A special thank you to all of the new and loyal readers of Arizona Oddities. This has been another exciting year in Arizona, and we look forward to 2017. Looking back, here’s an overview of our most popular posts this year. How to Keep Scorpions Away from Your Home – There are about 35 species ...

ST. JOHNS – This city traces its origins back to a game of chance. In the fall of 1875, Don Solomon Barth arrived in the area with a herd of sheep he had won in a card game and brought in families from New Mexico to care for the woolies.

Arizona is filled with peculiarities, weird stuff, unusual things, oddities, curiosities and that doesn't even include a state legislature that passed a law naming the Colt .45 as the state's official gun. Here are a few others worth mentioning.

Test your knowledge of Arizona history with this short quiz, originally published in Marshall Trimble’s Official Arizona Trivia. Don’t scroll down too quickly. The answers are posted shortly below the questions. When you’re finished, leave a comment with your score.

TUCSON -- The great artist Georgia O'Keeffe probably wouldn't have liked the way it turned out, but her onetime act of kindness resulted in one of her artworks becoming a logo for a motel. Her rendering of a white cow skull on a black background hangs on two signs at the Ghost Ranch Lodge at ...

SIERRA VISTA -- Back in 1954, when Sierra Vista was an unnamed community serving nearby Fort Huachuca, the residents decided to incorporate. One of the first steps was selecting a name for the proposed city, so a contest was held.

When translated from Spanish to English and back, two Arizona entities are duplicationally challenged. Picacho Peak, located in southern Pinal County, is one of them because "picacho" is a Spanish word for "peak" or "point."

PINAL MOUNTAINS -- Despite its name, Limburger Rock was, for many years, a popular gathering place in the Pinal Mountains. It received the aromatic title in 1910 during a stag party sponsored by an ice cream parlor in Globe.

On Dec. 27, 1872, Army troops trapped a group of Yavapai Apaches who had taken refuge in a cave carved into a hillside located in the Salt River Canyon. The soldiers began firing from below. Upset by the wails of women and children wounded as the bullets ricocheted off the cave's roof, Maj. William Brown ...

ELOY - Sometimes, a legend is to good to let die, even though there's nothing to support it as truth. One of them is the story of how Eloy got its name.