Rogue Columnist

When the river ran free

The Salt River flows without the impediment of upstream dams, pre-1911 (Tempe History Museum).

The first settlers to the region found a Salt River running as it had for millennia, free from its headwaters in the White Mountains to the northeast 200 miles to its meeting with the Gila River southwest of modern Phoenix.

The river had sustained the most advanced irrigation civilization in the pre-Columbian New World, although mysteriously gone for 500 years. The River brought not only with water, but also some of the planet's richest alluvial soil to its valley. Anything would grow here. These pioneers, especially Jack Swilling who saw the potential of the abandoned Hohokam canals and hired miners from Wickenburg to clean them out, hoped it would do the same for them.

There was, however, a catch. The Salt was a fickle river. It could run at a healthy flow much of the year, then turn nearly dry at the height of summer, interspersed with floods that destroyed the primitive diversion dams and irrigation systems of the pioneers. Archaeologists estimate that great floods had occurred on the river for two million years.

Floods hit in 1880, 1884, 1886, and 1889. The 1890s, when my family arrived, were particularly tough years. Against a backdrop of national "panics" (financial recessions), the Salt River rampaged and nearly dried up. The 1890 flood was followed a year later by a monster that breached its banks by miles, nearly reaching the Phoenix townsite and inundating crops.

The pioneers began to wonder if they would go the way of the Hohokam.

Signs and wonders

The media love to fixate on the "bathtub ring" of a diminishing Lake Mead. America's largest reservoir, contained by Hoover Dam, is at its lowest level since it first filled in the late 1930s. It's a potent sign of climate change. So is the expected string of record heat broiling central Arizona this week.

It makes me wonder, though. In 1960, Phoenix had a population of 439,170. The city encompassed 185 square miles. Importantly, it was entirely watered by the dams of the Salt River Project, providing a renewable source from snow runoff in watersheds that ran from the Coconino Plateau to the New Mexico border.

Looking back, that was probably peak sustainability for Phoenix. It looked like this:

Washington through the years

No east-west street was more important to early Phoenix than the one named after our first president. It carried streetcars, was the heart of the business district, held important buildings, and was movie-theater row. Washington remains the north-south dividing line for street addresses (Central is east-west). Let's take a tour through time.

1901: A dusty road with horses and mule-drawn streetcars.

1904: The Indian and Cowboy Carnival Parade.

1905: At First Street looking west.

The data center hustle

Data centers becoming dominant force in Mesa," reads the headline on a recent East Valley Tribune story. The lede: "It may never rival Silicon Valley, but Mesa is fast becoming Data Center Alley." 

This "Alley" isn't transforming struggling west Mesa and it's nowhere near the light-rail line. Instead, it's centered on the "Elliott Avenue Technology Corridor" in far southeast Mesa, the location of agriculture, desert, and the former Williams Air Force Base. Now, with abundant concrete, gravel, and asphalt, it will expand the increasingly dangerous Phoenix urban heat island. The "Corridor" is entirely car dependent.

Data centers are lowest on the ladder of the tech economy: necessary, but bringing few jobs — much less high-end jobs — and several headaches. This is why they are usually found in rural areas desperate to replace their lost millwork, manufacturing, or railroad jobs. States and localities shell out huge incentives and disappointment follows.

But to see the proliferation of data centers in a city the size of Mesa (518,000 in 2019), in the 10th most populous metropolitan area in the nation, is curious.

Duke and more Ponzi dreams

The news from my old 'hood is the pending demise of the Duke Photography building on the southwest corner of Seventh Street and Thomas. The Arizona Republic reported the building is set to be demolished and a Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers drive-thru built on the site. Duke is moving to the First Federal Building on Central in Midtown, taking its sign with it.

This is wrong for so many reasons, no wonder nearby neighborhood associations are opposing it ahead of a June 17th virtual public hearing. One big concern is increased traffic, including dangerous turns on Seventh, which has been widened and had "suicide lanes" added for rush hour. A Kentucky Fried Chicken drive-thru on the northwest corner already causes collisions.

Beyond that, while the building is modest it fits into the remaining fabric of the streetscape. The Raising Cane would be another soulless off-the-shelf building, made for cars not for pedestrians. If the company really wanted to be a good neighbor, as it claims, it would build something appropriate to the nearby historic districts. Too many losses have already been allowed, notably the replacement of John Sing Tang's iconic Helsing's at Central and Osborn — right up to the street — by a Walgreens, set back by a surface parking lot and surrounded by a low wall, gravel, and rocks.

Downtown's pivotal 1970s

Between the long series of civic missteps that murdered downtown Phoenix and its recent rebirth of sorts, the 1970s loom large. As the decade began — shown in the photo above — much of corporate Arizona and the energy of the city had shifted to Midtown. 

The city opened the brutalist Phoenix Civic Plaza (so named because the Phoenix Civic Center was at Central and McDowell with the library, art museum, and "little theater"). The new complex offered a convention center, Symphony Hall, and sun-blasted open space. It was intended to revive downtown, but its "super blocks" destroyed the fine-grained, human-scale of the old urban fabric, including much of the Deuce. That fabric was characterized by eight or nine steps between doorways to shops or offices shaded by awnings.

Walter Bimson of Valley National Bank gave downtown a vote of confidence, insisting the new headquarters tower be build there rather than at Central and Osborn. The other big banks followed. Two new hotels were also built. But it was a catastrophic 10 years for historic preservation. The gallery below tells some of the story. Click on a photo for a larger image.

A rendering of Phoenix Civic Plaza. The shade trees in the foreground of Symphony Hall never happened, leaving an uninviting frying pan. It did show the concert hall's signature lobby chandeliers to advantage, lost now to the new Convention Center.

Arizona putsch

Carl Muecke illustration

If you've been following the daily links here on Phoenix and Arizona news (left), you know the GOP-controlled state Senate is conducting an "audit" of Maricopa County's 2020 presidential votes. It was here that President Biden pulled out his narrow victory.

As the Washington Post reported, the review "has been undertaken using an opaque, often inscrutable process, outside of the close view of objective third parties and with the assistance of obviously motivated actors, such as a former legislator who was at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6." Republicans now say 40,000 ballots were flown in, including from Asia written on bamboo. I am not making this up.

The most obvious insular lesson is that Arizona's status as a blue or purple state is unsettled as long as the Republicans control the Legislature, the most powerful branch of state government.

But what's happening here has profound national implications, too. Amid a push in Georgia, Florida, Texas, and other states to suppress voting, Arizona is taking it a step further. If an election's outcome is not what the GOP apparatchiks desire, the Legislature will intervene post facto. The goal is to overturn the result or, failing that, sow doubt about the election's legitimacy. Never mind that this was the election that put these lawmakers in office, too. Meanwhile, the GOP raises money and keeps the base ginned up for the critical 2022 mid-terms.

We can't have a functioning experiment in self-governance if the losing side refuses to accept the results of elections. John Adams was angry over the 1800 election but he peacefully transferred power to his bitter rival (and former and later dear friend) Thomas Jefferson. This path leads to civil war. Discuss.

 

 

Early Phoenix mapped

One of the most interesting sources of information on early Phoenix can be found on the Library of Congress' Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps. The Sanborn Map Co. produced detailed maps of 12,000 U.S. cities and towns, detailing not only buildings but in many their construction materials so insurers could assess their risks.

Below I have some views of Phoenix, one in 1911 and the remainder from 1949, focused on Union Station and the Warehouse District. Click for a larger image.