Arizona Historical Society

Arizona Historical Society

AHS Logo (alchemist's symbol for copper)
Founded	November 7, 1864
Founder	Arizona territorial legislature
Type	non-profit
Purpose	collect, preserve, interpret, and disseminate the history of Arizona, the West, and Northern Mexico as it pertains to Arizona
Membership	3000
Website	http://www.arizonahistoricalsociety.org

The Arizona Historical Society (AHS) is a non-profit organization whose goal is to collect, preserve, interpret, and disseminate the history of Arizona, the West, and Northern Mexico as it pertains to Arizona. It does this through 4 regional divisions. Each division has a representative museum. The statewide divisions are as follows: Southern Arizona Division in Tucson, the Central Arizona Division in Tempe, the Northern Arizona Division in Flagstaff, and the Rio Colorado Division in Yuma. It was founded in 1884 (reference 2).

The group was founded as the Society of Arizona Pioneers on January 31, 1884 by physician John C. Handy, his father-in-law William Fisher Scott, and 58 other Tucson pioneers.

With a new railroad being built and change on its way to Tucson, Arizona, pioneers worried that their stories of battles with the desert heat and the Apaches would be lost forever. The society was founded to preserve these stories and provide charitable service work to the local community as a mutual aid society. Original Historical Society members were often prominent members of the community, and their tasks with the society included attending funerals and raising money to help out widows.

Over time, the Society evolved to provide storage for official state papers and collect the histories of many Arizona citizens. The society has faced several periods of financial difficulty, and difficulty storing their collections safely. Collections expanded beyond the capacity of facilities several times, until a large, block-long basement was created to store records and documents at the current Main Museum.

As of 2015^[update], the Society maintained several museums in the state with the financial support of over 3000 members and dozens of volunteers.

The Arizona Historical Society currently houses a large collection of published and unpublished historical documents in its library and archives division. The collections are divided among 4 locations in Arizona, with each location specializing in certain aspects of history. The Society lists its collection specialties as follows: