How to find Cactus Way in modern downtown Phoenix


If you lived in Phoenix during territorial times, you knew where Cactus Way was, halfway between Center (now Central Avenue) and Montezuma (now 1st Street).  it was also called Cactus Alley. No, it was never on any maps, but the gigantic scale of Phoenix as platted by William Hancock in 1870 meant that even the alleys were as big as many city city streets at the time. By the way, there was also Wall Street, and Melinda's Alley, also never on maps.

Loring's Bazar in the 1880s. You're looking west on Washington towards Central, at Cactus Way.

Cactus Way is where George Loring had his place of business, which he called Loring's Bazar (yes, he misspelled it that way). When the Ellingson building was built there, after Loring's building was gone (it was just adobe, anyway), it was the original location of Donofrio's. There used to be a plaque on that building, but when the building was torn down it went into storage, and is now at the Arizona Historical Society in Tempe.

Donofrio's Cactus Candy in the Ellingson Building in 1917. You're looking west on Washington towards Central, at Cactus Way.

1920 ad for Donofrio's Cactus Candy. Note the address: Cactus Way and Washington.

As a place of historical importance in Phoenix, Cactus Way is pretty darned important. Not only was Loring's Bazar the first Post Office, and the first Wells Fargo Station, Donofrio's in the Ellingson Building was pretty cool, too. Unfortunately, it has been mostly forgotten.


No, it's not a conspiracy, man. Phoenix just moves on. Time goes by, and people forget. There's a parking garage there, which is pretty darned useful if you work downtown! People drive past one of the most important historic places in Phoenix all of the time, and they don't know. Putting the plaque back up there would be nice.

Washington between Central and 1st Street. The entrance to the parking garage is exactly where Cactus Way was.

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