The Colfax Chronicle

Admission of New States
Arizona and New Mexico Remaining Territories—When They are Admitted Alaska and District of Columbia Only Will Not be Included in States.
It is expected that the bill providing for the admission to the Union of the Territories of Arizona and New Mexico as separate States will be passed by the present Congress. It has already received the approval of the House of Representatives.
The bill under which Oklahoma came into the Union, which was passed in 1906, provided for the admission of Arizona and New Mexico as one State, if the people of the two Territories should vote to accept that plan. When it was submitted to them they rejected it by a decisive majority. Their preference for separate statehood is likely to be realized. When they are admitted to the Union, the District of Columbia will be the only part of "continental United States" not included in any State.
During the progress of the campaign for admission of the territories, many residents of Arizona urged the annexation to it of seven of the southern California counties with half a million population, and the formation of an independent State, to be called Calizona. They preferred this to union with New Mexico; but the plan came to nothing. The proposal for the separation of the southern and northern parts of California was not forgotten. Last year many citizens, dissatisfied with the treatment received by the southern part of the State, proposed that a new State be formed. There are other dissatisfied citizens in northern California and southern Oregon, and they also have proposed a new State, and have gone so far as to call a convention to meet at Yreka, California, on March 15th, to discuss the matter.
There have not been the only propositions of the sort. In 1903 members of the legislature of North Dakota and Montana met in conference in Glendive to discuss the creation of a new State out of the eastern part of Montana and the western part of North Dakota. A few years ago influential residents of Long Island seriously considered a plan to have the island separated from New York and admitted as a State. But such schemes do not pass beyond the stage of discussion. Virginia is the only State that has been divided since 1820, when the district of Maine was set off from Massachusetts. That last division (of Virginia) took place during the Civil War.