Arizona is in Love…

With Valentine’s day. It’s a little spooky how this one date has played such an important role in Arizona’s history. It was Feb. 14, 1862 when the name “Arizona” first appeared on an official map—that was the day it was named the Confederate Territory of Arizona by Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Fifty years later to the day—on Feb. 14, 1912—President William Taft signed the act that made Arizona the 48th state in the nation. But in between, another Feb. 14 saw an economic boom for Arizona. It was on Feb. 14, 1888 that Montana Sen. Willliam Clark purchased the United Verde Copper Company in Jerome for the asking price of $300,000. Clark—one of the world’s richest men and namesake for Clarkville, Arizona, as well as Clark County, Nevada—would take hundreds of millions of dollars out of the mine and help make Jerome the “Billion Dollar Copper Camp” in the early 1900s.