Arizona Facts

The Saguaro Cactus, found in South-western United States does NOT grow branches until it is 75 years old.

It is illegal to hunt camels in the state of Arizona.

The first McDonald’s drive-thru was opened near a military base in Arizona “to serve soldiers who weren’t permitted to get out of their cars while wearing fatigues.”

The largest underground hotel suite in the world is located 21 stories below the surface in Arizona's Grand Canyon Caverns. The Cavern Suite sits in a 345-million-year-old cave and costs $1,000 per night.

A proposed 2,250-foot Solar Wind Energy Tower in Arizona was designed to generate as much electricity as the Hoover Dam by spraying water mist at the top, creating a downdraft that would spin turbines at the base.

Skydiver Debbie Williams was knocked unconscious in a midair collision over Arizona in 1987, and loadmaster Gregory Robertson dove after her, knowing he might fall too low to open his own parachute. He reached her in free fall, pulled her reserve ripcord and pushed her clear. Only then did he open his own, about 13 seconds from the ground, and both of them landed alive.

London Bridge, the real one from the Thames, now stands in the Arizona desert. In 1968, developer Robert McCulloch bought it for $2.46 million. Workers numbered every exterior granite block, shipped them 10,000 miles through the Panama Canal, and rebuilt the bridge over a canal in Lake Havasu City. It reopened in 1971 and still draws tourists today.

Passenger trains to the Grand Canyon stopped running in 1968. Cars had won. The tracks from Williams, Arizona sat abandoned for 20 years, torn up for scrap. Max and Thelma Biegert bought the dead line anyway. They rebuilt 65 miles of track and both depots, replacing 30,000 ties. Service relaunched on September 17, 1989, 88 years to the day after the first one. A train still leaves Williams for the South Rim every morning.

Grand Canyon's Colorado River runs 277 miles through the canyon from Lees Ferry. Inside it sits Crystal Rapid, rated 8 out of 10 on the canyon's own danger scale. A 1966 flash flood dumped rock into the river there. The park's swiftwater rescue team does not avoid that water. In one drill, they flipped a raft on purpose in Crystal Rapid, then raced the current to right it. They still train in it several times a year.

Elk at the Grand Canyon taught themselves to work the water fountains, lifting the spring-loaded levers with their noses. They guarded the spouts from hikers, and the park rebuilt the fountains elk-proof. The herds crowd the lodges anyway, to dodge cougars, so park biologists brought in a dog. Blue works on a leash and barks them back out.

Temple Grandin got down inside the cattle chutes at Arizona feedlots in the early 1970s to see what the cattle saw, and people thought she was crazy. She found what made them stop: a shadow, a hanging rope, a coat on the fence. Her curved chutes with solid sides now work on ranches and feedlots worldwide. At 79, she still teaches at Colorado State.

The lion who roared before MGM movies once survived a plane crash. In 1927, the studio put Jackie in a cage behind the pilot of a small plane bound for New York. It went down in the Arizona backcountry, and both survived. Pilot Martin Jensen left Jackie his sandwiches, milk and water and walked four days to a ranch. When he finally reached a phone, MGM's first question was, "How's the lion?"

42 men, most of them Havasupai, carried a steel cable that weighed over a ton down the Grand Canyon on their shoulders in 1928. No road reached the Colorado River, so each 550-foot cable for the Black Bridge went down the South Kaibab Trail in a single-file line, a drop of about 4,750 feet, with about 50 pounds on every man.

Buford, a Pyrenees-Anatolian ranch dog, found 2-year-old Boden Allen alone in the Arizona desert and walked him 7 miles home through mountain-lion country. State police spotted two mountain lions on his trail. Boden told his rescuers: "I followed the dog back." Buford became an honorary search and rescue member.