25 Super Cool Facts About Tucson

25+Super+Cool+Facts+About+Tucson

February 23, 2016

  1. The Tucson Rodeo Parade is the largest non-motorized parade in the world.
  2. The underpass that links Fourth Avenue to Congress Street has portraits in black and white of more than 7000 Tucsonans. These people were photographed in 2009; they are now preserved in tile.
  3. Tucsonans Dream of Genie: Barbara Eden was born here in 1931.genie
  4. Tucson has more bird species than any other region on earth, not including the Amazon Rainforest.
  5. “A” Mountain was used by the Spanish settlers and O’odham people as a lookout point by Apache raiders, which is how it has its modern name “Sentinel Peak.”
  6. A 1970 article in “Life Magazine” referred to Speedway Blvd. as the ugliest street in America due to the prevalence of large speedwaysignage there.
  7. In Tucson there is a space-aged facility referred to as “Biosphere” which is actually called the “Biosphere 2.” “Biosphere 1” being the earth itself.
  8. The University of Arizona was ahead of the times when they let female students study medicine in the 1890’s, way before it was common practice to do so.
  9. Justin Bieber is said to own several acres of land near Marana, AZ.
  10. The world’s largest collection of Southwest Indian pottery is in the Arizona State Museum on the University of Arizona Campus.
  11. According to the American Lung Association, Tucson has the third cleanest air of all cities nationwide.
  12. Tucson is the northernmost point on the globe where there was sighting of a jaguar in October 2012. The U of A has photographed a male prowling the Santa Rita Mountains.
  13. Tucson is in the middle of the world’s largest concentration of Saguaro cacti.
  14. At Tucson’s Tumamoc Hill, is actually home to one of the earliest examples of native agriculture and is still used as an active archaeological dig site today. tumamoc
  15. In 2010 Tucson was recognized as a “Top-Ten Digital City” by the magazine “Government Technology.”
  16. When the dude ranch was the main vacation area in the 1930s, Rancho Linda Vista hosted movie stars such as Rita Hayworth and Gary Cooper. Today it is communal living for working artists.
  17. In 2010, Tucson was called the Best City for Road Biking, citing “800 miles of roll-around bike paths” and “300 miles of well kept loops”, a cyclist’s dream in “Outside Magazine Online”
  18. The location of the El Con Mall was originally the site of the El Conquistador Hotel Which explains the mall’s name and conquistador helmet logo. The hotel opened in 1929 and was taken down in 1968, never having managed to get any profit.
  19. Fort Lowell Park is the site of an old army fort from where Tucson settlers fought the Apache. Today the park is a sort of archaeological preservation layer over an ancient Hohokam residential site.
  20. In 2011 the American Association of Retired People named Tucson one of ten great places for nature-lovers to retire.
  21. Roads started issuing a seven-mile-per-hour speed limit in 1903; Tucson didn’t begin to issue driver’s licenses until 1905. Speedway is now a main road but in those days it was a dirt track used for racing.
  22. The Tucson Gem and Mineral Show has many tents that come around during the month of February; they all are independently organized and operated and are known to be the largest show of its kind in the United States, and one of the largest gem and mineral shows in the world.
  23. Research companies in Tucson and the University of Arizona were mainly involved in the Human Genome Project, which was successfully completed in 2003.
  24. In 2012 Tucson was named as one of the nation’s 20 Most Creative Cities by The Daily Beast.
  25. Lucky Lindy landed in Tucson on September of 1927 to commemorate the opening of a new municipal airport on South 6th Avenue, near what today are the rodeo grounds.