European settlement in Arizona.

In 1768, the Spanish created the Provincia de las Californias, which included California and the Southwest US. Over approximately the next 50 years, the Spanish continued to explore the Southwest, and in 1776 the City of Tucson was founded when the Presidio San Augustin del Tucson was created, relocating the presidio from Tubac.

In 1776, two Franciscan priests, Francisco Atanasio Domínguez and Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, led an expedition from Santa Fe heading to California. After passing through Colorado, they became the first Europeans to travel into what is now Utah. Their journey was halted by bad weather in October, and they turned back, heading south into Arizona before turning east back to Santa Fe.

In 1804 Spain divided the Provincia de las Californias, creating the province Alta California, which consisted primarily of what would become California, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico. In 1821 Mexico achieved its independence from Spain and shortly after, in 1824, developed its constitution, which established the Alta California territory, which was the same geographic area as the earlier Spanish province.

In 1825, Arizona was visited by its first non-Spanish Europeans, English trappers. In 1836, the Republic of Texas, which contained the easternmost of the Southwest United States, won its independence from Mexico. In 1845 the Republic of Texas was annexed by the United States and immediately became a state, bypassing the usual territory phase. The new state still contained portions of what would eventually become parts of other states. In 1846, the Southwest became embroiled in the Mexican–American War, partly as a result of the United States' annexation of Texas. On August 18, 1846, an American force captured Santa Fe, New Mexico. On December 16 of the same year, American forces captured Tucson, Arizona, marking the end of hostilities in the Southwest United States. When the war ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on February 2, 1848, the United States gained control of all of present-day California, Nevada and Utah, as well as the majority of Arizona, and parts of New Mexico and Colorado (the rest of present-day Colorado, and most of New Mexico had been gained by the United States in their annexation of the Republic of Texas). The final portion of the Southwestern United States came about through the acquisition of the southernmost parts of Arizona and New Mexico through the Gadsden Purchase in 1853.

In 1851, San Luis became the first European settlement in what is now Colorado.

Becoming states

Of the states of which at least a portion make up the Southwest, Texas was the first to achieve statehood. On December 29, 1845, the Republic of Texas was annexed, bypassing the status of becoming a territory, and immediately became a state. Initially, its borders included parts of what would become several other states: almost half of New Mexico, a third of Colorado, and small portions of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Wyoming. Texas current borders were set in the Compromise of 1850, where Texas ceded land to the federal government in exchange for $10 million, which would go to paying off the debt Texas had accumulated in its war with Mexico.

Following the Mexican Cession, the lands of what had been the Mexican territory of Alta California were in flux: portions of what is now New Mexico were claimed, but never controlled, by Texas. With the Compromise of 1850, the states of Texas and California were created (Texas as a slave state, and California as a free state), as well as the Utah Territory and New Mexico Territory. The New Mexico Territory consisted of most of Arizona and New Mexico (excluding a strip along their southern borders), a small section of southern Colorado, and the very southern tip of Nevada; while the Utah Territory consisted of Utah, most of Nevada, and portions of Wyoming and Colorado. The New Mexico Territory was expanded along its southern extent, to its current border, with the signing of the Gadsden Purchase Treaty on December 30, 1853, which was ratified by the U.S. Congress, with some slight alterations, in April 1854.

The Colorado Territory was organized on February 28, 1861, created out of lands then currently in the Utah, Kansas, Nebraska, and New Mexico territories. The Nevada Territory was also organized in 1861, on March 2, with land taken from the existing Utah Territory. Initially, only the western 2/3 of what is currently the State of Nevada was included in the territory, with its boundary to the east being the 39th meridian west from Washington, and to the south the 37th parallel. In 1862 Nevada's eastern border shifted to the 38th meridian west from Washington, and finally to its current position at the 37th meridian west from Washington in 1866. The boundary modification in 1866 also included adding the southern triangular tip of the present-day state, taken from the Arizona Territory.

From July 24–27, 1861 a Confederate force under the command of Lt. Colonel John Robert Baylor forced the surrender of the small Union garrison stationed at Fort Fillmore, near Mesilla, New Mexico. On August 1, 1861, Baylor declared the creation of the Arizona Territory, and claimed it for the Confederacy, with Mesilla as its capital. The territory, which had been formed by the portion of the existing New Mexico Territory below the 34th parallel, became official on February 14, 1862.

Nevada was admitted to the Union on October 31, 1864, becoming the 36th state. This was followed by the admittance to the Union of Colorado, which became the 38th state on August 1, 1876. Confederate Arizona was short-lived, however. By May 1862, Confederate forces had been driven out of the region by union troops. That same month a bill was introduced into the U.S. Congress, and on February 24, 1863 Abraham Lincoln signed the Arizona Organic Act, which officially created the U.S. Territory of Arizona, splitting the New Mexico Territory at the 107th meridian.

Utah, as shown above, evolved out of the Utah Territory, as pieces of the original territory created in 1850 were carved out: parts were ceded to Nevada, Wyoming, and Colorado in 1861; another section to Nevada in 1862; and the final section to Nevada in 1866. In 1890, the LDS church issued the 1890 Manifesto, which officially banned polygamy for members of the church. It was the last roadblock for Utah entering the Union, and on January 4, 1896, Utah was officially granted statehood, becoming the 45th state.

In 1869, John Wesley Powell led a 3-month expedition which explored the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River. In 1875, he would publish a book describing his explorations, ''Report of the Exploration of the Columbia River of the West and Its Tributaries'', which was later republished as ''The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons''.

In 1877 silver was discovered in southeastern Arizona. The notorious mining town of Tombstone, Arizona was born to service the miners. The town would become immortalized as the scene of what is considered the greatest gunfight in the history of the Old West, the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

Copper was also discovered in 1877, near Bisbee and Jerome in Arizona, which became an important component of the economy of the Southwest. Production began in 1880 and was made more profitable by the expansion of the railroad throughout the territory during the 1880s.

The early 1880s also saw the completion of the second transcontinental railroad, which ran through the heart of the Southwest, called the "Santa Fe Route". It ran from Chicago, down through Topeka, then further south to Albuquerque, before heading almost due west through northern Arizona to Los Angeles.

The repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act in 1893 led to the decline of the silver mining industry in the region.

In 1901, the Santa Fe Railroad reached the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, opening the way for a tourism boom, a trend led by restaurant and hotel entrepreneur Fred Harvey.

The last two territories within the Southwest to achieve statehood were New Mexico and Arizona. By 1863, with the splitting off of the Arizona Territory, New Mexico reached its modern borders. They became states within forty days of one another. On January 6, 1912, New Mexico became the 47th state in the Union. Arizona would shortly follow, becoming the last of the 48 contiguous United States on February 14, 1912.

Since statehood

The 1930s saw the beginning of the ski industry in the Southwest. Resorts were established in Colorado in areas such as Estes Park, Gunnison, and on Loveland Pass. New Mexico's oldest ski area is Sandia Peak Ski Area at the eastern edge of Albuquerque, which opened to skiers in 1936. At the end of the decade, in 1939, with the establishment of Alta Ski Area, Utah's skiing began to be developed.

Due to the ski conditions in the state, during WWII, the 10th Mountain Division established Camp Hale in Colorado to train elite ski troops.

Origins of the term and historical/cultural variations

While this article deals with the core definition for the American Southwest, there are many others. The various definitions can be broken down into four main categories: Historical/Archeological; Geological/Topographical; Ecological; and Cultural. In the 1930s and 1940s, many definitions of the Southwest included all or part of Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Colorado, and Utah. As time has gone on, the definition of the Southwest has become more solidified and more compact. For example, in 1948 the National Geographic Society defined the American Southwest as all of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico, and the southernmost sections of Oregon, Idaho, and Wyoming, as well as parts of southwest Nebraska, western Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. By 1977, the Society's definition had narrowed to only the four states of Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico; and by 1982 the portion of the Southwest in the United States, as defined by the Society, had shrunk to Arizona and New Mexico, with the southernmost strip of Utah and Colorado, as well as the Mojave and Colorado deserts in California. Other individuals who focus on Southwest studies who favored a more limited extent of the area to center on Arizona and New Mexico, with small parts of surrounding areas, include Erna Fergusson, Charles Lummis (who claimed to have coined the term, the Southwest), and cultural geographer Raymond Gastil, and ethnologist Miguel León-Portilla.

Geographer D. W. Meinig defines the Southwest in a very similar fashion to Reed: the portion of New Mexico west of the Llano Estacado and the portion of Arizona east of the Mojave-Sonoran Desert and south of the "canyon lands" and also including the El Paso district of western Texas and the southernmost part of Colorado. Meinig breaks the Southwest down into four distinct subregions. He calls the first subregion " Northern New Mexico", and describes it as focused on Albuquerque and Santa Fe. It extends from the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado to south of Socorro and including the Manzano Mountains, with an east–west breadth in the north stretching from the upper Canadian River