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The Commemorative Quarter for Arizona





Our Genealogy Helper

Introduction ...

We have a couple of goals for our Gazetteer:

  • That it be a tool which helps us with planning our trips.
  • We're trying to shape our Gazetteer as a tool to help us understand the community in which our ancestors lived, the community that was part of their daily lives.
  • On our trips, we try to visit those places where our ancestors left their footprints.

By learning about Parker (and the surrounding area) during the time that our ancestors lived, we hope to have a better understanding of both their community and its relationship to their lifes. We hope that this tool helps to give us an insight into their world.

As we add data and organize our Gazetteer to help with our family research, we will be adding to this our Genealogical Helper for Parker. While we don't have information that is specific to any given person or family, we intend to expand our understanding about where and how people lived.

Neighboring Counties ...

When searching for family records, we have frequently made the mistake of not checking the neighboring counties.

For example, we have great-grandparents who lived in the southeast corner of their home county. During their lives, most hospitals and doctors were in the next county to the east. Almost all of the nearby churches and cemeteries were in the county to the south.

So when searching for records, we had our best success by looking in neighboring counties instead of the county in which they lived:  their home county contained property and probate records; the county to the east contained birth and death records; the county to the south contained their burial records. If we hadn't included the neighboring counties, we would have missed many valuable sources of information.

If you're in a similar situation, we hope that the following information helps.

Parker is located in La Paz County and is the County Seat.

To see how the shape of Arizona's counties have changed over time, we recommend the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries.

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of La Paz County: Maricopa, Mohave, Yavapai, Yuma, Imperial (CA), Riverside (CA) & San Bernardino (CA).

Below are the counties that are near Parker. For each of these counties, we show a sample of those communities that are closest to Parker:

  • La Paz County     (The home county of Parker)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Parker, with the one closest to Parker listed first.
    • Bluewater
      (Less than 2 miles to the northeast)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Bluewater have been provided by the GNIS.<1> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Bluewater
      • Bluewater is located in La Paz County
    • Cienega Springs
      (4 miles [6.4 km] to the northeast)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Cienega Springs
      • Cienega Springs is located in La Paz County
    • Parker Strip
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the northeast)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Parker Strip have been provided by the GNIS.<1> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Parker Strip
      • Parker Strip is located in La Paz County
    • Poston
      (12 miles [19.3 km] to the southwest)
    • Bouse
      (22 miles [35.4 km] to the southeast)
    • Swansea ‑ Historic
      (25 miles [40.2 km] to the east)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Swansea have been provided by the GNIS.<1> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Swansea
      • Swansea is located in La Paz County
    • Utting
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the southeast)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Utting
      • Utting is located in La Paz County
  • Mohave County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Parker, with the one closest to Parker listed first.
    • Lake Havasu City
      (23 miles [37 km] to the north)
    • Desert Hills
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the north)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Desert Hills have been provided by the GNIS.<1> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Desert Hills
      • Desert Hills is located in Mohave County
  • San Bernardino County (CA)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Parker, with the one closest to Parker listed first.
    • Bluewater
      (Less than 2 miles to the northeast)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Bluewater have been provided by the GNIS.<1> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Bluewater
      • Bluewater is located in San Bernardino County (CA)
    • Earp
      (Less than 2 miles to the northwest)
    • Big River
      (4 miles [6.4 km] to the west)
    • Parker Dam
      (12 miles [19.3 km] to the northeast)
    • Vidal
      (12 miles [19.3 km] to the west)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Vidal have been provided by the GNIS.<1> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Vidal
      • Vidal is located in San Bernardino County (CA)
    • Havasu Palms
      (17 miles [27.4 km] to the north)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Havasu Palms
      • Havasu Palms is located in San Bernardino County (CA)
    • Havasu Lake
      (24 miles [38.6 km] to the north)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Havasu Lake
      • Havasu Lake is located in San Bernardino County (CA)

For an expanded list of the communities that are closest to Parker, see our County-by-County Page for Parker.

Newspapers Published in the Vicinity of Parker ...

An ongoing effort between the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has resulted in the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP).

To share their results, the partnership has created the Chronicling America website. The goal of this partnership is to assemble a database about the current and historic newspapers of the United States. This includes a growing collection of scanned images from selected papers. All of it available to the public on their website.

Using information that we've taken from the Chronicling America website, we've identified 35 newspapers that have been published in the area around Parker.

We have organized these newspapers into two lists:

  • A Local Newspaper List - focusing on the papers published in the immediate area of Parker. There are actually two parts to this list - papers printed in the immediate area of Parker and those printed in the larger area surrounding Parker.
  • An Extended Newspaper List - a longer list, sorted by paper name and containing those papers published within 23 miles [37 km]<3> of Parker.

Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...

When we do our genealogical research, we begin with the websites from Cyndi's List, FamilySearch and Genealogy Trails. These professional and volunteer websites offer the information directly or else point to where you can find it. Their information is open to everyone.

To help you get started, the following links will take you to the pages that are relevant to Parker:

Cemeteries Near Parker ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Parker.

This is a new section and is likely to have errors. If you find an error, such as a missing cemetery or we have the wrong name, please let us know. If you know of them, we would also appreciate learning about previous or alternate names.

If you need information about a burial or interment, photos, transcripts, how to contact the cemetery or local authorities, please visit our selection of Genealogy Websites (see below).

If not found below, our Cemetery List for Parker covers a larger area, with the cemeteries listed in alphabetical order.

The following cemeteries are listed based on their distance from Parker, with the one closest to Parker listed first.

We've also created an expanded list of communities that existed in the 1890's and were located in the area around Parker. See our List of 1890's Communities around Parker.

The official website for Parker: www.ci.parker.az.us/

The official website for La Paz County: www.co.la-paz.az.us/

The official website for State of Arizona: https://az.gov/

Footnotes ...

<1>The location has been supplied by the Geographic Names Information System - which is maintained by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). While these values should be definitive, we found that accuracy can vary and you should double-check the location if accuracy is required.
<2>While we're fans and frequent users of TripAdvisor, you should know that we're also members of the TripAdvisor affiliate program.
<3>Our distances are not driving distances, but are calculated as a 'point-to-point' distance. A straight line distance ignores obstructions like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line drawn from Point A (ie- Parker) to Point B.Our distance measurements begin at a specific point in Parker. The point we use is located at these GPS coordinates - Latitude: 34.1504, Longitude: -114.2891    
<4>The Find-a-Grave website is an excellent research tool with information about a cemetery's location and interments. They also offer a forum for their members which can provide additional help. More information about Find-a-Grave can be found on their website: findagrave.com.
<5>An 'estimated' location is one where we have been given GPS coordinates, but are unable to verify the accuracy of those coordinates. That said, we have some confidence that we have placed the marker near the actual location. A typical reason for being unable to verify a location is that it might be on private property or maybe historic and gone without an obvious trace.




 

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This page was last modified/updated: 07 Apr 2024