12-03-2025
Arizona history: "Thieving Thirteenth" territorial legislature gave UofA to Tucson
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.
