Arizona is authentic. It's too hot to fake it, too rugged to tell tall tales, too beautiful to commit to the hard sell. All of its institutions, its attractions, and even its mythologies were forged through hard experience, trial, and error. 

This is even true of the land, built by the movement and explosion of the earth — canyons ripped open and mountains kicked up over millennia of shaking and oozing. This roiling has provided a wonderland of diversity, building — all at once — hot and verdant desert scrublands, cool evergreen mountain forests, dry sweeping grasslands, and red-rock, river-carved, fairy-tale canyons, all of which merge with a horizon lit most evenings with postcard-ready sunsets.

It remains one of the most exotic destinations in North America, with endless variety, iconic scenery, and a dark history of which the world has never tired.