Phoenix in The Great War

Phoenix-born air ace Frank Luke Jr., Arizona's most famous hero from World War I, with his thirteenth official kill.

Arizona had been a state for little more than two years when the cataclysm broke out in Europe a century ago. When the United States finally entered the conflict in 1917, doughboys and sailors fought under the new flag bearing the perfectly symmetrical 48 stars created with the entry of the "Baby State." While the Great War was not as transformative here as its continuation in World War II, it still brought big changes to Phoenix.

When the guns of August 1914 commenced, Phoenix's population had clocked in at 11,314 in the Census four years before. By 1920, it would be more than 29,000. Although it was the state capital (and home of the "lunatic asylum," which in those days was separate from the Legislature), it was still smaller than Tucson. But downtown had become a thriving commercial center with multistory buildings.

The streetcar "suburb" of craftsman bungalows was taking shape in what are now the Roosevelt and F.Q. Story historic districts and the southeast corner of Willo. The city was tightly bound to the old township, with additions running out to the capitol, north above McDowell, south of Grant and east to around 16th Street. By 1917, bungalows were being built in the Bella Vista addition northeast of Osborn and Central. The Santa Fe and Southern Pacific had completed branch lines to the town, but civic leaders were lobbying hard for a mainline railroad.

In 1914, Phoenix adopted the reformist commissioner-manager form of government. It was meant to tame the corruption of the wide-open Western town. Soon, it was back to business as usual with compromised commissioners. It would be after World War II that meaningful reform would come to City Hall.

Arizona, with 204,354 in the 1910 Census, was still a wild place. It had been only 28 years since the surrender of Geronimo. The state's economy was based on mining, ranching and, in the Salt River Valley, a farming cornucopia.

 

Although the recently closed American frontier seemed very far from Europe, conflict was closer than most places in America.

The Mexican Revolution began in 1910. And although the most famous incursion was Pancho Villa's 1916 raid on Columbus, N.M., several skirmishes were fought near the Arizona border, too. Gunrunning was common. Yaqui Indians who had hoped to establish an independent homeland in Sonora, fled into the state. In 1918, U.S. soldiers stormed Nogales, Mexico, after Mexican Army troops and militias fired across the border. That same year saw the Battle of Bear Valley between the 10th Cavalry Buffalo Soldiers and Yaquis, considered the last battle of the Indian Wars.

The border unrest gave weight to American outrage over the so-called Zimmerman Telegram in 1917, where the German government proposed an alliance with Mexico should the United States enter the war. The promised spoils of a Central Powers victory included Mexico winning back Arizona.

Even with America neutral, Europe's appetite soared for copper, the state's leading industry and one controlled by powerful Eastern capitalists, especially Phelps Dodge Corp. Demand rose further once the United States entered the war. Prices shot up. Wages often didn't and labor strife in the mines culminated in the notorious Bisbee Deportation of July 1917 (below).

In Phoenix, the agricultural economy also benefited from increasing demand. Theodore Roosevelt Dam had been completed in 1911 and dedicated by TR himself. More than 200,000 acres of land were under cultivation in the Salt River Valley. Farmers grew a very wide variety of crops, from alfalfa, wheat and barley to citrus, dates and vegetables. Alfalfa was especially popular as forage, both to ship and to feed local beef and dairy herds.

The war would change this.

Britain embargoed export of extra long staple (ELS) cotton, which was grown in its imperial protectorates of Egypt and Sudan. These regions represented most of the world's supply of this strong fiber used for tires and other industrial products. The shorter staple fibers grown in the American South didn't contain the same tensile sturdiness, and the South's humidity wouldn't grow ELS.

But the Salt River Valley — which early promoters called the Nile of America — would. The combination of soil and dry air were perfect for this fiber. During neutrality, U.S. tiremarkers needed a source for ELS. Once war was declared, the product assumed a national security dimension, not only for tires but also airplane fabric and other military uses.

Long-staple cotton had been grown for years in Phoenix, but mostly as an experiment and acreage was limited. According to historian Thomas Sheridan, 7,300 acres of extra long staple cotton were under cultivation in 1916. Then Goodyear Tire and Rubber bought land west of Phoenix and quickly had 1,700 more acres in production by 1917. Other tire-makers followed and by the following year production jumped to 69,000 acres. The first great cotton boom was on and for several years farmers enjoyed spectacular price increases. The treasurer of the Arizona Egyptian Cotton Co. was Barry Goldwater's father.

Although the boom didn't last, it profoundly distorted and changed agriculture around Phoenix. Massive, uniform cotton fields crowded out much of the variety and beauty of the old farming areas. The high prices for cotton and irrigated land also further eroded the ideal of a valley of Jeffersonian farmers, each with 160 acres. Farming began to become a big business.

The disclosure of the Zimmerman Telegram and unrestricted submarine warfare by Germany caused President Woodrow Wilson to ask for a declaration of war in April 1917. Four million men would eventually serve in the armed forces, although I haven't been able to find the number of Arizonans who enlisted or were drafted (the BYU World War I archive does have this list of the dead). Southeastern Arizona witnessed a gunfight between draft resisters and the law, with four dead in Rattlesnake Canyon.

The state's most famous Great War hero was Frank Luke Jr., who became America's second-ranking fighter ace and Medal of Honor winner, the first airman to receive the nation's highest medal. Interestingly, his parents had emigrated from Germany to Arizona in the 1870s. He died at age twenty-one. Luke Air Force Base honors him.

In January 1918, the "Spanish" influenza began. Despite the name, the flu might have originated at an Army base in Kansas and was carried by U.S. soldiers to Europe. Other hypotheses place the original epicenter in China or a British Army base in France. It infected 27% of the then-world population of 1.9 billion, killing between 50 million and 100 million. It was one of the deadliest plagues in history. Recent scholarship shows that it hit Arizona particularly hard, partly because of the large population of tuberculosis sufferers around Phoenix and inadequate care on tribal reservations. The age of antibiotics was yet to arrive. The influenza pandemic lasted until 1920.

After the war, President Wilson traveled to France to negotiate the ill-fated Treaty of Versailles. He was escorted from the United States to the continent by ten American capital ships. Among them was a three-year-old, state-of-the-art battleship. Its name was USS Arizona.

Gallery — click on the photo for a larger image:

Soon after the war, this memorial service was held at the Capitol in honor of Frank Luke.

In 1930, a statue of Luke by Roger Burnham was dedicated on the grassy lawn in front of the capitol (McCulloch Bros. Collection/ASU Archives).

The Luke statue today, surrounded by gravel and cactus.

Here's Frank Luke Jr.'s namesake Luke Air Force Base, where airmen check out an F-35 Joint Strike Fighter of the 56th Fighter Wing, Luke AFB is its primary training base for US and allied pilots.

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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.

 

Comments

[jmav]

Arizona apparently didn't exist as a significant political entity during the Progressive Era and the early and violent stages of the labor movement. Its late development may be part of the reason Arizona has become the current day luxury winter bedroom for the moneyed US right wing. The development of social institutions such as great public universities and medical facilities resided in the urbanized north before Arizona's time.

[jmav]

Arizona's relative political youth within the US context also has caused the state to be lacking in an anti-war and leftist(no not liberalism) tradition which was prevalent in northern urban areas and port cities along the Pacific coast in the early 1900's. How much of the state's lack of tradition in these areas is present today?

In most other states, the warmonger Arizona Senator John "napalm" McCain would have a much harder time politically maintaining his bombs, bombs and more boots on the ground solution to all foreign challenges. Not so in cowboy land.

[cal Lash]

For Petro, and
War in 2014
There is no "true Islam" in Islam. There has never been any central "authority" in Islam that could define such a thing. For better or worse (mostly for the better), Islam wears many faces. But paradoxically, there is one contemporary orientation that does make the big claim of being "true Islam": Wahhabism.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alastair-crooke/obama-isis-not-islamic_b_5843830.html

[cal Lash]

Phoenix since the great war and your King James lesson for the day.

"They soon fogat his works; they waited not for his counsel; But lusted exceedingly in the wilderness; and tempted God in the desert;
And he gave them their request; and sent leanness into their soul." Psalms 106: 13-15.

[Ruben]

Are you sure that top photo isn't cal the Boy Scout just falling short of earning his model aero plane badge?

[cal Lash]

Im 74 Ruben thats 74
the only badge i earned in Cub Scouts was the Field Recognition of girls badge

[Petro]

cal was eating brownies back in the day.

[cal Lash]

As the French bomb Iraq and the perpetual war goes on we should not forget that the French once supported a Cannibal Emperor.

http://www.vice.com/read/the-cannibal-emperor-of-bangui-and-africas-forgotten-conflict

The war will end when the last man looks around and there is no one else to kill. Question, will he become so depressed he decapitates himself?

Reminds me of the Last Man Standing breakfast I attend a few times each year. I am 74 Ruben and barley standing.

[cal Lash]

Petro,
Remind me to tell U that story about Down
on the farm

[Petro]

Not sure I want to hear about that.

[cal Lash]

But Petro i thought a rural carny like you cared for Sherwood Anderson type tales of Ohio

[cal Lash]

Jmav, important political entity.
TR's mistake was building the dam instead of making Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico wilderness.

I hope U all have had an opportunity to watch the PBS Ken Burns Roosevelt series. Need more info on Eleanor, i will loan you my leather bound copy of Eleanor by a guy named Lash

[cal Lash]

Since the great war before they started numbering them, there has been a lot of wars.
The current purposefully Russia initiated war in the Ukraine is to take your eye of the ball inside the US. As I have noted before from barber shops, to ruby's and bad oil and hacking financial institutions the Russians continue to work on owning the US. Our current sanctions may have temporarily drive the ruble down but The dollar will become the Ruble. While U give this thought have a cold one on the Russians.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/19/pbr-russian_n_5849262.html

[cal Lash]

Thats Joe Lash.

[Pat]

And then there's Snidely "Whip" Lash, the notorious villain.

[cal]

pat i identify with Snidely Whiplash

[wkg in bham]

Theodore Daldymple: But it was the hope of progress has not proved altogether illusionary, neither is the fear of retrogression proven unjustified. The Great War destroyed facile optimism that progress towards heaven on earth was inevitable or even possible. (Preface: Our Culture, or What’s Left of It)

[cal Lash]

Stoking the war machine:
http://www.onthemedia.org/story/empty-fears-southern-border/

The WAR on Drugs for the next 80 years at 40 billion a year:
https://news.vice.com/article/the-discovery-of-mexicos-first-coca-plantation-could-upend-the-cocaine-business

[cal Lash]

The WAR on the planet earth from the Front pages. I hear Malthus whispering from his grave, I tried to tell you.
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/530866/un-predicts-new-global-population-boom/

[cal Lash]

Phoenix 101 on how the west was won
http://www.vice.com/read/a-legendarys-simpsons-writers-long-lost-tv-pilot-just-got-uploaded-to-youtube-921

[Ruben]

A few months ago I made disparaging remarks about Hillary. I was soundly chastised, and rightly so.

Fast forward to now. The commentary about President Obama and Hillary is as vicious as I've ever seen......and it's coming from democrats.

If you haven't noticed, the republicans are staying silent and obviously enjoying the show.

To you democrats, I'm sorry your heros turned out to be frauds.

[cal Lash]

Ruben, U use the word heroes loosely!
They were just humans.
one with no experience and one with to much (old timers) experience.
But speaking of Heroes in the making.
How about Elizabeth Warren as the next Eleanor Roosevelt with the juevos of TR

Your republican Pal
cal

[Ruben]

By the way, while democrats have no hero's, republicans have only villains.

And alas, it turns out independents are like the Hispanic vote, both are just vapors in the wind. No substance. An illusion.

So sad.

[cal Lash]

THE LONGEST WAR IN US HISTORY
A war that is continued by American Profiteers and others. Financial institutions love the drug war, they charge at least 30 percent to launder drug money.
And how the drug war allows the US to militarize areas rich in resources.
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Global-Drug-Report-Dont-Just-Decriminalize-Demilitarize-20140921-0022.html