I was working on an article on state minerals in 2014 when I looked for Arizona’s state mineral.
Searching countless reference works and not finding such a designation, I called the Secretary of State’s Office. I was informed that Arizona did have a state gem (petrified wood) and a state necktie (the bola tie), but no state mineral.
At about the same time, students at Copper Creek Elementary School in Oro Valley proposed having the mineral copper become the state’s official metal, since Arizona is known as the Copper State. The bill passed quickly through the Legislature and was signed into law on March 27, 2015.
Should copper have been designated the state’s mineral as well? No, I say. Arizona needed a mineral that was known to museums around the world and unrivaled for its beauty. The answer was simple: wulfenite.
Wulfenite? Most residents of Arizona had never heard of it, unless you had an interest in minerals. What mineral collectors around the world knew, however, was that no place on Earth produced more spectacular specimens of wulfenite than Arizona, including nearly two-dozen mines that for decades produced the finest wulfenite specimens in the world.
I asked my state representative, Mark Finchem, to sponsor a bill to have wulfenite become the official state mineral. The bill died for lack of support. I tried again.
I collected signatures at Tucson’s gem and minerals shows. Signers included over 1,000 Arizona residents, as well as curators affiliated with the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, the Harvard University Mineral Museum and even the Natural History Museum in London.
With the assistance of mineral collectors throughout Arizona, particularly Tucson’s Frank Sousa, wulfenite specimens were featured in special display cases at the 2016 and again at the 2017 Tucson Gem and Mineral shows held at the Tucson Convention Center.
I arranged to have Phoenix youngsters affiliated with the Rockhounds of the Future of the Mineralogical Society of Arizona hand out calendars with wulfenite on the cover to every member of the House of Representatives just before the bill came up for a second reading.
On March 22, 2017, wulfenite became the official state mineral, proving wulfenite is the unrivaled choice for Arizona.
