When covering a story, journalists must try to answer the five basic W’s: Who, what, when, where and why? Through our Q&AZ reporting project, we received a question about a small southern Arizona community with a peculiar name. So we applied the 5 W’s to try to find out: Why is Why named Why?
The great Yankees catcher Yogi Berra dispensed many memorable pearls of wisdom. Including this one: “When you come to the fork in the road, take it.”
And this question — why the community of Why is named Why — took me to a fork in the road.
Why — that’s spelled W-H-Y — sits on a lonely spot in southern Arizona, 124 miles west of Tucson, and 12 miles south of the old mining town of Ajo.
State routes 85 and 86 intersect here, and many years ago it was a Y-shaped intersection.
Most travelers headed to the Mexican beach town of Rocky Point pass through Why without stopping, unless they need to top off their gas tanks or grab some last-minute supplies.
Cordelia Hamilton is a clerk at the Why Not Travel Store and gas station, where the question is often asked. If the inspiration came from the old intersection, why, then, is the community named W-H-Y? Why not just the letter Y?
“We point them to a plaque that’s above our thermostat, and it, you know, kind of explains why Why is called Why," Hamilton said.
The plaque refers to a state law — but that law doesn’t exist — and apparently never did.
Martha McConnell is a law librarian at the state of Arizona Research Library in Phoenix. She says residents, “were told that the law requires them to name the town using a name that has at least three letters. So I went looking for that law and — I didn’t find it.”
McConnell did a thorough search of the Arizona revised statutes, an earlier version of the statutes, and its predecessor, the 1939 Arizona Code. But she says they all said the same thing.
“The people in the town circulate a petition, and advise what they want the name of the town to be, and that’s what starts the process," McConnell said.
But Why is a tiny unincorporated community, with a population of just 122 people in the 2020 census, and it has never been a formally recognized town.
And whether it’s incorporated or not, there is no state law, and apparently never was, that required at least a three-letter name.
Another theory
Another theory is that there was a postal regulation requiring at least three letters. There wasn’t. In fact, there was a Y Alaska near Anchorage — just the letter Y. But Y Alaska adopted a wholesale name change in 2010, and is now known as Susitna North.
Back in Why, Arizona, 91-year-old Jose Flores heard over the years that there was a woman who settled out in the desert and sold tequila smuggled from Mexico to locals in the area. In his words, she was a bootlegger.
He says people asked her “why” — “por que” in Spanish — she moved out there. So that’s another theory.
The Y
Up the road in Ajo is another longtime resident, 85-year-old Bud Klinefelter. He says many of the people who settled in Why wanted to be left alone.
“That was about the only advantage to living out there was the isolation, and the fact that there was very limited neighbors — you didn’t have to put up with neighbors. And most of them folks that lived up there, you didn’t want them around you anyway. So, you know, they were just — they were different folks. They weren’t bad people, they were just different," Klinefelter said.
He recalls how that Y intersection — which has since been reconfigured to a T shape — was the site of many bad car wrecks.
Despite the sign and maps that identify the community as Why, most residents still know Why as “The Y.”
“We called it the Y, and it was just Y. In fact, it was years before I realized it was W-H-Y, we just thought it was the Y. We actually used to ride our bikes out there. I rode my bikes all the way out there a couple times when I was young," said Joe Gonzales, who grew up in Ajo and passes Why several times a week.
“Again, when I say — I don’t even say Why, I say the Y, like everybody else does. All locals call it the Y," he said.
So despite the legends, no one seems to really know how Why became Why, who was behind the naming, exactly when it happened, or what prompted it.
But when it comes to finding out why Why is named Why, the story ain’t over — until it’s over.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This story has been modified to correct that Martha McConnell is a law librarian at the state of Arizona Research Library in Phoenix.
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