The Coconino sun., 1917-03-23
Arizona Our Palestine


 On a crystal morning in the spring of the year you are off for Arizona.
 Gliding swiftly through hundred miles of lovely towns and charming orange groves of greater Italy," past the blossoming almond groves or Beaumont and down the long slope to that vast deep bowl of alluvium which we call ''richer Egypt" through sixty miles of distracted" Old Mexico" on A train packed with peons and guard ed by soldiers; over the Colorado river at Yuma; you are then under the nag and in the limits of "Our Palestine
 See America First
 In A few hours you have had plimpse of the most rapidly develop ing portion of your country and at the same time the added pleasure of visit to four foreign" lands. You have proven that in seeing America first you may see the better than other lands" also.
 You discover that it has pleased God to give to our people all the na- tural advantages that make possible here, the reproduction of the better and the best of every other land on the globe.
 You traverse with delight in this empire of the Southwest, our new Italy, our better Egypt, our modern Palestine, and you are proud of the enterprise that has made them mod ern and new and glad of the humane spirit that makes them so much bet ter than the old for the homes Of men.
 Vision Clarifies
 As A traveller you step into the bor- ders of Arizona and ask, What IS here worth while?" and your vision clarifies in that crystal air and your heart warns in that earnest workshop of society where a new and better state is forming. And you read, as of old it was written: "Thy God bringeth thee to a good land, of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees, or olives and honey--a land whose stones are iron and out of whose hills you mayest dig brass--a land in which thou shalt not lack anything"
 In proof of that prophecy fulfilled just glance at the table of statistics of the production of Arizona in lsl6'
 Check up now, as you traverse thousand miles of this strange and marvellous state, some of the things YOU cannot find anywhere else, for IL is legitimate for the tourist to seek novel and special things as well as to see and enjoy all the common and usual.
 Forehead to the Sun
 You are now in the youngest state in the Union.-the latest and aspiring to be the BEST. While constructing some of the greatest reservoirs in the world to conserve water for all the people, this newest state also tore down the saloons in her borders, so that while you are walking on soil that is "bone dry" of alcohol, you are at the same time upon the best water ed state in the Union, in the propor- ton of its irrigated acres to it's num- Der of inhabitants. Arizona is walk ing with her forehead toward the sun, both in moral and material things.
 You are now traversing the oldest state, in settlement and civilization, of all our 48 commonwealths. It is worth your while to see these ruins of cities and houses and waterways that go back of the Toltec and the Aztec, more than thousand years into the past Irrigation for crops has been practiced for hundreds of years in lower Arizona, and it is fit- ting this state should be preeminent in water storage and use.
 It is richest in Indian lore and le- gends and recent history of the tribes of American aborigines.
 The map of the state shows four teen Indian reservations, and almost every county is named for tribe.
 The descendants of some of the greatest tribes still remain, as Maya jos and Apaches, and the many aban-