7 Things Arizonans and Californians Will Never Agree On

Clocks in California fell back last Sunday. But in most of Arizona, they didn’t move.

Arizonans and Californians share a border, and they still can’t agree on what time it is.

Here are the things Arizonans and Californians will never agree on.

Note: This is general information, not legal or tax advice. Laws and tax rates are subject to change.

1. Colorado River Water

Colorado River water kept Arizona and California in a 25-year dispute until the U.S. Supreme Court settled it in 1963.

The justices rejected California’s arguments.

They ruled that prior appropriation, the rule that gives the oldest claim first call on water, didn’t apply to the shares of the lower Colorado River basin.

If you’re keeping score, California still came away with the bigger share.

Of the lower basin’s 7.5 million acre-feet a year, California gets 4.4 million, Arizona gets 2.8 million, and Nevada gets 0.3 million.

Congress authorized the Central Arizona Project in 1968.

That law also put the project’s water supply behind California’s share when water runs short.

2. Plastic Bags at Checkout

Plastic bags at checkout follow two opposite rulebooks, depending on which side of the state line you shop.

California’s statewide law bars covered stores from handing you a single-use plastic carryout bag.

If you want a paper bag, stores must charge at least 10 cents for it.

California stores also can’t require you to buy a bag.

Arizona goes the other direction.

Arizona’s state law bars cities and towns from taxing, charging for or regulating disposable and reusable bags.

If you’re hauling groceries across the state line, keep a few tote bags in your trunk.

3. Daylight Saving Time

Daylight saving time ends at 2 a.m. on the first Sunday of November, but your clock stays put in most of Arizona.

Arizona shares that choice with Hawaii and several U.S. territories.

The Navajo Nation is the exception in parts of Arizona, since it does observe daylight saving time.

California voters passed Proposition 7 in 2018, which lets lawmakers pick year-round daylight saving time with a two-thirds vote.

The catch is federal law, which has to change before you can keep daylight saving time all year in California.

As of October 2026, the House-passed Sunshine Protection Act has stalled in the Senate.

So California falls back anyway.

4. Summer Heat

Summer heat gives each state a number to point to.

Furnace Creek in California’s Death Valley hit 134°F on July 10, 1913, the world record for the highest air temperature.

Phoenix has a streak to point to: 31 consecutive days of 110-degree highs in 2023.

That streak beat the previous mark of 18 straight days, set in 1974.

Many people on both sides of the state line will keep arguing over whose summer is worse.

If you’ve spent a July in either state, you already have an opinion.

5. Spring Training

Spring training sends the Dodgers, Angels, Giants and Padres out of California and into Arizona each year.

The Dodgers work out in Glendale, the Angels in Tempe, the Giants in Scottsdale and the Padres in Peoria.

All four train in the Cactus League, which has 15 Major League teams and 10 ballparks.

Then they head home.

The Dodgers and Giants carried their rivalry from New York to California after the 1957 season.

The Arizona Diamondbacks play in the same division as the Dodgers, Giants and Padres.

If you follow the National League West, you can find the Diamondbacks’ three California rivals in Arizona every spring.

6. Grand Canyon or Yosemite

Grand Canyon National Park is in Arizona, and it covers 278 miles of the Colorado River and the land beside it.

The canyon itself is a mile deep.

Arizona has three national parks in all: Grand Canyon, Petrified Forest and Saguaro.

Yosemite National Park counters with Yosemite Falls, which drops 2,425 feet in three separate falls.

If you’re chasing the falls at full strength, plan your trip for May or June, when peak runoff typically happens.

California’s national parks include Yosemite, Death Valley, Joshua Tree and Channel Islands, among others.

7. Gas Taxes

Gas taxes add a different amount to your fill-up on each side of the state line.

Arizona's state tax on motor vehicle fuel is 18 cents a gallon.

California's rate rose to 63.4 cents a gallon on July 1, 2026, up from 61.2 cents a year earlier.

That leaves a gap of 45.4 cents a gallon between the two states.

On a 15-gallon fill-up, you'd pay about $6.81 more in state tax in California than in Arizona.

If you fill up twice a month for a year, that gap comes to about $163.

Route 66

If you trace Route 66 across the map, you'll find it ran through Arizona's mesa lands and on to the Mojave Desert and Los Angeles.

The highway stretched 2,400 miles across two-thirds of the continent.

Its official beginnings date to 1926, when the Bureau of Public Roads launched the nation's first federal highway system.