Whatever happened to the historic canals of Phoenix?


If you're a history buff, like I am, and you look at old photos of Phoenix, Arizona, you know that one of the major features of the landscape was the canals. There are still a few canals left, such as Grand Canal and the Arizona Canal. But there was a time, only a few decades ago, when many of the old historic canals could still be seen. And by historic, I don't mean Hohokam, I mean those built by the pioneers in the 1870s and 80s.

The good news is that the historic canals are still there. The bad news is that they're all covered up. But if you have a little bit of the detective in you, a Google satellite view, and some patience, you can find them. And the reason they are still there has to do with the difference between bringing water into the valley and taking it away.

Phoenix pioneers like Jack Swilling dug canals to bring water from The Salt River into the valley in order to experiment with growing crops. It was a successful experiment! They named their new settlement "Phoenix" as they had seen that there had been a large city here at one time (the Hohokam) and, in a fit of poetic inspiration, they declared that their city would "rise from the ashes" of the ancient one.

By the 1880s, Phoenix had a lot of canals. In fact, if you look at maps of that era, it seems like it would be difficult to travel around without running into one. Eventually most of these canals were shut down, and the function of bringing water to Phoenix was mostly handled by the Arizona Canal.

The historic canals, such as The Maricopa Canal and the Salt River Valley Canal (Swilling's Ditch) were converted to storm drains. No, they're not sewers - they only flow rainwater off of the streets. They are now managed by the flood control district. It makes perfect sense - why fill in the old canals when they could be used as storm drains?

My favorite historic canal to visit is the Old Crosscut Canal. It still functions as a storm drain, but it also has a wonderful park built above it, running north to south from Indian School Road to McDowell at 40th Street. It was built in 1888 and "de-commissioned" as a canal in 1914. It was an open storm drain until the park was built in the 1990s - for over 80 years. Right now, on a beautiful morning like this, people are walking a few feet above one of the original historic canals of Phoenix. That's it up there in the photo when it was still a canal, and if you go there, turn around, look at Camelback Mountain, and time travel.
If you liked this article, and would like to see more, please consider becoming a patron of History Adventuring on Patreon. If you're already a patron, thank you! You make this happen!

 Click here to become a Patron!
History adventuring posts are shared there daily. The basic tier is a dollar a month, and the PhD tier, which includes "then and now" photos, billboards, aerials, videos, and super high-definition photos, is five dollars a month, and is discounted for seniors, veterans, and students.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the
Read more