The Five C's once dominated Arizona’s economy, but these days, it might be a little harder to find someone who can rattle them off with precision.

Climate. Copper. Um … Cactus? Close, but no cigar.

The Five C's are copper, climate, cattle, cotton and citrus. (That’s the one people most often forget, possibly because of the soft C.) Each played a vital role in Arizona industry from territorial times to the recent past, and though some are less relevant today, the Five C's remain a useful lens through which to understand the history of the 48th state.

So who coined the phrase?

Not even the Arizona official state historian knows.

Marshall Trimble has held the governor-appointed role since 1997. He spent time investigating how the Five C's came about, but was unable to pinpoint its origin.

All five are represented on the Arizona state seal, which was designed at the Constitutional Convention of 1910, two years prior to statehood. Three delegates were appointed to investigate options for a seal and report back to the convention, which they did on Dec. 8, 1910.

They described the proposed seal in some detail: “In the background shall be a range of mountains, with the sun rising behind the peaks thereof, and at the right side of the range of mountains there shall be a storage reservoir and a dam, below which in the middle distance are irrigated fields and orchards reaching into the foreground, at the right of which are cattle grazing. To the left in the middle distance on a mountain side is a quartz mill in front of which and in the foreground is a miner standing with pick and shovel.”

There was a dispute between advocates for the new seal and those who wanted to keep the old territorial version, which featured a buck, pine trees and a saguaro cactus.

But the new design won out, and Phoenix newspaper cartoonist E.E. Motter was paid $50 to sketch it.

Some of the Five C's are explicitly represented in the seal, which is still in use today. A cow in the foreground, for cattle. The sun’s rays beaming out from behind mountain peaks, for climate.

Others are less obvious. Though no crops are specified, the irrigated fields and orchards by the reservoir could represent both citrus and cotton.

The 1910 description implies quartz is the relevant mineral. But the depicted miner is believed to be based on a picture of George Warren, an Arizona prospector whose name is more synonymous with copper. As the story goes, Warren lost his stake in Bisbee’s Copper Queen Mine after losing a bet that he could outrun a horse.

In this roundabout way, the state seal captured them all. But as he pored over documents from the Constitutional Convention, Trimble found no written mention of the Five C's.

In fact, the first one he found was 29 years into the future, in a May 1939 edition of Arizona Highways magazine. It was on the second to last page, in a section called Arizoniques: “Arizona’s leading industries are termed the five ‘C’s’. They are Cattle, Copper, Cotton, Climate and Citrus.”

The casual tone suggests the Five C's had well and truly entered the Arizona lexicon. But exactly when they arrived remains unclear.

Trimble even conferred with the late former Gov. Rose Mofford, a lifelong Arizonan, to try to figure out who started it. They explored a few theories: perhaps a journalist at The Republic or Arizona Highways was behind it, or a savvy marketer.

They came up empty.

“Somewhere, some anonymous person, and we've never been able to put a name on it so far,” Trimble said. “But they had decided to call it the Five C's.”

Climate

Today, when people think about Arizona and climate, their mind might go to climate change and climate tourism.

In Phoenix, the hottest big city in the country, summers are getting longer and more brutal , the searing highs and sweltering lows brought on by human-caused climate change and urban development. In winter, the city transforms to a desirable destination for so-called “snowbirds,” fleeing the icy East and Midwest.

But climate used to be about health seekers: people who moved to Arizona in the hope the desert sun would ease their ills.

“People came out here to die,” Trimble said. “And towns like Scottsdale and Sunnyslope and such as that were really places where people came out here to bake in the sun, and just try to bake the disease away.”

That’s how Trimble’s own family ended up in Arizona. His two grandmothers both moved to the state as health seekers in about 1918. One came from Arkansas with tuberculosis, and died a couple of years later, when his mother was still an infant. The other came from Texas, suffering asthma. Her condition was seen as potentially fatal, Trimble said, but she lived for another 40 years.

“It worked for some people,” he said, “and didn't work for others.”

Cotton

Local tribes had grown cotton in the Southwest for thousands of years. Commercial production picked up in the 20th century, with cotton used for automobile tires and clothes.

But it ramped up immensely when World War I broke out, and the German blockade of Egypt left the Allies searching for a new source of cotton. They landed on Arizona.

As prices went sky-high, farmers plowed up their alfala fields and sowed cotton instead. Dairy cows were sold and more land was purchased in the relentless pursuit of cotton. Pima cotton, developed in Arizona in 1916 and named for the Indian tribe, was used for army uniforms, as well as airplane wheels and fabric coverings.

“Land prices doubled. 230,000 acres of cotton were planted,” Trimble said. “Then came the bust.”

The post-war period was brutal for Arizona farmers. As cotton prices dropped, farmers fell on hard times, experiencing their own depression before Wall Street crashed in 1929. When World War II started, cotton farmers prospered again.

Cotton is still grown in Arizona, though production has diminished and it is no longer the largest crop in the state.

Cattle

In 1870, about 5,000 head of cattle grazed the ranges of Arizona.

Around the same time, Texas ranchers cast their eye over the prime grasslands of southern Arizona. The land had been contested, given out in Spanish land grants and subject to raids from Apache tribal members, leaving some ranches abandoned.

The Texans liked what they saw. They began to move huge herds across to Arizona, and by 1880, the cattle population had quadrupled. By 1890, they numbered 1.5 million, devouring every blade of grass in sight.

“They loved it to death,” Trimble said.

When drought struck in the 1890s, cattle died by the thousands, and many ranchers had to sell out. Those who survived had to get craftier, bringing change to the industry. “The ranchers learned the hard way,” Trimble said.

Today, 970,000 cows are spread across Arizona’s ranches and farmland.

Copper

Prospectors first struck gold in Arizona in the late 1850s, the following decade bringing a small gold rush. The 1870s were all about silver, as people rushed to capitalize off of huge deposits in the Prescott and Tombstone areas.

In the 1880s, copper took over. It was mined across the state, found in Jerome, Bisbee, Ajo, Morenci, Globe and more, and became the state’s most important mineral, cementing its place among the Five C's.

After the turn of the century, copper was in high demand due to the gradual uptake of electricity. When World War I started, it became even more precious, needed for field phones, weapons, ammunition and other elements of the war effort. World War II brought another boom to Arizona’s mines.

Copper has since been eclipsed by other industries, but production in Arizona remains significant. Today, 68% of all copper produced in the U.S. comes from Arizona.

Citrus

The first commercial orange grove in Arizona was planted in Scottsdale in the late 1880s by a man named William J. Murphy.

An entrepreneurial type who had big ideas for Phoenix, Murphy believed citrus could be profitable in Arizona, closer to eastern markets than the agricultural powerhouse of California.

“He was a great salesman and talked people into moving to the Salt River Valley and growing citrus all over the east and west Valley,” Trimble said.

The idea turned out to be profitable. Citrus blossomed in cities like Mesa, and Arizona became a top producer of grapefruit in particular, also growing oranges, lemons and tangerines.

These days, citrus growers in the Valley are a “vanishing breed,” Trimble said.

Like a lot of crops once frequently seen in metropolitan Phoenix, the bulk of orchards have moved down to Yuma County.

What didn’t get 'C' status?

Over the years, people have pondered why other C's didn’t make the cut.

Cactus is an obvious one. The Sonoran Desert, which stretches from northern Mexico to central Arizona, is the only place in the world where the iconic saguaro cactus grows. But these incredible plants, replete with prickly personality, never carried the same level of economic heft as the C's that made it in.

Trimble’s suggestions are less alliterative: railroads and air conditioning. He argues both were crucial to the development of Arizona as we know it today.

“Copper, cattle, cotton, citrus, all of those things, it was really the railroads that made it possible to ship that out,” he said.

In much of the state, no AC makes for a very uncomfortable summer. Cooling units started to pop up in homes in the 1950s, making life in southern and central Arizona far more hospitable.

The Five C's reflect a different time in Arizona history. An updated version would probably still include climate, Trimble said, but the others might look more like commerce, culture, conservation and community. Not so much C's as categories, each holding different aspects of a more modern and diverse Arizona.