Arizona

The sixth-largest and largest landlocked state by population in the United States, Arizona is one of the Four Corners states of the southwest and shares an international border with the Mexican states of Sonora and Baja California. Phoenix, the capital and largest city, has the largest metropolitan area. The Garbage Project originated in Tucson, the second-largest city. The last contiguous state to join the Union, Arizona was granted statehood in 1912, on the 50th anniversary of its recognition as a territory of the Confederate states. Arizona is notable for its desert climate, but also holds pine forest and mountain ranges in the higher north and a cooler climate in the southern deserts. The Grand Canyon and many other sites of national importance are located in Arizona, and over one-quarter of the state is Federal Trust Land, home to the Navajo Nation, Hopi tribe, Tohono O'odham, the Apache, and Yavapai tribes.

The state's population grew exponentially after World War II, in part because advances in air conditioning allowed more people to tolerate the intense heat of Arizona summers. The population was 294,353 in 1910, 1,752,122 in 1970, and 6,392,017 in 2010, with most residents clustered in the Phoenix metropolitan area. In the early 1960s, retirement communities (then a relatively new concept) appeared in the state, catering to those who wished to escape the harsh Midwest and northeast winters.

Early History of Waste and Disposal

For the Spanish colonial and Mexican periods, most data on garbage disposal is from archaeological research, with only a few known historical [Page 43]ref-erences. Excavation suggests that midden deposits were dumped outside the eastern gate of the Tucson Presidio and that there are refuse pits and concentrations of gardens inside the north Presidio wall near an horno. Field surveys of the Barrio de Tubac identified a large refuse area in the site.

The mechanical arm of a garbage truck in Scottsdale, Arizona, picks up 320-gallon trash containers and dumps the contents into a truck nicknamed “Godzilla,” in 1972. Garbage pickup was captured as part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's project to document environmental concerns via photographs in the 1970s, the same decade that William Rathje's Garbage Project, which originated in Arizona, began studying the archaeology of garbage. The latter project has been studied more intensively in Arizona than in any other state

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