Beyond The Trivia - 48th State - KRCG

Today's trivia question on our morning news asks which state was the last one to join the union before Alaska and Hawaii were added in 1959 and 1960. The lyrics of a popular song from the big band era "Let's Get Away From it All" includes the line "we"ll go from town to town and visit every state" and that later rhymes with "in all the 48". The U.S. was made up of 48 states for more than 40 years. So which state was the newest one for all that time, number 48.... Arizona, New Mexico or Oklahoma?

Answer:

Two of the states were added just a month apart. Oklahoma became a state on November 16, 1907 and remained the newest state for more than four years. On January 6, 1912, New Mexico became state number 47, and on February 14 of that year Arizona became number 48.

All three states were heavily populated by Native Americans. The name "Oklahoma" comes from the Choctaw words "okla" and "humma", both of which mean red people. Oklahoma Territory reportedly was named at the suggestion of a Choctaw chief after the tribe had relocated from what is now Mississippi. Attempts in 1905 to create an all-Indian state named Sequoyah helped to further the effort to merge Oklahoma Territory and nearby Indian Territory into the new state of Oklahoma.

New Mexico was inhabited by Native Americans for thousands of years before European exploration. It was colonized by the Spanish in 1598 but it had already been named Nuevo Mexico. The name comes from the Aztec Valley of Mexico, given to the area by Spanish settlers, so New Mexico was not named for the nation of Mexico. It actually precedes Mexico becoming a nation. After Mexican independence in 1821, New Mexico became a Mexican territory but it had considerable autonomy and became economically dependent on the United States. At the conclusion of the Mexican–American war in 1848, the U.S. annexed New Mexico as a territory.

Arizona had been part of the Alta California region of New Spain, but became part of Mexico in 1821. It was part of the territory that Mexico ceded to the United States in 1848. The southern part of the state was acquired in 1853 through the Gadsden Purchase. About one-quarter of the state is made up of Indian reservations that serve as the home of 27 Native American tribes.