History
Southern Arizona has been inhabited by human beings for several millennia. The Hohokam were the principal Pre-Columbian inhabitants of the area. In more recent times, the dominant indigenous group of Native Americans have been the O'odham tribe, which continues to reside in this area in their traditional homeland.
Several Spanish missions were established in the early 18th century by Father Eusebio Francisco Kino in what was then known as the Pimería Alta. After the Mexican-American War of 1846-47, much of Southern Arizona was purchased by the United States from Mexico for $15,000,000 in the Gadsden Purchase of 1854.
More recently, Southern Arizona had an important role to play during the Cold War. Davis-Monthan AFB was the home base of an air force wing of 18 heavy Titan II Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles dispersed over a wide area at launch sites – south, southwest, and southeast of Tucson. About 20 years ago, due to their advancing age and the advent of several important Strategic Nuclear Weapons Reduction treaties, all of these missiles were retired from service. All but one of their launch silos and command shelters were demolished with explosives. The remaining site, Titan II ICBM Site 571-7, about 15 miles south of Tucson on Interstate 19, serves as the Titan Missile Museum, a National Historic Landmark.
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The true theater of history is therefore the temperate zone.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a “will to renewal.” This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of “crises”Mof rupture, repudiation and resistance.... When there is no “crisis,” there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“History, as an entirety, could only exist in the eyes of an observer outside it and outside the world. History only exists, in the final analysis, for God.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)