Reexamining Arizona History: The Old Dominion Mine and Arizona’s Progressive Path to Statehood

Presenter: Natalie Knyazeva

Faculty Sponsor: Roberta Wollons

School: UMass Boston

Research Area: History

Session: Poster Session 2, 11:30 AM - 12:15 PM, Auditorium, A79

ABSTRACT

            This project demonstrates that territorial Arizona was influenced by nationwide Progressive movements, through which the territory’s society developed progressive values that enabled Arizona to achieve statehood in 1912. While Arizona’s territorial history is portrayed in pop culture as a tale of the Wild West, this reputation did not last into statehood. Around the turn of the 20th century, Arizona became a relatively organized territory with an effective government and diverse, law-abiding citizens despite its notoriety for delinquency from just decades prior. This change occurred simultaneously as the nationwide shift into the Progressive Era, in which Americans campaigned for reforms such as labor regulations that were also popular in Arizona.

            Despite the similar progressions of Arizona and American history during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, Arizona historiography frames the territory’s reform as isolated from progressive influences, and Progressive Era study overlooks Arizona, instead focusing on the American Northeast, Midwest, and California. This paper closes this gap in the historical record by analyzing the efforts of Arizona laborers, women, and settlers in local social movements, connecting Arizona’s reform to national Progressive Era movements. This essay then concludes that Arizona voters’ support for labor unions, women’s rights, and temperance as influenced by national movements and embodied in the 1910 Arizona Constitutional Convention and 1912 Constitution was integral to Arizona’s reform in character and governance.

RELATED ABSTRACTS