Arizona history: "Thieving Thirteenth" territorial legislature gave UofA to Tucson
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Tucson wanted the capital or an insane asylum from the "Thieving Thirteenth" territorial legislature, but got the University of Arizona as a consolation prize instead. Photo: Carol M. Highsmith/Buyenlarge/Getty Images
Tucson wanted the territorial capital and ponied up to make that happen, but what the city got instead was the University of Arizona.
Flashback: On this day in 1885, the territorial legislature passed the act that established UofA in Tucson.
Yes, but: It wasn't a particularly welcome development for Tucsonans, many of whom didn't see much use in a university.
- Saloonkeepers reportedly dismissed the idea, saying, "Whoever heard of a professor buying a drink?"
Catch up quick: The 13th territorial legislature was known as the "Thieving Thirteenth" — also dubbed the "Fighting Thirteenth" or "Bloody Thirteenth" — because of its lavish spending, which by one account totaled nearly $47,000, 11 times their budget.
- Selim Franklin, a member of Tucson's delegation, later said they violated an act of Congress by giving themselves extra pay, hiring excessive numbers of clerks and "subsidiz[ing] the local press with extravagant appropriations" to keep it all quiet.
- Some accounts include fistfights and even a duel challenge.
- Franklin described it as "the most contentious and most corrupt Legislature that Arizona had had," the Arizona Daily Star wrote in 1985.
The intrigue: Accounts vary on how the Tucson delegation ended up pushing for a university.
- Franklin said in a 1922 speech they went to Prescott thinking the town wanted the school. Some accounts indicate Tucson favored the capital, but member C.C. Stephens sought the school as a consolation after poor weather prevented him from reaching the legislature before most of the dealmaking concluded, including an agreement to not move the capital.
- Whichever it was, when Tucsonans learned that Stephens was trying to get the university, they sent cattleman and hotel owner Frederick Maish to Prescott with $4,000 to help reclaim the capital.
- Maish met with the Pima County delegation, gave each member $20 to "go out and treat the boys" and assured everyone, "There is another sack where this one comes from."
Yes, but: The House suspended its rules to advance a bill to move the capital back to Tucson but was defeated in the territorial legislature's upper chamber, with Stephens among the "no" votes.
- Stephens got a university bill through the upper chamber, and Franklin led the charge to pass it in the House.
- For many Tucsonans, it wasn't much of a consolation prize — at a meeting in Tucson, angry constituents pelted Stephens with eggs, rotten vegetables and, according to some, a dead cat.
The bottom line: Tucsonans may not have been impressed at the time, but UofA is an integral part of the Old Pueblo and a big part of the city's identity.
- The "Thieving Thirteenth" made a number of other momentous decisions, putting the asylum — a second choice behind the capital for many Tucsonans — in Phoenix, authorizing the Tempe normal school, which would later become Arizona State University, and keeping the prison in Yuma.