In 1885 the biggest prize in the Arizona Territorial Legislature was not the university. It was the asylum, and Phoenix and Tucson fought over it. The 13th Territorial Legislature met that year and divided up the territory’s institutions. It got nicknamed the Thieving Thirteenth for all the backroom dealing that came out of it. The asylum carried a $100,000 appropriation. The university carried $25,000 and went to Tucson. The teachers college carried $5,000 and went to Tempe. Yuma kept its prison. Prescott kept the capital. Tucson wanted the asylum badly. One Arizona historian called it the plum of the legislature’s pie. But Pima County’s legislators got held up by flooding on the way to the capital, deals were cut while they were late, and Phoenix walked away with it. Before 1887, Arizona had no facility at all. From 1873 on, the territory paid a hospital in Stockton, California to take its patients. When the Phoenix building opened that January, the first 61 patients were sent ba...