Arizona celebrates 113th birthday on statehood day, Feb. 14 [Video]

ARIZONA, USA — Valentine’s Day isn’t the only occasion this Friday — it’s also Arizona’s 113th birthday!

President Howard Taft admitted Arizona to the United States back on Feb. 14, 1912, as the 48th state in the union after a long journey to statehood.

Initially part of Mexico, Arizona’s population was a complex weave of Indigenous tribes, Spanish and Mexican culture and Anglo-Americans pushing into the Southwest. Outside of Tucson, the state was pretty barren, or at least not densely populated.

While most of the state’s early political leaders were Confederates or Confederate sympathizers, the then-territory was paradoxically ahead of the time with progressive policies. Women’s suffrage was only narrowly rejected at the 1891 Arizona Constitutional Convention. A bill giving women the right to vote made it to the governor’s desk before being vetoed in 1903. 

Then, just months …