Rogue Columnist

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.

Narrow and under a shade canopy, here's Grand Avenue in the 1920s. Joseph John's Grocery at 1007 Grand (McCulloch Brothers Collection/ASU Archives).

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

Another view of Grand and Thomas, circa 1930 (McCulloch Brothers Collection/ASU Archives).

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

 

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).

Another view of 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 (Photographer unknown).

The Lulu Belle at Scottsdale Road and Main Streets (Photographer unknown).

Main Street in the 1950s. It was much the same in the 1970s (Photographers unknown):

 

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.