Original subtitles

a perfect spot for those who believe

the perfect spot to build her dream:

an awe-inspiring modern chapel centered on a giant cross.

staude had envisioned what she called

"a spiritual fortress so charged with god,

godward." that it spurs man's spirit

she knew putting it on this rocky sedona hillside

would give it a head start.

the chapel of the holy cross was completed in 1956,

and was given an honor award

by the american institute of architects the following year.

today, this 90-foot-tall chapel

draws 3.5 million visitors a year.

but there are no church services here--

open to all. it's now a place of meditation,

for years. what she'd been searching for

that it lies at the center

famous energy vortices. of another of sedona's

building a chapel in the arizona desert is one thing--

but trying to build an entirely new city here is something else.

in 1970, architect paolo soleri bought this hill

about 60 miles north of phoenix

and began building an innovative prototype city of the future

he called "arcosanti."

he hoped to use it to demonstrate

a new way of living in the desert--

and the world.

he envisioned arcosanti as a 25-acre community

populated by hardy eco-pioneers who would, as soleri hoped,

be able to do more with less:

cosmic power lines meet where the earth's

two years later powell made a second expedition

down the colorado river,

and wrote a best-selling book about his exploits.

it was in this book that powell gave the grand canyon its name.

for many standing on its rim today,

the towering walls, remarkable depths,

and sheer scale of the grand canyon

remain just as awe-inspiring as they were

to the travelers who first stumbled onto this spot

hundreds of years ago.

but for new age spiritual seekers in arizona,

there's a place that even the grand canyon can't top.

it's called sedona.

many believe this is the site of a mysterious energy field

living without cars in innovative buildings

and create four energy vortices.

one of them, they say, is centered here,

at cathedral rock.

towering red cliffs, deep green forests

and an electric blue sky

make this high mountain valley an undeniably magical place...

whether you believe in magic or not.

new agers have been coming here for decades

to soak up its unique energy vibes.

to find spiritual inspiration but they're not the first

in this valley.

in 1941, sculptor marguerite brunswig staude

came to sedona and found

but reports soon surfaced

it was hailed as one of the world's

most impressive scientific undertakings.

but it quickly became one of the most notorious, too,

as the home of the "biospherians"...

a team of researchers who were sealed inside

for years at a time

in this supposedly self-sustaining environment--

and left to fend for themselves.

their mission was to use their world

to develop new technologies

that might help humans survive on the moon and mars.

they vowed they would grow all the food they needed,

recycle their water, air and waste,

and live without supplies from outside.

when it opened in the early 1990s

staying true to their word-- that the biospherians weren't

stories that they were actually surviving

on prepackaged food they had hidden inside,

secretly replenishing their oxygen from outside,

and using co2 scrubbers

to prevent the buildup of dangerous gases.

the reports set off a scientific scandal.

though it was rumors about what members of the mixed gender team

were doing after work

that really caught the world's imagination...

rumors seemingly verified when two of the team members

got married almost as soon as they got out.

what happened in between

might have been perfect for reality tv.

many of his fans say neither he nor his ideas

designed to make the most of the desert sun,

and generating less pollution and waste.

soleri called his blend

of architecture and ecology "arcology,"

and said his goal was

to "reformulate the present into something more promising."

over 40 years later,

many wonder if that promise will ever be kept.

was 5,000, arcosanti's planned population

but only about 100 people ever lived here.

only five percent of soleri's planned buildings--

including a covered plaza, a ceramics studio,

and a shopping center--

have ever been built.

as soon as they'd reached the canyon's rim.

ever got the respect or attention they deserved.

perhaps because another laboratory

for living in the arizona desert

was hogging most of the press.

and not always for the right reasons.

this is biosphere 2--

a supersized three-acre terrarium.

originally funded by texas billionaire edward p. bass,

its 6,600 panes of glass

enclose 7.2 million cubic feet of space--

including an artificial rain forest,

desert and tiny ocean--

in addition to 3,800 species of animals and plants.

and no site in the canyon has revealed more

by august, the team had finally crossed into what's now arizona,

and started their daring attempt

to journey through the entire canyon.

soon, steep walls soared more than a mile above them,

filling powell with dread.

but on the banks of the river he found exciting evidence

that this forbidding landscape was once home to native cultures

that appeared to have flourished along the canyon floor.

here where the colorado river meets the little colorado,

he found walking trails, ruins, pottery fragments

and petroglyphs of these early canyon dwellers.

as the ancient pueblo people. today they're known

they began making their homes here in the 8th century.

for generations they farmed the river's fertile banks.

on a tributary of the colorado river.

about the lives of the ancient pueblo people

than a place known as the unkar delta.

researchers now know that nomads and farmers

arrived here at this curve in the river

as early as the year 700.

but they were gone by around 1150,

after severe drought finally drove them away...

leaving behind one of the canyon's largest

and best preserved ancient sites.

known archaeological sites it's one of more than 4,000

in the grand canyon--

though there could be thousands more.

only five percent of the grand canyon national park

has been explored for archaeological remains.

and predicted his would be

they finally gave up and headed back the way they'd come,

and cardenas declared the canyon impassable.

for the next 300 years the area would only be explored

by the native american tribes that already knew it well,

including the hopi, havasupai and hualapai.

but then, in 1857,

a u.s. army lieutenant named joseph ives

launched an expedition up the colorado,

in a steam-powered boat--

hoping to be the first to journey by river

through the entire canyon.

when rapids shattered the boat, but ives' attempt floundered

forcing him and his men to walk back out.

seen to the gates of hell, later, ives compared what he'd

as powell and his men worked their way down the river,

the first and last party of white men

to attempt to reach what he called its "valueless" depths.

but a decade later,

a union veteran of the civil war named john wesley powell

launched a new expedition.

but this time he and his team would try to travel

down the colorado river, instead of up.

powell, a geologist and one

first ethnographers, of the smithsonian institution's

was hoping to gather evidence

that could unlock the mysteries of how the canyon was formed.

on may 24, 1869, powell and his nine-man team

launched their expedition in wyoming,

by the end of august they thought the worst was over.

to create this giant chasm--

which reaches, in places, 18 miles from rim to rim.

that continues today-- it's a process of erosion

a process that's created some of the canyon's greatest landmarks,

from towering rock pinnacles near temple butte...

to deep geological scars known as the hindu amphitheater,

and soaring above, the tower of ra.

now-legendary expedition but powell's

came with a terrible price.

for weeks his men were forced to battle the canyon's rapids

in their heavy 19th century wooden boats,

fighting to survive with little food,

under grueling conditions

can only imagine. today's recreational rafters

and helped expose the colorful layers below,

but then, on august 27, 1869, they came to what seemed to be

the most terrifying rapids of them all.

refused to run them, three of powell's men

and went off to climb the cliffs in search of another way out.

but the river turned out to be

much less dangerous than the men had feared,

and just a day later powell and his remaining team

reached the canyon's end...

at a site that has since been flooded by lake mead

and the hoover dam.

one of the men on the expedition wrote that his only regret

was that the missing men weren't still with them.

he would soon discover that native americans

had killed all three of them

in the hundreds of millions of years that followed,

they also gathered evidence that would help them understand

how the grand canyon may have been formed--

striking the first blows in a scientific quest

that continues to this day.

while scientists still don't know

exactly how the canyon was created,

they do know that its story stretches back

more than 1.5 billion years,

thanks to colorful layers of rock

that are now exposed in the canyon's walls.

the oldest of these is a black rock

known as vishnu schist--

it was created from deposits of volcanic ash, mud and sand

that washed down from ancient mountains.

unfortunately, the gossip and scandal

oceans, deserts and swamps came and went

across this part of arizona...

leaving behind more layers of sedimentary rock,

so many that they created a giant plateau.

just 250 million years ago,

the youngest layer in the canyon's walls was laid down.

known as kaibab limestone. it's a light-colored stone

it was only after these deep

and colorful rock layers were formed

that the colorado river started carving a giant canyon

through the plateau's floor.

feeding it were thousands of tributaries

that eroded the landscape even more,

for more than 30 days straight--

try to leave too early, and to make sure they don't

arpaio forces them to wear classic striped prison uniforms,

accessorized with pink underwear,

to make them easy to spot if they try to escape.

their distinctive stripes also help them stand out

along the shoulders of the state's highways,

where arpaio has introduced another innovation

with a controversial past...

chain gangs.

he puts his female convicts in the gangs, too,

sending them out in the blazing sun

to pick up litter and cut down weeds...

pushing flesh and blood to the limit.

here in arizona, temperatures can top 100 degrees

to keep from coming back. so they'll do their best

not the easiest place to be working in a chain gang.

but this dry, baking desert is perfect for planes.

this is the 309th aerospace maintenance

and regeneration group outside tucson.

over 4,400 retired aircraft line the desert here,

in a place they call "the boneyard."

but don't let the name fool you.

most of these planes didn't come here to die.

they came to bask in the arizona sun

and stay well preserved in a dry heat

guaranteed to keep corrosion at bay,

standing safely on soil so dry and hard

it makes concrete unnecessary...

while waiting to be restored and returned to service.

arpaio, who likes to call himself

policemen on tv and in real life

have been reading suspects their miranda warning ever since.

but not even a supreme court victory

could earn miranda an acquittal in his second trial

or keep him from being sent back to prison for up to 30 years.

today he might have served at least a part of that time

here in phoenix instead,

most notorious jails-- in one of the nation's

in the custody of one of modern america's

most controversial lawmen:

maricopa county sheriff joe arpaio.

got its start in 1993, arpaio's bare-bones lockup

when he was pressured to grant early releases to inmates

in his overcrowded jails.

but some will just be cannibalized for parts

"america's toughest sheriff,"

had promised voters he'd never comply.

so instead of releasing his prisoners,

he pitched these military surplus tents in an empty lot

and moved the prisoners here.

human rights activists have been complaining

about his infamous "tent city" ever since.

they claim life here is inherently inhumane--

hot summers. especially in arizona's

and many complain that arpaio--

who once compared his own tent jail to a concentration camp--

doesn't care.

he wants it to be the convicts' worst nightmare,

many are retired northerners

to drum up publicity, webb held a contest

to pick a name for his new community,

and legend has it that he personally chose "sun city"

as the winning entry.

at his january 1, 1960, opening,

100,000 people showed up to see what webb was up to.

he sold them 237 of his still unbuilt homes

before the weekend was over.

he would sell almost 2,000 more by the end of the year.

were over. by then, webb's doubts

today, sun city has over 26,000 houses

and a median age of 73.4, just as del webb imagined.

though not all of these "active adults"

live here year round.

and five model homes.

who migrate to arizona every winter

to get away from the snow.

arriving in herds of rvs they leave parked in special lots

home in the spring. until they're ready to head back

more than 400,000 "snowbirds" migrate to arizona each year,

more than even sun city could ever handle.

fortunately, the state offers them

plenty of other places to roost while they're here.

and plenty of reasons to come back...

to the colorful...

adventurous...

historic...

futuristic...

fascinating state of arizona.

as the owner of a string of las vegas casinos.

and simply forgotten.

many will spend the rest of their days here--

joining the millions of other retirees

who call arizona home...

including the 37,000 who live here,

in a sprawling planned community near phoenix called sun city.

today it looks a lot like other sleepy senior developments.

but when it opened in 1960, sun city introduced americans

to a radical new approach to growing old...

an approach dreamed up

by a visionary developer named del webb.

at 63, webb was already a wealthy businessman

and co-owner of the new york yankees.

he would go on to even greater fame and fortune

and ordered miranda back for a new trial.

but sun city was the project that made his name.

he imagined it as a vibrant but safe, all-inclusive village

where thousands of residents

could live out their golden years in style...

not as seniors, but as "active adults,"

in one-story houses that were easy to navigate,

on streets coiled around neighborhood centers

to keep them conveniently close...

where grandkids could visit, but couldn't move in.

no project like it had ever been attempted on such a vast scale.

and even webb had doubts that it would work.

but in 1959 he broke ground on its first phase:

a shopping center, golf course, community center

to deliver the precious cargo

a team that has carved out its own stellar record

since the game was first played on campus in 1899.

the youthful energy that u of a students bring to tucson

helps to give this city an up-to-date vibe.

but parts of tucson itself

look much as they have since the 19th century,

with adobe style buildings from an age

when this part of arizona still belonged to mexico.

long before walls of steel divided the desert,

and an array of high-tech gadgetry

started keeping an eye on america's southern border.

every day fleets of truckers

roll out onto u.s. interstate 10 in southern arizona,

sun-baked desert and race across the state's

to root for the football wildcats,

21st century economy on track. that keeps america's

but when these trucks head south of phoenix to tucson,

they drive on land

that was originally supposed to be part of mexico.

when the u.s. acquired that's because,

most of present-day arizona after the 1848 u.s.-mexican war,

of southern arizona-- it didn't get a big piece

including the city of tucson, which still belonged to mexico.

but after the war, the u.s. wanted even more land

to build a new southern transcontinental railroad

through arizona to california.

so in 1853, on the heels of the war,

a u.s. envoy, james gadsden, negotiated a deal with mexico

for the u.s. to buy a 30-million-acre parcel

today its more than 39,000 students

ended up overshadowing

the serious research being done here--

and even helped bring it to an end.

today, biosphere 2

is still trying to live down its soap opera past

scientific intentions. and live up to its founders'

its reputation got a boost when it was taken over

by columbia university. in the mid '90s

and in 2011, the university of arizona

started using it for cutting-edge research.

the move made it part of a respected institution,

which is centered at this sprawling campus

in nearby tucson that was founded in 1881,

31 years before arizona was even a state.

on the southern borders

follow in the footsteps of past graduates

such as senator barry goldwater,

congresswoman gabrielle giffords,

journalist geraldo rivera,

and reality diva kourtney kardashian...

traditions alive. and help keep the university's

like making sure that the huge mountaintop "a"

that looks out over tucson is kept freshly painted...

heading over to mckale memorial center,

to cheer on the u of a wildcat basketball team,

third highest winning percentage owner of the nation's

since 1997...

and crowding into arizona stadium

starting with a ritual any fan of tv cop shows knows all about:

would simply park over a trap door,

upload their cargo of drugs, and then drive away.

today, millions of dollars of legal goods

pass through the nogales border crossing each year.

the trick for customs officials is to try and pinpoint vehicles

that may be carrying contraband--

or illegal aliens.

and the vigilance doesn't end in nogales.

north--in phoenix and across arizona--

local, state and federal authorities

spend millions of dollars to watch out for smugglers

that have come across the u.s.-mexican border.

once they identify a suspect

the wheels of justice begin to turn,

cars with holes in their floors

reading the suspect his or her rights.

a practice that got its start

right here in arizona back in 1963,

and was handed down in the case

of an arizona native named ernesto miranda...

after the license number of his truck

was linked to a robbery and rape--

crimes to which he confessed.

maricopa county courthouse, at his trial, here at phoenix's

that confession earned him a sentence of 30 years.

but his lawyer argued

that he should have been told about his rights

before being interrogated by police.

three years later the supreme court agreed,

came to seem suspect.

of present-day arizona and new mexico...

a piece of land that would be called the gadsden purchase.

mexico agreed to give it up for just over 30 cents an acre.

but when the deal for the gadsden purchase was signed,

the u.s. border moved south...

and split one mexican town, the town of nogales, in two.

for almost a hundred years folks in nogales

hardly seemed to notice the border at all.

locals passed back and forth freely to do business

and visit friends and family on either side.

then, in the late 20th century,

tensions over illegal immigration

and drug smuggling began to mount.

the casual crossings that had been a way of life here

to the colorado river on the canyon floor.

in the 1990s a new sheet metal fence brought them to an end.

in 2011 the u.s. government began replacing the fence

with an open pole barrier

so they could see what was happening on the other side--

at a cost of more than $4 million a mile.

now customs and border patrol officers

work to make sure no one breaches the new fence,

while security cameras keep watch 24/7.

but the biggest threat may be

what the officers and cameras can't see...

tunnels dug underneath the new fence.

one was even discovered

leading right under a street on the u.s. side.

cliff dwellings in america. it's one of the best-preserved

come spring, saguaros also produce blossoms

that are the arizona state flower.

thousands of years ago, with landscapes like this one,

it would have been easy to think

that arizona was just a wild and uninhabited place.

but travelers in central arizona would have found evidence

that people also called this desert home--

a people called the sinagua.

little is known about these early arizonans.

but amazingly, one of their dwellings has survived.

wedged in rugged limestone cliffs

is an ancient apartment building

impossible perch here that's clung to a seemingly

for hundreds of years.

and is found nowhere else in the world but in this desert.

when white settlers first set eyes on it

they imagined it had been built by refugee aztecs,

so they named it montezuma's castle

after the last aztec king.

but montezuma had nothing to do with it.

archaeologists say the sinagua

began building this cliff house and others like it

in the 11th century, long before montezuma.

for generations its thick walls

sheltered the sinagua from the sun,

while its perch high on the cliffs

protected them from their enemies.

but by the early 1400s they were gone.

the remarkable structure they left behind

like these forests covered with snow

from the colorful slopes of its painted desert

to giant fields of black lava.

it was here that a nearby volcano erupted

in the 11th century.

fire shot hundreds of feet into the air

and a cloud of volcanic ash rose two and a half miles,

and then settled over 64,000 acres...

leaving behind sunset crater.

fortunately, most of those living at its base

had time to get out of the way.

the story of their escape

has been passed down through generations--

right down to their hopi, zuni and navajo descendants today.

but arizona has plenty of other surprises, too.

shows they knew a thing or two about surviving in the desert.

that flank the san francisco peaks,

outside of flagstaff.

and then there are the dry rocky hills

sonoran desert, of southern arizona's

largest cacti: the saguaro. home to north america's

there's no better place

to set eyes on these prickly giants than here,

on protected land east and west of the city of tucson.

the saguaro national park.

more than one and a half million saguaro cacti live here.

one reason an entire park has been dedicated

to protect one species...

is because this towering plant can grow up to 50 feet tall,

times that would go on to transform arizona

on the opposite side of the river.

but apache raids, political upheaval,

and a lack of funds forced them to quit before it was done.

today their incomplete church, called tumacacori,

is the centerpiece of a national historic park.

some who come to see it are drawn by rumors

that the spaniards left something behind...

a fortune in gold buried beneath the sanctuary.

records show that when the national park service

took over tumacacori,

it found signs of extensive treasure hunting,

including a suspiciously large hole dug underneath the altar.

by then the church had been abandoned for sixty years,

a victim of changing times...

and building a grand new church

in ways the conquistadors and cowboys

could never have imagined.

from a former colony and frontier territory,

into a modern state where one giant city

has been able to rise from the desert...

thanks to a mega-engineering project

that snakes across the land.

when dawn breaks over the mountains

east of phoenix, arizona,

is called the valley of the sun. it's easy to see why this

the most colorful in the world. arizona's sunrises are some of

these psychedelic side effects are not the result of pollution,

but caused instead

exceptionally clean air, by the desert's

by then, a native american tribe called the pima

but the ancient ways of life of arizona's native tribes

came under attack in the 16th century,

after spanish conquistadors arrived...

as they crisscrossed this land

on their search for fabulous cities of gold...

and claimed it, and much of the american west,

in the name of the king of spain.

catholic missionaries rode in after the conquistadors,

spreading out across this new spain

to stake their own claims

in the names of christ and the pope.

one of them, a jesuit named eusebio francisco kino,

arrived here, on the east bank of the santa cruz river,

in 1687.

as stunning as any in the american west...

had been living and farming here for thousands of years.

kino, hoping to save them

from what he called their sinful ways,

tried to win the pima to christ

with gifts and promises of salvation...

while the spanish army used brute force

to keep them in line.

after an uprising in 1695,

50 pima were murdered by the spaniards.

by 1751 they had had enough, and rose up again,

trying once and for all to drive the spanish away.

but they didn't succeed.

by 1800 spanish missionaries were still here--

to search for silver,

or the tomb of a prehistoric king.

but a closer look reveals that it was placed here

just over 100 years ago

and marks the grave

of an adventurous 19th-century prospector named ed schieffelin.

schieffelin arrived in what is now southern arizona in 1877,

hoping to strike it rich.

he'd come to see if rumors he'd heard were true.

rumors of silver in the dragoon mountains,

a dangerous and rocky range where apache warriors

were still battling the u.s. army for their freedom

and killing any white man who dared to enter.

but schieffelin was determined to follow his hunch.

for months he stole into these mountains again and again

at first it looks like a relic of some forgotten civilization,

dodging apache war parties every step of the way.

others urged him to give up, and warned him

the only stone he would ever find in the dragoons

would be his own tombstone.

so when he finally uncovered

the mother lode of silver he was hunting for,

he named it the tombstone mine.

it would make schieffelin a millionaire

and spark the spectacular rise of a nearby boomtown

that shared the tombstone name.

in just a few short years, the brand-new town exploded

wildest outposts... into one of the west's

with up to 100 saloons,

and an untold number of houses of ill repute.

and a controversial sheriff challenges the limits

most colorful states, it's one of america's

with stunning red peaks, golden hills,

and psychedelic sunsets.

pretty colorful people, too. it's seen some

from spanish conquistadors on the hunt

for lost cities of gold,

to a courageous miner who gave birth

to one of the wildest towns in the west.

here in arizona, brave lawmen

once battled legendary outlaws in the streets...

and not-so-daring scientists

tried to help us reach the final frontier.

in the skies over this southwest border state,

vigilance is kept 24/7,

a mix of silver, greed, liquor and loose women

of cruel and unusual punishment--

to put the lid on crime....

in a city where one convict's confession

led to fundamental rights for anyone accused.

to soar over arizona is to discover a landscape of giants,

from the largest cacti in north america

to awe-inspiring craters--

one formed by a falling meteorite,

another by a fountain of fire that erupted from below.

and a chance to journey deep down

into the most epic landscape of them all...

this is the grand canyon state: arizona.

in the arizona desert, a strange monument rises from the brush.

the hollywood western.

but that boom went bust when miners hit the water table

and the mines began to flood.

by the early 1890s most of them had closed,

and this once wild outpost

was turning into a quiet desert town.

ed schieffelin-- the man who started it all--

died in 1897.

his last request was to be laid to rest

in his prospecting clothes,

with his pick and canteen by his side,

not far from his original tombstone mine.

by then, he must have seemed like a relic from a bygone age.

be forgotten-- but it's an age that will never

thanks in large part to a uniquely american art form:

with a population estimated at up to 20,000.

columbia pictures came to arizona in 1939

to shoot a movie called "arizona."

producers built this copy of old tucson

to serve as a backdrop for stars william holden and jean arthur.

ingrid bergman, jimmy stewart, john wayne, maureen o'hara,

clint eastwood, harrison ford, val kilmer, leonardo dicaprio

all followed, striding along these streets

in films that kept the legends

alive. of arizona's wild west days

but arizona's history doesn't start

with tales of the wild west.

long before gunslingers and saloons dotted the horizon,

all that travelers here would have seen

was a series of landscapes

and how the outlaws refused.

made tombstone a volatile, dangerous place.

as robbery and murder filled the streets,

the town recruited a band of lawmen--

including brothers morgan, virgil and wyatt earp,

and their friend doc holliday--

to lay down the law.

on october 26, 1881,

their efforts sparked a shootout so legendary...

performers re-enact it on a daily basis

for tourists who flock to the scene.

here, in the same tombstone streets

where the actual events unfolded,

they show the visitors how earp and his men

ordered a band of outlaws to surrender their guns.

which allows the natural spectrum of colors in sunlight

a standoff that finally erupted in a hail of bullets,

now famous as the gunfight at the ok corral.

by the time the smoke cleared, thirty rounds had been fired,

three of the outlaws were dead,

and wyatt earp and doc holliday

were on their way to worldwide fame

most dangerous gunslingers. as two of the west's

and tombstone was on its way to a new era of law and order...

symbolized most of all by the stately new courthouse

that soon rose in the center of town.

by the mid 1880s,

tombstone was said to be the fastest-growing city

between st. louis and san francisco,

to the arizona state fair,

to the engineers designing it.

to make sure that a nuclear plant's fuel rods

don't overheat and melt down,

a constant flow of liquid is required to keep them cool.

most nuclear plants are built near lakes or rivers

that supply water to do that job.

but engineers designing this desert facility

had to come up with another solution.

they decided to use ponds of treated wastewater

from homes and industries in the phoenix area instead.

by re-using waste to help make energy,

palo verde is able to provide the power that phoenix needs...

and help keep the lights on in every corner of the state,

from suburban homes to downtown skyscrapers...

but the location posed another challenge

a sparkling spectacle with roots that go back to 1884,

long before arizona was even a state.

today the fair offers visitors everything

from livestock exhibitions, to concerts, to pig races.

that pack them in. but it's the rides

a million or more fun-seekers come here every year,

to let their kids loose in the moscow circus,

take a terrifying plunge,

or grab a relaxing break atop the ferris wheel,

to watch the desert sun go down.

but even the sight of phoenix from high above is nothing

compared to the experience of standing on the rim

of what may well be america's

most awe-inspiring natural landmark.

the palo verde nuclear generating station.

spewing out high levels of nitrogen oxides

from its three towering 600-foot chimneys.

pollution that nearly blocks the sun--

and threatens the views of some of america's finest scenery,

and the health of those living on the navajo reservation

on which it stands.

it's why tribal officials

are looking into developing alternative energy sources

to help clear the air, including a proposed wind farm.

until that and other cleaner energy sources come on line,

more than 35 percent of arizonans

will continue to depend on coal for their power.

and 25 percent more will get theirs

from an even more controversial source:

50,000 years ago,

sprawling across the desert

just 55 miles west of downtown phoenix,

palo verde is the largest nuclear power plant

in the united states.

its three reactors can produce

more than 4,000 megawatts a year,

enough for about 1 million homes.

when it was being built in the 1980s,

environmentalists warned its location upwind from phoenix

could make an accident especially deadly.

for power-- the region's ever growing need

and reassurance that the plant would be safe--

trumped their concerns.

on the north american continent.

new northern territories. became part of mexico's

but by the 1840s americans,

driven by a philosophy known as manifest destiny,

sought to make this land part of the united states.

after america won the 1848 u.s.-mexican war,

much of the southwest, from texas to california,

officially became u.s. territory,

including what would later become arizona.

but the southwest was such a big area

that little was known about this new land,

and what exactly the united states had won.

no one knew that it held what would become

greatest treasures... one of america's

a giant chasm bigger than anything

and mountains and arizona's deserts

a place so daunting in scale

no american had yet managed to journey into its depths.

a place now known as the grand canyon!

today visitors come to its rim to be thrilled and unnerved.

but when early european travelers first stood here,

they simply could not comprehend the canyon's enormous scale.

a spanish conquistador named garcia lopez de cardenas

was one of the very first travelers

to set eyes on the grand canyon.

when he arrived in 1540

his eyes. he literally couldn't believe

he was convinced it had to be much smaller than it looked.

but then he and his men spent three days

trying to find a way to descend

a place known today as meteor crater.

landscapes was born. one of america's most dramatic

a giant bowl of earth and rock,

formed by a great cosmic event in the arizona desert.

it happened in the blink of an eye.

a meteorite traveling at 26,000 miles per hour

passed through the earth's atmosphere

and slammed into the arizona desert

with an impact equivalent

to more than 2.5 million tons of tnt--

creating an explosion 150 times stronger than an atomic bomb.

the meteorite melted on contact,

sending a spray of molten metal and pulverized rock

for a mile in every direction.

but it left behind one of the world's most unique landmarks,

one of the most polluting in the nation,

almost one mile across, and more than 550 feet deep,

it's an eerie reminder

of just how vulnerable planet earth can be.

meteor crater would have been a familiar sight

like the sinagua. to arizona's early people,

when spanish and mexican travelers first set eyes on it,

they must have felt like they'd been transported

to another world.

but the sight of the meteor crater

was still nothing

compared to what else lay ahead in the arizona desert.

arizona changed hands in 1821, the land that's now

when mexico won its independence from spain,

which means these players aren't just here to win games.

from flocking here to play ball.

as many as 14 major league baseball teams

come to central arizona for spring training each year.

the metro area is dotted with training camps and diamonds

for the visiting teams

and the diamondbacks, who already call phoenix home.

but this isn't spring.

and this isn't spring training.

is the arizona fall league, it's autumn, and this

an annual series sponsored by major league baseball

since 1992.

every major league team drafts six promising young players

to compete in the afl each year--

and sends its scouts, managers and coaches along to watch.

young athletes of america's most promising

in the major leagues. they're here to win a spot

some--like afl alumni derek jeter, jason giambi

and albert pujols before them--

will get called back for spring training.

some won't.

to michael jordan, that's what happened

who played in the afl in 1994, before heading back to the nba.

but many sports fans come to arizona

with an entirely different game in mind...

one they play on more than 250 courses

that make metro phoenix a golfer's paradise.

in the early days the courses here were all made of sand.

but in 1913 phoenix got its first grass golf course.

and in this desert state,

when city officials set out to build a grand new skyline,

to shine through.

and in phoenix,

to witness this colorful display there's no better place

than from the top of this iconic 2,700-foot peak,

known as camelback mountain, thanks to its camel-like hump.

to reach the top requires climbing more than 1,200 feet

in just over a mile.

but that doesn't stop millions

from reaching the summit every year.

to take in breathtaking views it's also a perfect spot

of one of the ten largest cities in the nation.

but it's a metropolis that hasn't always grown

the way city planners intended...

like the time in the 1960s

it takes a lot of water to keep all that grass green--

and ended up giving phoenix two separate downtowns instead.

the dream was to create a manhattan in the desert

by expanding the existing downtown to the north

and filling it with skyscrapers.

optimistic developers soon began erecting towers

in the city's new north end.

but the problem was that no one else stepped forward

to build on the blocks in between,

and so phoenix ended up with two downtowns by mistake.

today phoenix looks more like los angeles than manhattan,

with sprawling suburbs, great weather,

and endless traffic jams.

but that doesn't stop many

but there's a price for phoenix's ready supply

of open canals, pipelines and tunnels...

carrying precious water from the colorado river

to millions in phoenix, and then south to tucson.

project, or "cap." it's called the central arizona

construction of this water network began in 1973,

but it wasn't easy.

tunnels like this one, west of phoenix,

had to be carved right through the mountains.

without the cap, the development of phoenix

would have hit a wall.

towers like this one on phoenix's skyline

might not exist,

explosion in recent years and the city's giant population

would have never been possible.

and consists of more than 300 miles

of fresh water.

to power the pumps that keep the water in the cap flowing

requires a lot of energy.

and most of that energy comes from one facility,

right here in the state.

sights in arizona from the air. it's one of the most dramatic

sunrise, through the belching stacks

of the navajo generating station,

just outside the town of page.

nearly 25 percent of the power from this plant

has been purchased by the cap to keep its aqueducts working

and the water running in phoenix.

but this coal-fired plant has been labeled

to meet the needs of 30 million families a year.

which is why these courses are regulated,

and only allowed a certain number

of acres of grass per hole.

natural water sources in phoenix may be scarce,

but arizona itself lies

on one of the greatest sources of water in the west.

northern border with utah, here, on the state's

as far as the eye can see... there's plenty of water,

thanks to the glen canyon dam, on the colorado river.

hailed as an engineering marvel on its completion in 1964,

the dam is the 4th highest in the u.s.

and required more concrete to build than the hoover dam...

four million cubic yards of it!

behind the dam, lake powell holds enough water

arizona.

take all this water for itself. but arizona's not allowed to

in 1922, it and six other states

agreed to share the water from the colorado river--

how to split it up ever since. and they've been fighting about

to claim its share--

and to get the water from this river

to places like phoenix and tucson where it's needed--

took a giant feat of engineering and two decades of construction.

first, engineers built an intake valve

at lake havasu on arizona's western border.

then they carved a giant modern-day aqueduct

into the land.

it snakes east across the arizona desert...