All Posts AAHS Founded in 1916
The Arizona Archaeological and Historical Society was founded on April 14, 1916 by Byron Cummings and some of his associates including: Nelson Bledsoe, a medical doctor from Bisbee; Ida Douglass, the wife of A.E. Douglass of tree-ring dating fame; Robert Forbes, Professor of geography, physiology and chemistry at the University of Arizona and the planter of the olive trees outside the Arizona State Museum; Hattie Ferrin Solomon one of the four graduates of the University’s Class of 1898 and a founder of the Tucson Symphony Orchestra as well as the proprietor of a dress shop located in what is now Franklin’s outside of the University main gates; G.E.P. Smith of the University faculty who wrote the first Arizona Water Code and drafted Tucson’s first zoning ordinances as well as Senator Carl Hayden. Byron Cummings was the legendary Dean of the Department of Archaeology (now Anthropology) at the University of Arizona as well as the Director of the Arizona State Museum.