18 Best Sights in Arizona, USA

The tribe operates this enlightening 7,000-square-foot museum, which is set inside a geodesic dome–shape structure that is meant to recall a traditional Navajo hogan. Inside the dome is a vast trove of artifacts, photos, artwork, and memorabilia. One of the more poignant exhibits tells of the infamous "Long Walk" of 1864, when the U.S. military forced the Navajo to leave their native lands and march to an encampment at Fort Sumner, New Mexico, where they were confined for more than four years. Admission also includes entry to the small Navajo Code Talkers Memorial Museum in the back of the Tuba City Trading Post next door. Both facilities are adjacent to the NavajoLand Hotel (formerly the Quality Inn Navajo Nation).

Texas Canyon is the home of the Amerind Foundation (a contraction of "American" and "Indian"), founded by amateur archaeologist William Fulton in 1937 to foster understanding about Native American cultures. The research facility and museum are housed in a Spanish colonial–style structure designed by noted Tucson architect H. M. Starkweather. The museum's rotating displays of archaeological materials, crafts, and photographs give an overview of Native American cultures of the Southwest and Mexico.

The adjacent Fulton–Hayden Memorial Art Gallery displays an assortment of art collected by William Fulton. Permanent exhibits include the work of Tohono O'odham women potters, an exquisite collection of Hopi kachina dolls, prized paintings by acclaimed Hopi artists, Pueblo pottery ranging from prehistoric pieces to modern ceramics, and archaeological exhibits on the Indigenous cultures of the prehistoric Southwest. The museum's gift shop has a superlative selection of Native American art, crafts, and jewelry. Beautiful picnic areas among the boulders can accommodate large and small groups.

The museum has exhibits exploring the history of Southern Arizona, starting with the Indigenous Hohokam Tribe and the Spanish explorers. The harrowing Life on the Edge: A History of Medicine in Arizona exhibit promotes a new appreciation of modern drugstores in present-day Tucson. Children enjoy the exhibit on copper mining (with an atmospheric replica of a mine shaft and camp) and the stagecoaches in the transportation area.

The library has an extensive collection of historic Arizona photographs and sells inexpensive reprints. Park in the garage at the corner of 2nd and Euclid streets and get a free parking pass in the museum.

Sharing space with the visitor center, this museum provides a nostalgic look at the evolution of the famous route that started as a footpath followed by prehistoric Native Americans and evolved into a length of pavement that reached from Chicago, Illinois, to Santa Monica, California. The Route 66 Electric Vehicle Museum, a semipermanent display inside the museum, features electric vehicles on loan from the Historic Electric Vehicle Foundation. Memory Lane, also inside the Powerhouse building where the museum is housed, is a store crammed with kitschy souvenirs.

Inside the main gate of the university is Arizona's oldest museum, dating from territorial days (1893) and a preeminent resource for the study of Southwestern cultures. Exhibits include the largest collections of Southwest Native American pottery and basketry, as well as Paths of Life: American Indians of the Southwest—a permanent exhibit that explores the cultural traditions, origins, and contemporary lives of 10 native tribes of Arizona and Sonora, Mexico.

The redbrick structure this museum is housed in was built in 1897 to serve as the Copper Queen Consolidated Mining Offices. The rooms today are filled with colorful exhibits, photographs, and artifacts that offer a glimpse into the everyday life of Bisbee's early mining community. The exhibit Bisbee: Urban Outpost on the Frontier paints a fascinating portrait of how this "Shady Lady" of a mining town transformed into a true mini urban center. Upstairs, the Digging In exhibit shows you everything you ever wanted to know about copper mining, including what it felt and sounded like in a mining car. This was the first rural museum in the United States to become a member of the Smithsonian Institution Affiliations Program, and it tells a story you can take with you as you wander through Bisbee's funky streets.

For its size, this small museum inside the Boulder Dam Hotel is well done. It includes hands-on exhibits, oral histories, artifacts from the building of Hoover Dam, and a glimpse at what it was like for Great Depression–era families to pull up roots and settle in the rock and dust of the harsh Mojave Desert. And don't forget to ask museum staff about the city's audio walking tour of 11 historical sites around town.

Learn about the fierce Chiricahua Apaches and the fearless leaders Cochise and Geronimo at this research center, located in downtown Willcox. Other interesting tidbits about the area can be found in displays featuring the U.S. Cavalry, a nice collection of rocks and minerals, and relics of the famed Butterfield Overland Stage Route. One oddity the museum points out is that the memoirs of Civil War general Orlando Willcox, for whom the town was named, don't even mention a visit to Arizona.

On the other side of the river from Fort Yuma, the Civil War–period quartermaster depot resupplied army posts to the north and east and served as a distribution point for steamboat freight headed overland to Arizona forts. The 1853 home of riverboat captain G. A. Johnson is the depot's earliest building and the centerpiece of this park. The residence also served as a weather bureau and home for customs agents, among other functions, and the self-guided tour through the house provides a complete history. Also on display are antique surreys and more "modern" modes of transportation like a 1931 Model A Ford pickup. You can visit a re-creation of the Commanding Officer's Quarters, complete with period furnishings. A popular Italian restaurant, Autentico Sapore, is also here.

Three miles from the fort's main gate are the Fort Huachuca military museums. The late-19th-century bachelor officers' quarters and the annex across the street provide a record of military life on the frontier and the Buffalo Soldiers regiments, most of whom were based here. More often than not, you'll be sharing space with new cadets learning about the history of this far-flung outpost. Motion sensors activate odd little sound bites in the multimedia experience. Another half block south, the U.S. Army Intelligence Museum focuses on American intelligence operations from the Apache Scouts through Desert Storm. Code machines, codebooks, decoding devices, and other intelligence-gathering equipment are on display. You need a driver's license or other photo identification to get on base. International visitors need to call at least three weeks in advance to arrange for a military escort.

Of the three mining museums in town, the most inclusive is part of Jerome State Historic Park. At the edge of town, signs on AZ 89A will direct you to the turnoff for the park, reached by a short, precipitous road. The museum occupies the 1916 mansion of Jerome's mining king, Dr. James "Rawhide Jimmy" Douglas Jr., who purchased Little Daisy Mine in 1912. You can tour the mansion and see tools and heavy equipment used to grind ore; some minerals are on display, but accounts of the town's wilder elements—such as the House of Joy brothel—are not so prominently featured. Just outside the mansion/park gates is Audrey Head Frame Park, where you can peer 1,900 feet down into the Daisy Mineshaft.

This museum takes an in-depth look at the history of the region with exhibits on the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe, London Bridge, Parker Dam, the mining industry, and historic steamboat operation.

Run by the Jerome Historical Society, the Mine Museum in downtown Jerome focuses on the social history of miners in the area. The museum's collection of mining stock certificates alone is worth the (small) price of admission—the amount of money that changed hands in this town 100 years ago boggles the mind.

This museum includes an Andy Devine room with memorabilia from Devine's Hollywood years and, incongruously, a portrait collection of every president and First Lady. There's also an exhibit of carved Kingman turquoise, displays on Native American art and artifacts, and a diorama depicting the mid-19th-century expedition of Lt. Edward Beale, who led his camel-cavalry unit to the area in search of a wagon road along the 35th parallel. You can follow the White Cliffs Trail from downtown to see the deep ruts cut into the desert floor by the wagons that came to Kingman after Beale's time.

This institution, founded in 1928, is respected worldwide for its research and for its collections centering on the natural and cultural history of the Colorado Plateau. Among the permanent exhibitions are an extensive collection of Navajo rugs and a Hopi kiva (men's ceremonial chamber).

A gallery devoted to area geology is usually a hit with children: it includes a life-size model dilophosaurus, a carnivorous dinosaur that once roamed northern Arizona. Outdoors a life-zone exhibit shows the changing vegetation from the bottom of the Grand Canyon to the highest peak in Flagstaff. A nature trail, open only in summer, heads down across a small stream into a canyon and up into an aspen grove. Also in summer the museum hosts exhibits and the works of Native American artists, whose wares are sold in the well-stocked museum gift shop.

Devoted to the art, culture, and history of the Navajo people, this museum also has an excellent library on the Navajo Nation. Each season brings new exhibitions by native artists; call for a list of current shows. There are also permanent exhibits on the Long Walk—during which the Navajo were tragically and temporarily relocated to Fort Sumner, New Mexico—and on the culture and philosophies of the Navajo people. In the same building is the Navajo Nation Visitor Center, a great resource for all sorts of information on reservation activities.

Located in a converted rest area, this small museum is packed with Native American artifacts found in the area and items early settlers left behind; you can also tour a collection of historic cabins and buildings. Usually, a docent or the owner himself is there to give a guided tour. Bring cash; the museum is free but relies on donations to keep going.

Local pioneer history is documented at this remarkable museum, the creative vision of historian and poet Sharlot Hall. Along with an original 1863 ponderosa pine log cabin and the mansion which housed the territorial governor in 1864, the parklike museum complex contains several additional restored period homes and a transportation exhibit housed in a former auto repair shop circa 1937. Territorial times are the focus, but natural history and artifacts of the area's prehistoric peoples are also on display.