Imagining living in Phoenix back when it was small


Very often when I post a photo that shows Phoenix back when the population was very small, I see comments that people wish that they could go back to that time and place. I understand, and I agree.

Of course, you can go back to that time with me, in our imaginations, with what I call "history adventuring" here on my blog. I have a lot of old photos, and what strikes me the most is the wide-open space, which of course has all been filled up nowadays. And I like wide-open spaces. But those type of spaces are still there, and I visit them, IRL (In Real Life) as often as I can.

When you get out on the Arizona Highways, you get a feeling of just how huge and empty Arizona really is. I've often gone past places in the desert, and seen a small amount of buildings scattered there and wondered, "What are they doing there?" Of course, they could be retired, and enjoying the scenery, but my experience is if they're young they're hoping that the area will grow, that their community will prosper.

And that's really what happened with Phoenix. It wasn't all that long ago that you'd wonder "What are they doing there?" When John C. Lincoln built the Camelback Inn, back in the 1930s, way out in the middle of nowhere, north of Camelback Mountain, in Paradise Valley, it had to be seen as kind of a crazy waste of money. I suppose he envisioned a day when the area would be prosperous, when it wouldn't have been unusual to hear the clink of champagne glasses out there in the desert. He was right.

But mostly that didn't happen to the thousands of hopeful communities in Arizona. Most of them remain small to this day, with wide open spaces around them. When I visit those places I always feel kinda sad to see the note of optimism there, as they're always the "gateway to somewhere" or "the fastest growing town in the west", but of course it's just a place out in the middle of the desert. You can see tumbleweeds rolling past real estate signs, and hear the desert wind whistling.
History Adventuring on Patreon

 Click here to become a Patron!

Comments

  1. UnknownDecember 7, 2019 at 11:02 PM

    Actually, Camelback Inn was built, ran, and owned by Jack Stewart, along with some investors in 1936. He was only 32 years old and a real visionary. He sold the hotel in 1967 to Marriott who had been a frequent visitor to the Inn.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Brad HallDecember 8, 2019 at 6:23 AM

      Yep! John put up the money, which must have sounded pretty crazy to his friends at the time! Jack must have been a pretty convincing guy!

      Delete

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