Stewart's Petrified Wood is a shop off of I-40 in Holbrook, Arizona with giant animatronic dinosaurs eating, and sometimes being ridden by, somewhat decrepit mannequins. Also, there's an ostrich farm. [more inside]
posted by NoraReed on Jun 4, 2011 - 28 comments

Walking Home: stories from the desert to the Great Lakes. Laura Milkins is walking home. Home is Grand Rapids, Michigan. Laura lives in Tucson, Arizona. That's 2,000 miles (3,219 km), or about 4,473,976 steps. Right now she's in the shoulder of the road somewhere around Holbrook, Arizona. She has a pack on her back, a webcam streaming 24 hours strapped to a sun visor on her head, and hopefully, a place to stay tonight. You can follow her every step of the way, by watching live video broadcast from her hat. Or walk with her. [more inside]
posted by Tufa on May 25, 2011 - 26 comments

In addition to being a five term US senator, Barry Goldwater was an accomplished photographer, particularly of people and landscapes of the American West. [more inside]
posted by Nelson on Aug 24, 2010 - 27 comments

A group of artists has been asked to lighten the faces of children depicted in a giant public mural at a Prescott school. The project's leader says he was ordered to lighten the skin tone after complaints about the children's ethnicity. (via Wonkette)
posted by EarBucket on Jun 4, 2010 - 112 comments

The Wisdom Of Rats - A personal essay on art and time and everything, by Charles Bowden for Harper's.
posted by The Whelk on Apr 6, 2010 - 12 comments

The town of Jerome was incorporated on March 8, 1889 when Arizona was still a territory. A mining town of the real 'wild west' variety, Jerome was incorporated after three devastating fires within an eighteen month period that nearly destroyed the town. Jerome was a wild town with little law enforcement, building codes, or real government. It earned the title "The Wickedest Town in America" by the New York Sun in 1903 for being a hotbed of gambling, prostitution, and vice. [more inside]
posted by Bageena on Dec 2, 2008 - 23 comments

Any fool can hire an architect to draw up a plan for a house, but it takes a truly inspired fool — which is to say, an artist — to start building and see where the earth and driftwood and shards of broken pottery take him. [Slideshow.] [more inside]
posted by dersins on Feb 5, 2008 - 19 comments

Images of the Southwest. The American southwest, that is. The Bisbee Deportation of 1917 - 'an event specific to Arizona that influenced the labor movement throughout the United States'; early cartography of the southwest; a rural school newspaper; mission churches; folk arts - Easter eggs, murals and so on; War Relocation Authority camps (some photos ; and more.
posted by plep on Jul 14, 2003 - 6 comments

Roden Crater is an extinct volcano in Arizona and doubles as a $7M land art project by James Turrell. I look forward to visiting the site on my next trip to the Southwest.
"If you're not an optimist, forget being an artist," Mr. Turrell said. "I've been lucky. I never felt any entitlement. I'd hoped interest in this work would get going sooner because it wasn't meant to occupy my whole career." The sun was going down and the sky was red and purple. "But that's fine. I have nothing better to do."
posted by gen on Apr 9, 2001 - 2 comments