Arizona is a state in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the Western United States and of the Mountain West states. It is the sixth largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is one of the Four Corners states. It has borders with New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, California, and Mexico, and one point in common with the southwestern corner of Colorado. Arizona’s border with Mexico is 389 miles long, on the northern border of the Mexican states of Sonora and Baja California.
There are ski resorts in the areas of Flagstaff, Alpine, and Tucson. In addition to the Grand Canyon National Park, there are several national forests, national parks, and national monuments. About one-quarter of the state is made up of Indian reservations that serve as the home of a number of Native American tribes.
Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. Not all holes, or games, are created equal.
George Will
The name of the state appears to originate from an earlier Spanish name, Arizonac, derived from the O’odham name alĭ ṣonak, meaning “small spring”, which initially applied only to an area near the Mexican silver mining camp of Planchas de Plata, Sonora.
There is a misconception that the state’s name originated from the Spanish term for “Arid Zone”. The Spanish phrase for “arid zone” would be zona árida in Spanish.
Arizona is located in the Southwestern United States as one of the Four Corners states. Arizona is the sixth largest state by area, after New Mexico and before Nevada. Of the state’s 113,998 square miles (295,000 km2), approximately 15% is privately owned. The remaining area is public forest and park land, state trust land and Native American reservations.
Arizona is well known for its desert Basin and Range region in the southern portions of the state, which is rich in a landscape of xerophyte plants such as the cactus and its climate with exceptionally hot summers and mild winters. The state is less well known for its pine-covered north-central portion of the state’s high country of the Colorado Plateau .
Like other states of the Southwest United States, Arizona has an abundance of mountains and plateaus in addition to its desert climate. Despite the state’s aridity, 27% of Arizona is forest, a percentage comparable to modern-day France or Germany. The largest stand of ponderosa pine trees in the world is contained in Arizona.
