The Arizona Department of Health Services has placed digital copies of their original records online. This collection includes death records from 1870 through 1963.
The earliest death record in this collection appears to be that of Henry Jenkins who died in Apache County of a gunshot wound – the date of his death is recorded as “bet. 1870 & 1890” His death was not recorded until at least 1930 based on the form used.
There are quite a few data entry errors in the index, particularly for deaths in 1961 and 1962; many of these have incomplete birth and death dates in the index but the dates are clearly entered on the certificates. If you make a search by date, these entries will be at the beginning of your results and should not be overlooked even though they may appear more like computer gibberish than actual index entries.