America's Premier Holiday Card

At the time, it must have seemed an inauspicious beginning. Or perhaps not a beginning at all. The editor of ARIZONA HIGHWAYS MAGAZINE, one John C. McPhee, published a page with five scenes in black and white photography. Thus, the December, 1936, issue became the first to carry a reference to the holiday season. "Yuletide in Arizona," the page was titled, together with the explanation, "Arizona is the land of eternal snow and springtime. The scenes below portray the paradox....It is December in various sections of the state...mistletoe clings to a desert mesquite...an orange grove...a typical Arizona ranch... December rainbow...a snowstorm in the pine forest...."

Reader response was so enormous, by 1938 a new editor, Raymond Carlson, was encouraged to devote much of his December magazine to the glories of the holy season. Wrapped in a fourcolor cover view of the Grand Canyon were full-page enlargements of desert and mountain photography.

Genius. Fate. Luck. Americans were on the move, and to keep in touch with one another, they turned to the greeting card. Abruptly, as light upward through a prism, the spectrum of printed greetings illuminated displaced American lives. And those who touched or traversed Arizona in those days chose ARIZONA HIGHWAYS MAGAZINE as their premier holiday card. They might send five-cent cards to their friends, but to Mother back East, they mailed a 10-cent copy of HIGHWAYS. Or a dollar-a-year gift subscription. In ensuing years readers demanded more. And for the holidays the magazine delivered - more.

By December, 1947, HIGHWAYS became the first magazine, ever, to print every page in four-color lithography. Delighted subscribers drove circulation to 300,000...500,000... and some years past a million. Today, for subscribers in all 50 states and 120 countries throughout the world, ARIZONA HIGHWAYS represents the last word in holiday greetings.

But why? Why this confluence of inspiration, sentiment, and spirituality?

Why Arizona and its showcase journal...?

LOFTY TEMPLES OF SCULPTED STONE

NATURE'S BEAUTY REBORN