Jim Turner, Historian 

I select the best stories and images to entertain and educate any audience: Retirees, teachers, conferences, conventions, professional organizations, and service clubs all enjoy interesting history presentations about Arizona's fascinating past. The PowerPoint talks  vary from 20 to 90 minutes, depending on your needs. You may also request a history topic tailored especially to your group (law, medicine, journalism, etc.), allowing at least two weeks' notice for research and preparation.  

The following are descriptions of some of my talks and a list of Southwestern history presentations developed over the past ten years. The ones listed in red italics are PowerPoint (computer slideshow) presentations with historic pictures, western art, and digital photos of historic and scenic sites. 

Coronado's Journey from Mexico to Kansas, 1540-42

In 1540, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado entered Arizona with the largest expedition ever gathered in North America and took two years to travel from Mexico to Kansas. Indians might have stood for several hours watching 350 Spaniards, 1,000 Indian allies, and thousands of horses, cattle, and sheep pass by their villages. Historians have puzzled over Coronado’s exact route through Arizona, including Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, accompanied by Jackie Kennedy, who said, “I was absolutely knocked out by the beauty of all we saw.”

When the United States declared war on Mexico in 1846, thousands of refugees from the Irish potato famines joined the army for the pay. They endured extreme prejudice and punishment from their Nativist, Anglo-American officers. Eventually, hundreds deserted to serve with their fellow Catholics in the Mexican Army, where many received officers in their own battalion, the Saint Patrick's, under a green silk flag with the Harp of Erin on one side and the Mexican Snake and Eagle on the other. Learn the personal stories of several of these men, the only organized group of deserters ever to form a unit and fight against the United States Army.  

Many people know G-Men shot down that famous Robin Hood with a Tommy gun in front of Chicago's Biograph Theater, but few realize that six months earlier, on a rainy Thursday, January 24, 1934, he was captured without a shot in Tucson, along with three of his gangsters and their molls. Through a combination of coincidence, luck, criminal ego, and good police work, the Old Pueblo made the newsreels for a few days, and spawned a local Congress Hotel event in commemoration. 

1. Lost Mines and Buried Treasures
2. A Brief History of Ranching in Arizona
3. American Barbarity: The Tucson-Phoenix Union Football Riots of 1937
4. Annie Rockfellow: Tucson’s First Woman Architect
5. Arizona Home Front: World War II in Arizona
6. Arizona’s Four Spanish Forts
7. Buddy Can You Spare a Peso? The Great Depression in Arizona
8. But It’s a Dry Heat: History of Healthseekers in Arizona
9. Cabeza de Vaca and the Seven Cities of Gold
10. The Captivity of the Oatman Girls
11. The Civil War in Arizona
12. Cochise, Geronimo, and the Apache Conflicts
13. The Conquest of Mexico
14. The Coronado Expedition
15. Daily Life in the Presidio San Agustin de Tucson, 1776 - 1856
16. Father Kino and the Spanish Missions of Arizona
17. The Gadsden Purchase, and Why We Didn’t get a Seaport
18. Good Man with a Gun Tamed by New England Schoolmarm
19. The Harvey Girls and Arizona Tourism
20. Henry O. Flipper and the Buffalo Soldiers
21. Hick Town Cops: The Tucson Capture of Dillinger and his Gang
22. How Arizona Got Its Name
23. Images of the Grand Canyon: Artists and Photographers
24. Impact of the Gold Rush on Arizona History
25. A Little War of Their Own: The Pleasant Valley War
26. The Manso Apaches: Allies of the Spaniards
27. Mickey Free: Captive, Interpreter, and Apache Scout
28. Miss Major Pauline Cushman: Yankee Spy, Arizona Sheriff’s Wife
29. The Mormon Battalion, 1846-1847
30. Multicultural Marriages in Tucson, 1859 to 1880
31. Museums of Arizona-A Virtual Pictorial Tour 36 attractions
32. Pearl Hart – Feminist Stage Robber
33. The Pima Indian Villages: Oasis at a Cultural Crossroads
34. Pre-Columbian Mexico Art and Culture
35. A Roman Colony in Arizona: The Mysterious Lead Crosses
36. The San Patricio Battalion: Irish Soldiers fight for Mexico, 1846
37. Spanish-Mexican History of Arizona
38. Tales of the Iron Horse: Impact of the Railroad
39. Tales of the Robbers: Banks, Trains and Stages
40.  Teaching in the Arizona Territory
41. Teddy’s Boys – The Arizona Rough Riders
42. Tourism in the Roaring Twenties: Arizona Auto Courts
43. The Women Was Too Tough – Crimes and Misdemeanors
44. Tucson Theater from Mexican Tumblers to Dance Hall Girls
45. Uncle Sam’s Camels: The Beale Expedition of 1857
46. Watering the Desert: Canals and Dams from Prehistory to the CAP
47. Western Literature from James Fennimore Cooper to Ed Abbey
48. When Billy the Kid was a Kid – His Arizona Crimes
49. Winnie Ruth Judd, Trunk Murderess or Victim?
50. The Women Was Too Tough: Frail Prisoners at Yuma Territorial Prison