Washington Street in Phoenix, 1890. The trees and adobe buildings of 1870 were mostly gone from this view.
My grandmother, Sarah Ella Darrow, was born in 1889 in the Chickasaw Nation, Cumberland, Indian Territory. Her parents had come to I.T., as the postal address read for today's eastern Oklahoma, as Presbyterian missionaries. Then they ran a small store.
Earlier, on the Texas frontier, her mother (my great-grandmother), Emma Caroline Hulse, had been scalped as a baby during a Comanche attack after troops were withdrawn for the Civil War — she survived and went on to marry my great-grandfather, Francis Marion Darrow who hailed from the Midwest.
Indian Territory, home of the Five Civilized Tribes, was fine country for farming and timber, well watered, with growing towns and new railroads. But whites couldn't own land and that was Darrow's dream. The Chickasaw governor (chief) loved my great-grandfather and wanted to adopt him (thus putting him on "the rolls" as a tribal member), but Darrow declined. Then the store and their home were destroyed by a tornado, with one daughter killed.
They went west, to Arizona, to the Salt River Valley. They and hundreds like them came for relatively cheap land and good farming. Like much of the West, Phoenix was heavily publicized to draw settlers. One thing was even true: This was one of the world's great alluvial valleys, fanning out in mostly flat, irrigable land from a river that flowed year-round, or so it seemed.
Here the Hohokam had created the most advanced irrigation system in the New World, with at least 200 miles of canals, before that civilization faded. The Pima, likely the descendants of the Hohokam, had moved south to the Gila River and beyond, partly to escape raids by the Apache.
In the late 1850s, Charles Trumbull Hayden noticed this vast, mysterious valley with its tree-lined river while hauling freight to Tucson. He would be back. He would name his son Carl.
By the 1890s, the phoenix was stirring from the ashes. The Apache had been subdued by the U.S. Cavalry. Thousands of acres were under cultivation, especially for wheat, barley and fruit trees. Anything would grow in this soil, provided water was added. The project of clearing out and extending the old Hohokam Canals was well along by then. Phoenix as a settlement was more than 20 years old.
The first railroad had arrived on Independence Day, 1887. In 1890, the Census Bureau declared the American frontier closed. By the time my family arrived, the chance to start fresh and live the Jeffersonian dream of yeoman farmer was fading most places. Not here.
Looking east along Melinda's Alley, near First Street and Monroe in the 1890s.
It had been more than 25 years since Jack Swilling, a former Confederate officer, began cutting hay in the valley to sell to the cavalry at Camp McDowell on the Verde River. Most of the westward migration into the wilderness of Arizona Territory was drawn to the more established town of Tucson or to the mining districts, especially around the territorial capital of Prescott. Like Hayden, with whom he would do business, Swilling was drawn to the river valley. In addition to cutting hay, he grew corn, barley and wheat near today's 32nd Street and Van Buren. With the Swilling Irrigating Canal Co., he began cleaning out and using the Hohokan canals.
A cohort of pioneers, opportunists and misfits followed. Phoenix, named by "Lord" Darrell Duppa, was assigned a post office in 1869, with Swilling as postmaster. In 1870, a new townsite was laid out three miles west of the original settlement and in the first auction 61 lots were sold. Flour mills were among the first larger businesses. By 1872, Phoenix boasted two saloons and a bakery, four stores, a hotel, law office and Methodist church. Shade trees lined a dusty Washington street. Hayden's Ferry, which would become Tempe, had been established slightly before Phoenix. Mormon pioneers began settling Lehi/Mesa in 1877.
By the 1890s, when my family arrived, Phoenix was a thriving town of more than 3,000 people. But this would be the decade that nearly killed the towns of the Salt River Valley (and it did take my great-grandfather's life). First came a record flood in 1891 destroying crops and canals, followed by more than a decade of drought. Nationally, a depression lingered through much of those years. Phoenix now had railroads to haul its agricultural commodities to new markets, but credit was difficult to obtain. People began to leave. Fields fell fallow. It seemed as if a repeat of the Hohokam calamity was at hand.
Phoenix was saved by the Newlands Act, passed by Congress in 1902 and a president in Theodore Roosevelt, who saw himself as a Westerner and was fascinated by the idea of reclamation.
The first fruit of the Newlands Act was Theodore Roosevelt Dam, completed in 1911. More dams and modern canals followed. The Americans possessed technology that the Hohokam had lacked. The territory's center of gravity started shifting unstoppably to Phoenix. It didn't have copper or silver, nor did it enjoy the historic primacy of a presidio and trade center as did Tucson and Tubac. Phoenix possessed the most valuable treasure in the desert: Water.
Agriculture and its associated industries, along with the railroads, made Phoenix multicultural from the start. Along with Indians and Mexicans, came Chinese, Japanese, Greeks and Middle Easterners, notably the Basha family. The Greeks cornered the restaurant trade. The rise of cotton farming attracted African Americans from Texas and Mississippi. With its Southern heritage, Phoenix was a white supremacy town, but not as harshly as in the true South. As it grew, it was both a trade center and wide-open place to relax for cowboys and miners. Jacob Waltz (of the Lost Dutchman gold mine) died in Phoenix.
By 1909, Center Street (Central) was graced by the fanciest hotel in the state, the Hotel Adams. It would burn a year later and was replaced by a five-story reinforced concrete building. That building lasted until the early 1970s and was replaced by yet another.
Even with water assured, life was very hard. Air conditioning had yet to arrive, even in the form of swamp coolers. Helen Humphreys Seargeant's evocative The House by the Buckeye Road is the best memoir of these years.
While the richest farmers could send their families to California or Iron Springs in the summer, most people suffered through the heat. For all the aspirations of Phoenix's Victorian and brick buildings, farm work was horrendously difficult, irrigation a tricky technique and the valley consisting of many microclimates and soils that challenged, and often ruined, farmers.
When Oklahoma became a state in 1907, my great uncle, Charles Rector Darrow, left Arizona to become a farmer in a less harsh place. My great-grandmother stayed, remarried Jackson Thomas and lived until 1944, long enough to see the desert bloom, the Phoenix rise and more.
By the 1920s with a transcontinental railroad line, Phoenix was selling itself as a winter resort. Trains pulling Pullman sleeper cars would deposit tourists at Union Station. Resorts were established and dude ranches experienced some years of popularity.
With dry, clean air, Phoenix for decades became a magnet for people with respiratory ailments. Later, millions would come for the climate, the sunshine, new houses in subdivisions, championship golf. It would become a megalopolis where people turn on the water without a second thought or worry, where air conditioning keeps the rising heat at bay.
Agriculture has been pushed toward extinction and doesn't figure in the daily lives of Phoenicians. Today, no one asks why people come there other than as a commentary on the city's problems and limitations.
It was not always that way.
Around 1880, an elderly Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman was traveling on the Southern Pacific Railroad when his train was met at Maricopa by a delegation of Phoenix boosters.
Among them was Capt. William Hancock, one of Phoenix's pioneers and probably more of an actual town-builder than his friend Swilling. Sherman exclaimed, "What a hell of a country!" Hancock said, "Why General, it is not such a bad country; we have to the north a rich agricultural valley and mines. Possibly Arizona is a bit warm, but all she needs is more water and better immigration." Said Sherman, "Huh! Less heat! More water! Better society! That’s all hell needs!"
An ad from 1885 before railroads reached Phoenix (Brad Hall Collection).
Transportation in 1888 (Brad Hall Collection).
RELATED: More Early Phoenix 3.
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My book, A Brief History of Phoenix, is available to buy or order at your local independent bookstore, or from Amazon.
Read more Phoenix history in Rogue's Phoenix 101 archive.
Mr. Talton wrote: Said Sherman, "Huh! Less heat! More water! Better society! That’s all hell needs!"
Cackle!
Posted by: Emil Pulsifer | April 16, 2013 at 08:28 PM
Five generations ago, Mexicans killed and scalped Whites and Indians. Indians killed and scalped Whites and Mexicans. Whites killed and scalped Mexicans and Indians.
Now we kill each other with drones and pressure cookers.
With progress like that, I'm really expecting big things from these creatures called humans.
Posted by: Ruben A. Perez | April 16, 2013 at 09:26 PM
"manunkind"
Posted by: cal Lash | April 16, 2013 at 10:58 PM
FWIW - maybe this'll help some, Reb.
The Good Outnumber You And We Always Will
If not, maybe this is more to your tastes:
Always Look On The Bright Side of Life
Posted by: Petro | April 17, 2013 at 10:38 AM
Ruben Perez wrote: "With progress like that, I'm really expecting big things from these creatures called humans."
I once knew someone who hated papayas. Every time he saw any kind of ad with papayas, or a salad on a menu mentioning papayas, he displayed a spasm of irritated disgust. Years later, it transpired that what he had thought was "papayas" was actually something called "durian". Someone had once served him some cut up in a dish on a trip abroad, and called them "papayas" because durian was all that was available but "papayas" sounded more appealing to visitors.
Posted by: Emil Pulsifer | April 17, 2013 at 11:30 AM
Forgive the unsophisticated comment, but I came in 1969 for career opportunity, more salubrious lifestyle, more fewer allergies and better air. The latter two hopes were dashed by the mid-80's. After boo coo skin cancer surgeries and now radiation, I've turned into a daytime hermit when possible.
My neighbors came for the lifestyle and the golf and the backyard pool, roosting largely with birds of the same feather. Rogue has written about all the above with great insight.
Posted by: morecleanair | April 17, 2013 at 12:34 PM
Apparently the Obama administration is floating the idea of selling the TVA. Of course, Republicans are outraged because socialism that helps white people is capitalism. Or something like that. At any rate, this might be the key to unlocking gridlock in DC. Propose something they're supposed to like so they might instead sing the Internationale and wear Birkenstocks.
http://news.yahoo.com/role-reversal-gop-blasts-obama-070717351.html
I'm not sure if selling SRP would elicit the same howls of outrage among our faux-free market types. Millions of us live in this "valley" because of a successful exercise in socialism by Teddy Roosevelt (just as millions are kept alive by the socialist experiment called Medicare, thanks to LBJ). We used socialism to bring in Colorado River water. And now that our single-most important industry is housebuilding, we're mostly in favor of keeping federal guarantees afloat for home buyers.
We're here because someone saw a possibility that only government could underwrite. Yes, it's a lovely paradox that geezers on Medicare and SS scorn the government only when it helps "those people" but here we are. There's not much rope left to hang ourselves with and that noose is already nice and snug. Maybe we could build some more socialist freeways before the socialized housing industry collapses around the remains of our militarized Keynesianism.
Posted by: soleri | April 17, 2013 at 04:04 PM
We were on our way to So. California in 1950 when we ran out of money in Phoenix. The population had just passed 100K.
Like Jon, I miss the old Phoenix.
Posted by: bearsense | April 17, 2013 at 07:58 PM
It snowed in Sunnyslope one day in January 1950
Posted by: cal Lash | April 17, 2013 at 08:53 PM
Why they will leave?
Posted by: cal Lash | April 18, 2013 at 11:19 AM
I found a nice shard of Salado Red pottery in 1981 as I was walking along Southern Ave about a quarter mile west of Mill.
The metaphor that time and circumstance had presented me with was not lost upon me.
Posted by: headless lucy | April 18, 2013 at 12:49 PM
One set of grandparents, both raised in Texas, met in Douglas, 1907 (he worked for Roy & Titcomb Mining Supply) married and settled in Nogales, Arizona Territory, grandpa Watkins had a Willys Knight Overland business. Granny and son, Allyn, drove all over the West, even up to Vancouver.
Our other grandparents met in Silver City, NM in the teens, but were from Missouri. After living as farmers for a few years, they began trips to Phoenix (1926) each winter, moving out in the 1940s.
I was born in Phoenix, lived here most of time.
I think the hard line, uneducated, religious freaks have taken over.
Phx is also a much more Cosmo., arty city now, but if we brag about being the bottom of wage payers, we will not attract families with wealth and culture., unless they enjoy being predators. I hybernate in summer. Pet peeve is that our city is run by developers who plow our history under. I had some favorite old houses that have all hit the dust, usually for crap construction. Our "city fathers" are most often developers out to make a buck and move on.
Posted by: Lucia Watkins | April 18, 2013 at 02:17 PM
Is there a possible sequel to this, like "why they may leave"?
Factors like bad air, scarce water, escalating utility rates and inevitable mortality of the seniors who formerly came in droves. Will their kids want to follow in their footsteps? Will they have the resources to do so?
(signed: Alice in Wonderland)
Posted by: morecleanair | April 18, 2013 at 06:14 PM
And 130 degree summers!!!!!!
Posted by: cal Lash | April 18, 2013 at 07:44 PM
morecleanair:
That's an interesting rhetorical point. I believe Jon has written in the past about a possible future demographic of wealthy bubble-dwellers (Scottsdale?) surrounded by the Third World of the rest of us ("liberally salted" with ethnic immigrants, of course,) providing "services" and living at bare subsistence levels. In my imagination this has grown to resemble the favelas surrounding upper-middle-class communities in South America.
While the reality may not be so dramatic, it does make one wonder what happens to the folks who don't have the resources to pull up stakes and who don't have anywhere else to go. How will we organize to satisfy our basic needs? Is it possible that a population drain might result in some sustainability for those who are left behind, once the engine has run down?
Will cal's dream finally come to pass? ;)
Posted by: Petro | April 18, 2013 at 11:06 PM
Answer. Read "Killing the Hidden Waters.
Posted by: cal Lash | April 19, 2013 at 07:12 AM
Get the book so u can c the photos of those that stay
Posted by: cal Lash | April 19, 2013 at 07:39 AM
The building you a liked to see while fi bing in the cars with Kim are best photographers for perpetuity. Most aren't "fit" to retrofit due to the cost of building with good materials in the desert cheers enjoy the old damaged building such a lovely way to see life
Posted by: Amy | July 13, 2017 at 11:47 AM
Love it! i've been researching a story about two Hopi boys who ran away from the Phoenix Indian School and made it all the way up to Hopi in 1902. According to Edmund Nequatewa's account they went to Maricopa to catch a train. Wasn't it a spur line that came down to Phoenix from Ash Fork? Also, they were afraid of being caught and sent back to the school.
Posted by: Carole Schoneman | March 22, 2018 at 02:06 PM
Carole,
The way to the Hopi rez would have been the Santa Fe line north. The railroad to Maricopa was the Southern Pacific, which was a branch line until the Northern Main Line was completed through Phoenix in 1926.
Posted by: Rogue Columnist | March 22, 2018 at 02:15 PM
Without even evap cooling Phoenix must have been incredibly hot. In the 70's lots of folks got air conditioning, and what a difference, especially during the humid monsoon season. Most cars had air conditioning then, and busses. I grew up in Phoenix in the 50's and 60's, and you just endured the heat, but you didn't avoid it. I still remember those days, so I really can hardly imagine what it was like before there was any cooling at all. An older lady I knew said that when she was a girl her family all slept outside under wet sheets in the summer. Those folks were sturdy!
Posted by: James Rowland | June 22, 2018 at 01:44 PM
The photos remind me of one of the many many comments my grandmother made about the "early days" in Phoenix (she came at age 6-months in Dec 1906; my grandfather's family came in 1883). She said the dirt streets were either a constant dust cloud or a muddy mess during rainy season and they were thrilled to death when the first iterations of paving stated.
Posted by: Wyatt James | February 15, 2019 at 09:34 AM
I moved from San Diego to Phoenix in September of 1969 as a 12 year old boy. I attended Kenilworth Elementary school (Barry Goldwater’s former school) for 7th grade (with the Rogue Columnist) and St. Mary’s Catholic Elementary (long gone) school for 8th grade. Phoenix Union High School (gone by the wayside) was a few blocks from St. Mary’s. I remember having to learn the hard way that you could not walk barefoot on the streets in Phoenix in the summer - as I had done in San Diego. I discovered swamp coolers, irrigated lawns and fields in residential areas, and the Wallace and Ladmo show. Legend City was legendary and Big Surf was pretty cool. East/west travel across town was like getting your teeth pulled without Novocain (no freeways to get you there). Bob’s Big Boy was a treat and Central Avenue was the place to be on Friday/Saturday nights. Those were some good times and memories. I live in San Diego now, but visit Phoenix often. It has sure grown up...
Posted by: Dan Moody | February 19, 2019 at 10:12 PM