John,
When I look at the peaks climbed for a person for AZ, UT, and perhaps other states (I didn't check them all), the order of the peaks is a weird pattern that starts out with some peaks in prominence order, then settles into elevation order instead of all being in strictly elevation order, e.g.
http://listsofjohn.com/PeakStats/statea ... rianR&s=AZ
It's easy to see with mine since most of my AZ peaks are low prominence, but seems to be the case for everyone. Same for UT, but I don't have any peaks there.