Typepad, which hosts Rogue Columnist, has a bug that causes photos to disappear from galleries. Usually you can still click on the empty space and see it. I try to keep up and restore the pictures. Typepad assures me that it's working to remedy the problem. For now, thanks for your patience.
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Cars, 138-year-old technology.
A reader writes:
WBIYB, very true.
However..........AZ republicans are behaving like fanatical religious groups found in the middle east, whose only goal is to end public transit, if not in their lifetime maybe the life time of their great grandchildren.
What in the hell drives these nut jobs nutty about public transportation???
I will attempt to explain, although for regular readers this is familiar ground. In 2004, Maricopa County voters approved Proposition 400. It assessed a half-cent sales tax for 20 years to build new freeways, widen existing ones, expand highways and arterial streets, and fund transit. Of the total, 33.5% was intended for transit. Headlines in the Arizona Republic often use shorthand in headlines calling it "a transit tax," when it's really a transportation tax.
Legislative Republicans would have preferred to use the highly regressive sales tax exclusively for cars. But voters felt otherwise. The real hot button for Republicans was light rail, a modern technology and concept that was little understood by most in metropolitan Phoenix.
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Before the Sanctuary, Boulders, or Phoenician, the city embraced a tourist experience beyond the hotels downtown, motels along the highways, or dude ranches. They were resorts offering amenities that couldn't be found elsewhere in the Southwest. First came the Arizona Biltmore (above) in February 1929, months before the big stock-market crash. Next, during the Great Depression, was the Camelback Inn in 1936, financed by John C. Lincoln and Jack Bell Stewart.
All fed into a reviving economy, location on a transcontinental railroad, and the Chamber of Commerce's "Valley of the Sun" tourism campaign. Contrary to urban legend, the Biltmore wasn't the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, but rather his student, Albert Chase McArthur. McArthur paid Frank Lloyd Wright $10,000 to use his patented block design, (but it turned out Wright didn't actually own the patent). Soon, William Wrigley Jr. bought the resort and built the famous mansion on a nearby butte.
Let's take a tour. Because TypePad, which hosts Rogue Columnist, is buggy on photos, I'm going to bunch out the gallery, below, without captions. You'll see the Biltmore — including its pre-construction site — Camelback Inn, Royal Palms, Chandler's San Marcos, and the Wigwam near Litchfield Park. Hope you enjoy. Click on a photo for a larger image.
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Midcentury Phoenix was remade by the automobile age. One of the keystones was drive-in restaurants. Sit in the car and eat. Or sit on benches. Drive-ins were essential to the tradition of Cruising Central — an essential way for teenagers from different high schools to meet each other and find new steadies.
Regular readers know that the McDonald's at Central Avenue just south of Indian School (above) was the first franchise location outside of California and the first with Golden Arches. Opened in 1954, it was the only McDonald's location in Phoenix for years.
Let's visit a few, from the 1930s to the 1960s.
The Coffee Pot Drive-In at Seventh Street and McDowell in the 1930s.
The Village Inn at two-lane Central and Thomas in the 1940s.
Gizmo at 13th Street and McDowell Road in the late '40s. Not much business when this photo was taken.
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The A.C. Redewill House, built in 1914, in the Willo Historic District after a rainstorm rolled through leaving clear blue sky. We lived there in the 2000s.
In a city better known for tearing down its heritage, including the irreplaceable Fox Theater, some precious victories have been won. Among them: the Orpheum Theater, Professional Building, Luhrs Tower and Luhrs Building, and — for now, at least — Union Station.
But some of the best preservation victories are the Historic Districts, 35 in all as of 2023, and rebranded as Historic Neighborhoods. And most of them are: distinctive, authentic, walkable, rich in history. The earliest began as a response to the Papago Freeway Inner Loop. Its construction required the demolition of 3,000 houses, many irreplaceable historic dwellings.
Even with the concessions of running the freeway underground from Third Avenue to Third Street, the coming of the Papago put everything from Roosevelt Street to McDowell Road at risk. From Thomas to Roosevelt and Central to 15th Avenue was once a continuous neighborhood. Only Palmcroft had a name. But the freeway cut it in half and people wondered if blight would spread as far north as Thomas.
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If only. I think Trump will get away with it.
But this week I want to write about the future of Rogue Columnist. When I began the blog in 2008, my primary mission was to write about the issues and news with perspective and context that no one else provided. Also, I wanted to write about Phoenix history that wasn't easily available elsewhere. This was strictly pro bono — no charge to readers and no ads on the site itself.
The history essays are most popular, especially the ones with photo galleries.
Otherwise, I've written on issues large and small. And I have to bring a big barrel of humility here: Not a damned thing has changed. Or what was bad has gotten worse.
Climate change, sprawl, gravel, pavement, freeways, underfunded education, chopped down shade trees, impasse at the border, morally bankrupt politicians, the GOP's stranglehold on the Legislature — all have grown like kudzu in the desert. The Real Estate Industrial Complex continues its dominance on Phoenix. And the nation is more divided than any time since the eve of the Civil War.
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Old Phoenix had busses, too — kisses. But as for transit on wheels or intercity travel, it had those, too, spelled right. Click on the photo for a larger image:
The "Hellzapoppin" group arrives in Phoenix by bus for the Rodeo of Rodeos in 1939 (McCulloch Bros. Collection/ASU Archives).
The Greyhound Bus Depot at 29 E. Jefferson in the 1940s (McCulloch Bros. Collection/ASU Archives).
The Santa Fe Trailways bus depot on Jefferson in 1944 with the Pantry Cafe and Jack's Liquors. The Santa Fe Railway operated this subsidiary to compete against intercity buses, which were cutting into its ridership (McCulloch Bros. Collection/ASU Archives).
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One of the many lies the boosters tell is that Arizona is a youthful state. Yet according to the U.S. Census Bureau, 18.3% of the state's residents are 65 years or older. That compares with 16.8% nationally and — among peer Western states, 15% for Colorado, 16% for Washington, yet surprisingly 18% for Oregon (home of Portland, "where young people go to retire").
Either way you slice the baloney, Arizona is a state with a sizable cohort of older people. It's not surprising. Since 1960, when Del Webb built his pioneering Sun City development west of the Santa Fe Railway tracks and Grand Avenue northwest of Phoenix, Arizona has marketed itself to retirees.
One of our long-lost commenters — I believe it was Concern Troll — made the point that a huge piece of the state economy is dependent on retirees, including their Social Security and pension checks, and the vast system of hospitals, medical workers, and caregivers who serve them.
According to the Social Security Administration, nearly $1 billion was dispersed in Arizona in 2021, the latest data available (Thanks, Rich Weinroth for the catch). The average monthly check is modest: 574.76. And not all this goes to seniors. Still...
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The Morenci mine in eastern Arizona, with one of the largest copper reserves in the world. It's owned by Freeport-McMoRan, formerly Phelps Dodge (Tom Blackwell photo).
One of the misbegotten efforts to revive downtown Phoenix in the early 2000s was to rename it. "Copper Square" was the monicker chosen on the, er, thinking that people in the metropolitan area didn't even know where the city's downtown was. Phoenix had nothing to do with copper — aside from the low dome of the Territorial Capitol and an occasional freight car going through with equipment to the mines — and thankfully the name went away.
But the story was far different for Arizona. Copper was one of the "Five Cs," along with cotton, citrus, cattle, and climate and for decades the most profitable. Arizona has by far the largest concentration of copper deposits in the nation — including Butte, Montana — and second only to southern Peru and northern Chile. Copper mining also produces such byproducts as gold, silver, and molybdenum.
Arizona is the only state with an elected Mining Inspector. His office estimates more than 100,000 abandoned mines dot the state. About 10 major copper mines remain today, with controversy over efforts to start the Resolution Mine near Superior.
No wonder the Grand Canyon State is also the Copper State.
Let's take a tour through the years (click for a larger image):
Jerome, a classic mining town, on Cleopatra Hill in the 1930s (Library of Congress).
The United Verde Mine in Jerome produced 2 billion pounds of copper, silver, and gold from the 1880s to 1953 (Library of Congress).
An ore train passes through Jerome's Hopewell Tunnel circa 1920s (Library of Congress).
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