Talk:Arivaca, Arizona

Incorporation Issue

To whom it may concern: It is a fact that Arivaca was incorporated on December 20, 1879. This fact is documented in the public records for the Pima County Board of Supervisors for that date. I have made reference to these records in my edits to "Arivaca". For you to continue to delete these edits proclaiming them to be unsourced is intellectually corrupt.

Did you review the Pima County records for this date? Clearly not. Your failure to acknowledge the public records does not constitute an unsourced assertion on my part. If you would like, and can arrange to have the 1879 minutes scanned and sent to you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.249.180.73 (talk) 21:57, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

I acknowledge the records of the United States Census Bureau, which give absolutely no record of such an incorporated place. Please refrain from personal attacks, such as by calling me "corrupt". Nyttend 22:03, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

You're obviously not a lawyer. Towns are not incorporated by acts of the Census Bureau. They are incorporated by the local (county) legislature. I did not "attack" you personally. I attacked your assertion. It is intellectually corrupt for you to delete my edit, which references specific public records, and then to assert you did so because they were unsubstantiated. I provided a verifiable reference to a recorded public record in support of my factual assertion, (i.e. Arivaca was incorporated on December 20, 1879) and you repeatedly deleted it without ever inquiring as to existance of the records. If, as you say, you have full reliance on Census Bureau records for the unincorporated status, why do you not cite to those records? Is it because you would have to cite to the absence of a record? Not as compelling as my specific citation to an actual document, the Pima County Board Minutes. You're probably not a historian either. Otherwise you would know Arizona was not a state in 1879, and was therefore not subject to the US Census Bureau. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.249.180.73 (talk) 22:30, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Actually, the Census Bureau covered Arizona as far back as 1870, in which year it had a population of 9,658.[1] Moreover, I already gave you the Census Bureau map (located hereon your talk page; please be careful to follow standard procedure, such as checking your talk page and signing talk page messages with ~~~~. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nyttend (talk • contribs) 22:42, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

I have now provided another source besides the Census Bureau data: a state website note. Although Arizona counties may be responsible for municipal incorporations, that's only because they're somehow granted that power by the state, and if the state says it's not incorporated, I don't see how it could be. Nyttend 04:13, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

What is interesting about this exchange is that you are arguing about two different things. 24.249.* says that Arivaca was incorporated in 1879. Nyttend says that Arivaca is not incorporated now. Both may actually be true. However, we really aren't interested in truth -- only verifiability. The minutes of the Pima County Board is, to me, a reliable source and easily verified with a quick trip to the library archives. It is my opinion that Nyttend should not have removed the information added by 24.249.* as it is both verifiable and notable to this subject. Given that, it would be the height of folly to say that just because Arivaca was incorporated over a century ago that it still enjoys that status today. Not only do current state, county, and federal governments fail to recognize Arivaca as a currently incorporated area, it does not behave as one (i.e. there is no 'mayor' of Arivaca; in fact, no municipal government at all). The bottom line is that both facts have a place in this article and should reflect that. -- ShinmaWa^(talk) 02:45, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Wow, didn't expect to be on this question again :-) It's just that, unless Arizona law works differently from what I'd expect, municipal incorporations aren't permanent. We know for sure from multiple sources that it's not incorporated now; unless there's a source for disincorporation, the idea that it was incorporated in 1879 conflicts with the idea that it is unincorporated today. Let's just have a source before claiming that it was once incorporated, and I can't imagine how anyone could dispute it; I don't dispute the incorporation, for example, of New Rome, even though it's not incorporated today, since I know that it was disincorporated. Nyttend (talk) 03:57, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

They don't really conflict, if you know a little history of the area. As was pointed out, at one point Arivaca was actually a pretty thriving community of nearly 10,000, which was a very large community in what was arguably the wildest of the wild west. Let's not forget that 1879 was 2 years before the famous gunfight at the OK Corral in Tombstone not too far away (which was a mining town of 15,000 at the time). The reason that Arivaca was so large was that it was a military post, which sprung up population and services that support the military. Arivaca was never a fort or anything. It was a remote outpost at best. Even so, given that Arivaca was arguably the largest town in the general area, the idea that it was incorporated for a time is not too outlandish -- and, there is a source, namely the minutes of the Pima County Board (and I don't see why you don't like this source; you keep ignoring it for some reason I can't fathom) stating this fact. Even today in Arizona, the power of incorporation lies with the counties, so Pima County records are about as authoritative as they come. In 1920, the last of the buffalo soldiers in the area (10th Cav) pulled out and Arivaca became, for all intents and purposes, a ghost town. The railroad, when it was built, went down what is now I-19 between Tucson and Nogales, bypassing Arivaca by 20 miles to the east. There was no formal dissolution of Arivaca; it just simply ceased to exist. Even today, the former town of more than 10,000 is but 10% of that size. -- ShinmaWa^(talk) 07:23, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Page controversy

The Arivaca article strikes me as unbalanced and incomplete, and I'll add it to my (very long) list of Arizona to-do's. I did quite a lot of work south of Arivaca, but haven't been there in quite a few years. Nice country, but in recent years I've been more comfortable in the Mexican backcountry along the Border.

I doubt I'll get to work on this anytime soon, but the incorporation thing seems like a side issue. The community webpage has a lot of good information, and it would be good to get it summarized in our Wikipedia article. I'm surprised Arivaca isn't even a CDP, as there aren't many other inhabited places nearby. Cheers, Pete Tillman 02:24, 7 September 2007 (UTC)