Rogue Columnist

Book break

I hate to do this, but with a deadline looming for my next novel I'm stepping away from Rogue Columnist until at least November. The exception might be if major news breaks. In the meantime, enjoy the archives and favorites, especially those on Phoenix history. Thanks for your support.

You may use this as an open thread for comments.

 

Death and life of Sunbelt cities

 

By Soleri

Guest Columnist

 

I hadn't been to Phoenix in several years, so my trip a couple of weeks ago was animated as much by curiosity as it was the desire to see old friends. I did know the city had more than recovered from the previous housing crash. Indeed, it was booming again. A dozen years ago, I predicted Phoenix would never recover from the crash. I don't like eating crow but if it's the sole item on the menu, so be it.

 

Much of what I did see made that crow taste better. Phoenix looked much healthier than when I moved to Portland in 2013.  The downtown had filled in with new high-rise apartment buildings and crowded clubs. The activity at night, in particular, was heartening to see.

 

What I didn't see were the thousands of "unhoused" mentally ill drug addicts who have turned much of Portland into a dystopian hellscape. Yes, street people were on the sidewalks of downtown Phoenix, but without the trash, tents, and drug paraphernalia that have so deeply damaged Portland. Phoenix is relatively litter-free and unmarred by graffiti.

 

Maybe it's the weather, or maybe it's because its political center of gravity is simply not in far-left field.

Grand Avenue

Grand Avenue never lived up to its splendid name. It continued as U.S. 60 from Van Buren Street northwest, picking up the companion Santa Fe Railway at 19th Avenue on the way to Wickenburg and eventually — in pre-Interstate days — to Los Angeles. Let's take a tour through the years. Click a photo for a larger image.

In 1892, this map shows Grand Avenue running to Glendale, Peoria, and beyond.

This 1915 map shows how Grand was the only street to break the ordinary street grid of Phoenix.

Grand near Lateral 4 near Thomas Road, looking southeast, in the 1930s (McCulloch Brothers Collection/ASU Archives).

The same location looking northwest in the 1940s (McCulloch Brothers Collection/ASU Archives).

Days of risk

Rogue Columnist attracts two distinct groups of readers. Those who want commentary ("a pen warmed up in hell") on politics, climate, current events, and Phoenix. The other is attracted to the history columns — and by far the most numerous clicking on the photo galleries. Today, I'll serve the first batch of readers.

As I write, Russian troops are massing on the borders of Ukraine and in response NATO is stepping up readiness, the United States has placed thousands of troops on "high alert," and, along with Britain, emptied out its embassies in Kyiv (Kiev), the Ukrainian capital.

At the risk of being labeled a Putin apologist, do we really want to go to war with Russia over Ukraine? I'm old enough to remember when every international challenge was seen through the lens of Munich, when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain appeased Hitler and sold out Czechoslovakia. Appeasement was justified as avoiding "a quarrel in a far away country, between people of whom we know nothing..." in Chamberlain's words. He thought he secured "peace in our time." Churchill knew better: "You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war."

This is not a Munich moment. Or is it — see the update.

More Valley towns

Another look at some of the distinct towns and villages of the Salt River Valley before the blob of sprawl consumed them. Click on a photo for a larger image:

Avondale:

Avondale street scene, 1946 (McCulloch Bros. Collection/ASU Archives).

Avondale Market and Schneider Drugs, 1945 (McCulloch Bros. Collection/ASU Archives).

Coldwater Drug Store featuring Phoenix's famous Donofrio's ice cream in the 1940s (Brad Hall collection).

The Avondale Southern Pacific depot, circa 1926 (Arizona Archives Online).
 

Buckeye:

Downtown Buckeye in the 1920s. Founded in 1888, it was originally named Sidney after the hometown of settler Malie Jackson. It was changed to Buckeye to honor his home state of Ohio (McCulloch Bros. Collection/ASU Archives).

Buckeye's Southern Pacific depot in an undated photo. The platform is for unloading boxcars. In 1926, completion of the SP Northern Main Line placed Buckeye on a transcontinental railroad.

Depression-era housing for cotton pickers in Buckeye.

Buckeye Union High School, built at Buckeye High School, built in 1921.

When Scottsdale was real

After I finished grade school at Kenilworth north of downtown Phoenix, we moved to Scottsdale (population 68,000) so I could attend Coronado High School. My mother was alarmed by news that a gang of teenagers had kicked a West High student nearly to death. I lucked out, going four years and graduating from one of the nation's best public secondary schools, with a superb fine arts program and academics. And I got to see Scottsdale before it became so rich and big and fake, Silicone Valley with its plastic surgery and a city limits reaching all the way to the Tonto National Forest.

Here's how "the West's Most Western Town" was in those decades. Most of the gallery is thanks to Brad Hall's collection. Click on a photo for a larger image:

Brown Avenue in the 1950s. Scottsdale's population was a little more than 2,000 in 1950.

The Lulu Belle at Scottsdale Road and Main Streets.

Main Street in the 1950s. It was much the same in the 1970s.

Year of living dangerously

Illustration by Carl Muecke

Everything that's good is at risk. Everything bad spreads and gets worse. 

It's difficult to avoid that conclusion, from my personal experience to the nation and the world. In Phoenix, Central Methodist Church — the "Mother of Arizona Methodism" for all the other congregations it established — is now just "Central Church." First it took away such comforting staples as the Apostles Creed, then ran out  the choir and excellent music program, shut the inspiring sanctuary and eliminated the traditional service with the glorious hymns — and has only a contemporary "Jesus, Java, and Jazz" service. I know all you smart agnostic and atheist readers don't care. I do.

The city keeps throwing down gravel and pavement, gutting shade trees, landscaping, and grass. It's ahistorical in the natural oasis of central Phoenix and adds to the deadly heat island. Newcomers lecture me that "we live in a desert" and "there's a drought." They don't care that investments in natural cooling such as shade trees keeps that water away from being wasted on more sprawl. I do.

And little indicates it will change in 2022. It will get worse. This is how we live now.

The art of American Eden

In the first half of the 20th century, the produce of the Salt River Valley traveled to customers in the east via refrigerated boxcars (reefers), iced before they left the Warehouse District packing houses and others in Glendale and Peoria, and along the route. But the wooden crates and later cardboard boxes were decorated with vivid illustrations that advertised the produce — and created a distinct art form. Almost all were done by anonymous artists.

Here is a sample. Click for a larger image: