A young man in a black beanie and glasses calibrates a large telescope.
Grand Canyon's New Astronomer in Residence
Grand Canyon, Ariz. — Grand Canyon Conservancy (GCC) is excited to welcome Stephen Hummel as the first Astronomer in Residence onsite at Grand Canyon National Park this year. Hummel is the Dark Skies…
A spot near John Ford Point offers a dramatic view of the weathered buttes of Monument Valley on the Navajo Nation. | Jerry Jacka
Photographs by Jerry D. Jacka
One of Jacka’s favorite Arizona spots was Coal Mine Canyon, southeast of Tuba City on the Navajo Nation. “Each time I take a photograph, I feel as though I am capturing a moment in time,” he wrote. “…
Superstition Mountain is the title of this painting by David Swing, depicting the iconic mountain with a foreground of a dirt road through desert landscape dotted by saguaros.
The Nature Of An Artist
CORONADO TRAIL   LAKE MEAD   THE NATURAL BRIDGE   Cochise Head…
Students, teachers and other staff at a federal Indian boarding school in the Kingman area pose for a photo around 1900. | University of Southern California DIGITAL LIBRARY, California Historical Society Collection
Painful Lessons
The only things my mother heard were the sounds of children’s cries, whimpers and soft footsteps as they fled into the night and she hid in fear beneath a thin, unfamiliar white blanket. Reduced to a…
The gas-powered riverboat Aztec passes through a movable bridge at Yuma in 1902. The Aztec moved cargo on the Colorado River between Yuma and Needles, California, until 1905, when a severe sandstorm caused it to wreck a few miles downstream from Needles. | THE HUNTINGTON LIBRARY
Rollin' On The River
Behind the moored steamboat Gila, a bridge used by the Southern Pacific Railroad spans the Colorado River at Yuma in a photo from the late 1870s or early 1880s. In the…
Clyde Tombaugh peers through a 6-inch telescope at the University of Kansas, where he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees. This photo was made in 1936, six years after Tombaugh’s discovery of Pluto at Flagstaff’s Lowell Observatory. | New Mexico State University
Staring Into Space
Looking through a hand magnifier, Clyde Tombaugh could barely see the stars on the image in front of him at Flagstaff’s Lowell Observatory. “My hand was shaking,” he later told his biographer. “I was…
Described by some as eccentric, Wilhelm Smith had connections to many better-known figures in the history of the American Southwest. | SHARLOT HALL MUSEUM
She’s a Relative Unknown
Sedona’s newest park honors the city’s history, and one of the city’s oldest buildings is its focus. But just beyond the borders of Ranger Station Park on Brewer Road stands a reminder of a lesser-…
Michael Kotutwa Johnson, a Hopi farmer, and his dog gaze out over farmland in Northeastern Arizona.
Michael Kotutwa Johnson
Coming up through the Painted Desert from Flagstaff, we pull into the Kykotsmovi Village convenience store, where Michael Kotutwa Johnson greets us. He’s a faculty member at the University of Arizona…