History Adventuring

When I got the job, in 1990, as a young Graphic Designer at Valley National Bank, in the corporate offices in Phoenix, I was delighted. Unfortunately, it wasn't long until I learned that I was on a sinking ship. Even though Valley National Bank was celebrating 90 years in Arizona in 1990, everybody I talked to told me that the Bank was in terrible condition financially. At the time that I started, Valley Bank had not paid dividends to its stockholders for years. They were “frozen”. And the more I learned about how much Valley Bank had invested in Arizona, the more I understood someone who said, “If Valley National Bank goes bankrupt, we all have to leave Arizona, and the last one turns out the light”. But, in 1992 Valley National Bank was taken over by a very strong Bank that was headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, named Bank One. Bank One had been buying up banks all over the country, and then leaving them alone to run themselves. If you lived in the Valley at the time, you ma

I have to admit to being a little torn about talking about the magical places that I go to in the Phoenix, Arizona area. On one hand, I don't want to encourage swarms of crowds (and the need for more parking lots), and on the other I realize that to preserve something, people have to know about it. I know a lot of magical places in Phoenix, and in Los Angeles. These are the places where I've always gone to just get away from it all for a while. Sure, I've given excuses, such as an interest in history, or exercising. But, really, these are just places that are good for the soul. And to my surprise, and pleasure, I am finding out that I'm not the only one who needs these places. The best example I can give is the Sahuaro Ranch, which is near where I live, in Glendale, a suburb of Phoenix. Ever since I moved to Glendale, the ranch has been a magical place for me, just to stop and look at it. There were times in the ‘90s when I would drive straight to it after work,

Over by the State Fair Grounds in Phoenix is a place that is called Six Points. It's the intersection of Grand Avenue, 19th Avenue, and McDowell. I first heard about this when I started collecting old photos of Phoenix. And there's even a Six Points Hardware. Of course, many times names don't really mean anything. Look at the names of many apartment complexes and shopping centers, which amuse me as I drive around Phoenix. Things just have to have a name I guess, even if they're pointless, or make no sense. But there is a reason for Six Points. And to see it, you have to either fly over it, or stand in the middle of the intersection. Let's fly over it and take a look. OK, now let's imagine that we're standing in the middle of the intersection, and we're about to walk in any direction we want to. Count the different directions. There are six, and that's why people called it Six Points. By the way, don't confuse it with Five Points , which

Phoenix and Los Angeles are both very modern cities. And, in spite of arguments that I've heard from locals, most people who live there didn't grow up there. And even for people who did, chances are pretty slim that their parents, or grandparents, did. And this leads inevitably into the common misconception about my two favorite cities, which I call "Back in the day, when the mall was built". And since Phoenix predates Park Central Mall by nearly 100 years, and Los Angeles predates the Sherman Oaks gallery by even longer, it really doesn't take much to amaze many people about the history of these cities. I have a particular fascination for Phoenix, and Los Angeles, history. For me, it just has always made me more comfortable in these adopted homes (I grew up in Minneapolis). I moved to Phoenix when I was 19, all alone, and it was a pretty scary place for a Midwestern boy on his own. And Los Angeles was even scarier to me! So I took ownership of these places b

I have a fascination with the names of things. Sometimes they don't mean anything at all, they just sound good, like the city that I live in, Glendale, Arizona. Some names are very cool, as they come from Greek Mythology, like the Phoenix Bird . And another name from Greek Mythology is where the name of Tempe, Arizona, comes from. The Vale of Tempe, as shown in the picture above, was the valley next to Mt. Olympus, where the Greek gods lived. I lived in Tempe when I went to ASU, and doesn't sound like Greek to me, but it is. And the name, along with the name for Phoenix, Arizona, was given to it by an eccentric character in Arizona named Darell Duppa. I've read about him, and the more I learn, the less I know. But I know that he read the classics, and he knew about the Phoenix Bird, and the Vale of Tempe. It all kind'a makes me wish that they had kept with this Greek Mythology theme - maybe I'd be living in Zeus, or something like that. If you liked this ar

I've been posting a lot of images lately on the web of the 1960s in Phoenix, and I am coming to the conclusion that it is pretty much all gone. I started this project just with the idea in mind of finding a lot of cool old photos of Phoenix, but I am learning something that is making me sad - the lost childhood of many people who grew up in Phoenix. I didn't get to see the Phoenix of the 1960s. By the time I got to Phoenix, it was all being torn down and made into parking lots. But the images that I am finding are haunting. Many of them show a place full of vitality and people, with homes, business, and activity, that have now been bulldozed and are just dirt. Take a look at this image of Grand Avenue and 20th Avenue in the 1960s and then go compare it to the Google satellite view. It's now nothing but dirt. In this photo there is a flurry of activity. I imagine a grouchy old guy sitting behind the desk at the repair shop, maybe smoking a cigar. The "exit only&q

Jomax Road, which is a mile north of Happy Valley Road, in Phoenix, Arizona was named after two women, Josephine and Maxine. And it was the road to a little 9-hole golf course. The golf course was owned by Maxine and S. Fitzgerald "Fitz" Durham, and it was called Ironwood. Way back in the 1950s, this area was "way out in the country", way beyond the city limits of Phoenix, and other than a little place that sold trinkets, called Curry's Corner, there really wasn't anything out there except desert and cactus. And the Ironwood Golf Course.  Nowadays, Jomax is a major road in the Phoenix grid system, but back then it was just the road to a little tiny golf course, where you could iron out your irons. If you like pictures of old-time Phoenix, please become a member of History Adventuring on Patreon. I share a LOT of cool old photos there, copyright-free, with no advertising. If you like Phoenix history and would like to help support my efforts to pres

I hated museums when I was a kid. Everything was old, and cracked, and rusty, and well, disgusting. If I had given it any thought as a kid, I would have wondered why people back then used such horrible-looking stuff. Even their photos were all dull and dingy and cracked. It wasn't until I grew up that I realized that it had to do with conservation. When your great-great-great-grandmother wore her wedding dress, it wasn't all horrible, aged, and old. It was brand new. And the photos that your uncle took on his vacation with a Polaroid weren't all faded, with the "Instagram Filter" color. Everything was new. The colors were vibrant. I like to imagine the when everything was brand new. I like to imagine Phoenix when the Professional Building was brand new in 1931, when Valley Center (now Chase Tower) first opened in 1973. And since I'm an amateur collector, and I don't work at a museum, I can do something that they can't, and shouldn't, do. I

If you've ever seen the movie “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, you know that the hero, Indiana Jones, is a believer that certain things belong in museums. And by that he meant on display, with access for everyone, not locked up in a box, stored away, and forgotten. In the last few years of working on my digital collection of images of Phoenix, I have come to realize that a lot of precious history is being lost, possibility forever, by people who don't quite know what to do with it. And it comes in many forms - there are people who are afraid to share photos they have for fear of copyright violation, there are people who are storing things away in garages, etc., and whose heirs will only see “ebay value”. There are museums which, for lack of funds, are unable to display things and have them locked away in boxes, in storage. Since I'm a Photoshop person and a web designer, I am comfortable with scanning, optimizing, and uploading images. I have thousands that I have posted o

If you're an Arizona State University Sun Devil or a University of Arizona Wildcat, you know about the Territorial Cup, the oldest sporting rivalry in Arizona and arguably the most important game of the year. Football, or Foot Ball, has deep roots in Arizona. And the rivalry between Phoenix and Tucson goes even deeper. It has been at times terribly acrimonious, and has even led to some regrettable incidents. And I'm not just talking about overly-enthusiastic sports fans, I'm talking about politics here. The first year of the Territorial Cup was 1899, and it was played between the University of Arizona and the Tempe Normal School (which is now ASU). That's the Normal football team up there in the photo, with the Territorial Cup for that year. The owl was stuffed, by the way. And yes, the team was called the Normals, and no, it was never called the Owls. Those are the steps of Old Main, which wasn't really all that old back then. If you know ASU, you know that

Since I've begun my study of the history of Indians in Arizona, I've discovered an unintended result of the renaming of tribes, the accidental erasing of their history. No, it's not a conspiracy, man. It's just that if you rename a tribe from Pima to Akimel O'odham, you will make it impossible for future researchers, if they don't know the original name, to find original history, in old books. And that's why, although I'm embracing the new names of the tribes, and learning them, I am still making a note of the names that they were known by for hundreds of years. There's enough intentional erasing of history, and re-writing of history, going on nowadays, adding accidental erasing just makes it worse. The Akimel O'odham, or the Pima people, have been a major force in the history of Arizona for hundreds of years. Walk into any library and you will find a lot of information on them, going back to the days of Father Kino. The Pimas are woven

When I first moved to Phoenix, Arizona from Minneapolis I was absolutely amazed. There were mountains, the gigantic desert, and sunsets. I mean, wow, sunsets. People joke about Arizona sunsets, but until you've seen one IRL - in real life, you would never know that no photo even comes close. Like most people who live anywhere, after several years I stopped noticing. I spent my time looking at my computer, or looking at traffic lights. And at that point, I might as well be living anywhere. The beauty of Phoenix disappeared for me. Then after a terrible accident (please don't ask, it was a long time ago, and I got better) I got to see it all again, with fresh eyes. At first I was delighted just to see a sunrise. Then it started to occur to me that I was in Phoenix, Arizona. And I wanted to see it, not just on my computer, and not just pictures of it, but in real life (IRL). I wanted people to take me somewhere, anywhere. I want to try to tell you what I saw. Not only th

As I continue my journey of discovery of Indians in Arizona, I am finding out that the names are all pretty much the same - they are the people . “Us and them” pretty much describes the relationship between tribes, whether at peace, or at war. But that is not to say that the names of the tribes lack meaning, or are in any way trivial. Its just, well, that you really can't call every tribe “The People” anymore than you can call every city “The City”. The names we know of tribes are given by outsiders. The name of my tribe (and I know it sounds like I am kidding here) was given to them by the Romans. They were the Britons. Yes, that's where the name of Britain comes from. I will never have any way of knowing what my tribe called itself, but it was most mostly probably the people. And the Romans were simply the enemy. When you use the names of Indian Tribes in Arizona, or the names of any tribe in the world, you will probably be using the name that was given to them by an o

The lettering just went up on the new Dr. Phillip D. Randolph Automotive Technology Building at Glendale Community College in Glendale, Arizona. Since I go past that building, which is just east of the Matt O. Hanhila Stadium , on almost a daily basis, and have been watching it being built, I have been curious about it. So when the name went up, I had to find out who is was named after. If you like Phoenix, and Glendale, history, it’s pretty interesting. Dr. Phillip D. Randolph was a former President of GCC, who retired in 2004. He was a teacher at Maryvale High School from 1968 to 1972. But here’s the part that’s interesting to me: His father, Martin L. Randolph, built the Randolph Ranch, which was on the southeast corner of Olive and 59th Avenue, in 1915. And if the name sounds familiar, and if you have driven past GCC in the past decade, it’s the name of the subdivision there. So there’s 100 years of Glendale history there in that name. I like learning about connections l

Every month I give some money to the nice people at SRP. They are kind enough to supply me with electricity so that I can have air conditioning. Thank you, SRP! I'm looking at one of my bills now, and it just says SRP. But to me, it will always be the Salt River Project. If you understand the Salt River Project, it answers many questions about why a city like Phoenix sits out in the middle of the desert, and has done so well. And to do that, you have to do a little traveling, and a little time-traveling. If you live in the Phoenix area, and think that the Salt River is that big empty area that goes past the freeway, think again. Phoenix does live along the banks of a flowing river, it's just that its course has just been changed, and used for water and power. Start with the Roosevelt Dam, which is northeast of Apache Junction. If you're really adventurous, drive there along the Apache Trail. If you do, it will really give you a clear picture of how absolutely ridic

It's November, and even though it's been a long time since I moved away from Minneapolis, as a teenager, I still stop and marvel at how wonderful it is here at this time of year. Now, don't get me wrong - Minneapolis is a wonderful place and I enjoyed growing up there. Well, most of the time. But not the winter. I hated the cold. I had thin blood I guess, and couldn't get warm from November until May. I had a lot of friends who enjoyed winter sports, who played hockey, skied, etc., but I didn't. So I started planning on moving to a sunny climate when I was in high school. As I recall, I talked about going to Australia because I'd seen pictures of the desert there, which looked nice. But someone told me that you had to be a doctor, or something, to be allowed to move there, so I never looked into it. But it was all the same to me when I decided to move to Phoenix. I bought a car when I was eighteen, figured out how to read a map, and headed west. But rea

If you're new to Los Angeles, you may still be trying to take it all in. That's what Raymond Chandler called trying to "get your arms around Los Angeles". And no, it can't be done. It's just too big and there's too much going on. And in fact, if you're still trying, it marks you as a newcomer. You need to make it a small town, and this is how people in LA do it: • Find a major boundary. Most people just use a freeway. I used to say that there was really nothing east of the 405 for me. I lived in the western part of the San Fernando Valley, and so that's really a pretty big area. But the next step is the most important: • Find human scale. Find a coffee shop you like and call it "the coffee shop" as if were the only one in town. Without being creepy, learn the names of the people you see all of the time, at your local convenience store, at the grocery store. And give every place a name that's personal. Tell your friends that af

One of the things that I find fascinating about my adopted home of Phoenix, Arizona, is that it's constantly changing. I've lived here since I was a teenager, and believe me, it's not the same. I've spoken to people older, and younger, than me, and they say the same. What happened to the buildings they remember?, that sort of thing. As my studies of Phoenix history has slowly progressed, I have found myself lately exploring Phoenix in the 1920s. And if you really want to see changes in Phoenix, look at the difference that happened before and after World War I. During World War I, from 1914 to 1918, the economy of Phoenix was booming because of the demand for long-staple cotton, also known as Pima Cotton and Egyptian Cotton. The demand was driven by the wartime need for tires, which relied on this very strong cotton at the time. Yes, tires. I'm not kidding, this cotton was used mainly for tires. Go Google it, I'll wait. But after the war ended, the price

After I got my degree from ASU in 1982, I moved to Los Angeles. And after a couple of months of fruitless job-searching, a friend of mine in Phoenix recommend that I talk to a friend of his in Santa Barbara, which is about an hour north of Los Angeles. So I drove up there, was offered the job and accepted it, and went back to LA to make preparations to move. And then I discovered how wildly expensive rentals were in Santa Barbara, even compared to Los Angeles, which were much higher than my experience in Phoenix. But I had accepted the job, and there was never any question of my commuting from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara. So I found a hotel that rented rooms by the week. It pretty much used up all of the money that the job payed, so I needed to find something cheaper. The owner of the Hotel also had rental property. And so I moved into a tiny apartment that had been carved out of a house over in the Milpas area. And by tiny, I mean insanely tiny. It was only about twelve feet s

Arizona has had its share of political embarrassments. If you've lived in Arizona for a long time, you know that. I moved to Phoenix when I was a teenager and then lived for a few years in Los Angeles, where you can get a good perspective of the embarrassment of Arizona politics. But nothing seems to have embarrassed Arizona, and Phoenix in particular, as much as the fact that during the Civil War, Arizona was a Confederate territory. That is, pro-slavery. And after the end of the Civil War, and the restoration of the Union, Phoenix was anxious to show that it looked to the future, and that embraced the Union. And that meant being Republican. To understand this better, you have to realize that during the Civil War, it was the party of Abraham Lincoln that sought to keep the Republic united, the Republicans. To the states that disagreed, and preferred a more Democratic government, that is, states rights, this meant war. When the Civil War ended the Republic was united again,

I like learning about history. And I like sharing what what I'm learning. And the most common thing that I hear from people after I share stuff is, “Hey, they didn't teach me that in school!” No, they probably didn't. But it's not a conspiracy, man. Nor are the schools trying to withhold information. It's all about priorities, and teaching students the best way that it can be done. It was only when I started my teaching career (no, not history, Graphic Design), that I started to understand the limitations of what can be taught. And as much as I'd have liked to have gone into a lot more detail, there were always time constraints. And someone has to decide what to cover during a given semester, and what not to. I grew up in Minnesota, and if you know your American history, it's where the largest mass execution in United States history took place. No, they didn't teach me that in school. I learned about the Dakota Indian Wars after I became an adult,

I moved to Phoenix when I was a teenager, and like most people who live there, the only river I knew about was the Salt River. It was while tubing there in my early twenties that I learned the importance of using sun block! Nowadays, with my fascination for old photos of Phoenix, I have been trying to figure out the rivers, washes, and creeks. I found this map in an old book about the Gila River, and it really caught my eye. Note that there are no roads indicated. No, that doesn't mean that there were no roads when this map was drawn, in the 1960s, it's just that this map focused on the history of the Gila River. This part of the map shows the area that I'm most interested in, the Salt River Valley and the areas to the north and south. OK, let's take a look. Start with downtown Phoenix, that's the area underneath the word Phoenix and between Salt and R. Just to the west of it is where the Agua Fria, the Salt, and the Gila Rivers combine. Tres Rios. Note that

I've driven back and forth between Phoenix and Los Angeles more times than I can count. So each time I would watch the Alfred Hitchcock movie “Psycho” I would scoff at what I considered the obviously very poorly-shot scenes of Janet Leigh's character driving out of Phoenix in 1960. If you look carefully, you will see what looks like Grand Avenue. Which it is, and which was actually the route to Los Angeles at the time. Really. Grand Avenue looking northwest in 1960. That's the hood of Janet Leigh's car in the movie "Psycho". This is north of Olive, where the railroad tracks switch from the left side of Grand over to the right. At the time, this was the route to Los Angeles. I collect old photos of Phoenix and old maps and, yep, that's how people drove back and forth between Phoenix and Los Angeles, through Wickenburg. I've been to Wickenburg a couple of times, but I never considered it as a logical route to Los Angeles! Take a look at a ma

“Howdy, stranger” has been the culture of Phoenix, and of Arizona, for over 100 years. If you're new to Phoenix, and are already getting a welcoming feeling, it's not surprising. Phoenix is not a place “for locals only”. I lived in Southern California for several years, and remember it as not being a welcoming place for strangers. It was a place for locals, who resented the newcomers. The bumper stickers that I remember said, “Save California, when you leave, take someone with you”. Historically, Arizona has been different. In Arizona, it has always been bad manners to ask a man his name. If he wants to tell you, fine, but his background, and what he may, or may not, have done, was his own business. Arizona was a place for people to start again. Yeah, you know what I mean here, criminals, outlaws, that sort of thing. It was a place to build a better life, and it still is. I moved to Phoenix when I was a teenager, and have always gotten the feel of the Old West here. No

The White Tank Mountains are at the western edge of the Salt River Valley. They run north and south, and if you live in Glendale, like I do, they are very prominent. And if you're like me, you may have wondered what the name “White Tanks” means. A white tank is an old-fashioned term for a place with clean water that is accessible in a canyon. Nowadays, we still use the term for a water tank, although of course it would be made of metal. A water tank in a mountain is the same thing, except that it's made out of, well, part of the mountain. If you're wondering why a mountain range would be described based on the fact that you could find water there, you need to time-travel back to the days before Phoenix even existed. The White Tanks were a place where travelers could get water on the long stretch between the Gila River and Wickenburg, where the Vulture Mine was. And if you look at a map and realize that the travelers are going out of their way, as they were traveling

Maybe it's my age, but I tend to lower my voice out in public when I use the words “Mexican” or “Indian”. And I've been giving a lot of thought to that these days, as I research the importance of these people to the history of Phoenix. I've lived in Phoenix for a long time, and somewhere along the line I must have been taught that these were bad words. As if someone saying “Italian” loudly in a restaurant would cause offense (I'm mostly Italian, by the way). I've lived all of my adult life in Phoenix, and Los Angeles, and believe me, I know the importance of people with Mexican, and Indian, heritage. To me, these are not bad words. But I realize that a lot of people feel differently. I'm sorry they feel that way, and I wish they didn't. I collect old photos of Phoenix and post them on the internet, and I just cringe when I think of someone making a nasty comment just because they see the word “Mexican” or “Indian”. But people from Mexico, and Native

When Neil Diamond wrote that "palm trees grow and rents are low" he was talking about Los Angeles, California in the 1960s. Of course, he was from New York, so maybe it was just by comparison, I don't know. But by the time I moved to Los Angeles, in the 1980s, rents were not low, even in "less fashionable" neighborhoods, such as Canoga Park. What I learned about how low-income people manage to survive in places where the rents are high has stayed with me, and haunted me a bit. They crowd together. Please let me explain. When I moved into my little tiny studio apartment in Canoga Park in 1987, I had found the cheapest place that I could find that would give me access to finding work in Warner Center, which I did. While I looked for work I lived there, and I stayed there even after I got the job, because I was trying to figure out where to move to. Then the job ended, and I moved back to Phoenix. In Phoenix I tried to describe it to my friends and it just

If you live in the Phoenix area, you've seen fast-food restaurants called KFC, which stands for Kentucky Fried Chicken. And the old guy that you see in the logo was a real person, and he really started the company, His name was Harland Sanders. It's quite a success story - he did look like that, and he dressed like an old Southern Colonel. And in the beginning he went to restaurants and sold them the rights to use his recipe, which had "eleven secret herbs and spices". Actually, what he sold was a license, as he kept the copyright for himself. Harland Sanders in 1968, at age 77. Harman's in the 1960s, Tempe, Arizona. I collect old photos of Phoenix and noticed that there was a connection between Harman's Restaurant and Kentucky Fried Chicken. And it had to do with how Harland Sanders got his chicken recipe started, by selling the rights to it to restaurants. Harman's Ranch Restaurant menu in 1962, including Kentucky Fried Chicken In t