History Adventuring

I went on a history adventure recently through the Gila River Indian Reservation, which is an area that very few Phoenicians go to, between the Estrella Mountains and South Mountain. My interest was to see the route of the last leg of the freeway loop. But as I got past Laveen, and rode along Pecos Road, I was reminded of how difficult it is for me to understand the concept of what I have often heard called "Indian Time" or "Res Time" (res is short for reservation). No, I know that I will never really understand it, but that won't keep me from trying to. And I have seen glimpses of it. Walk with me. I'm not being all mystical here. And this way of looking at time is cultural, not racial. It's not something that you can understand by reading about it on the internet, or in a book. It's a feeling that is passed down by the elders. And, no, I have no intention of trying to explain it here, but I will share with you what my journey has been, and w

I visited the Professional Building today for the first time since 1994, and it looks great. If you're a fan of Art Deco, it's worth a look. It's on the southeast corner of Central Avenue and Monroe, in Phoenix, Arizona. Its modern name is the Hilton Garden Inn Downtown. Originally built in 1931 as a building for medical offices, and as the headquarters for Valley National Bank, this building has been sitting boarded up since the 1980s. There have been several attempts to restore it over the years, and all of them have failed to get this far. As of this writing, December 2015, the hotel is open, although they're still doing some finishing touches on it. The exterior of the building is original, but the interior is mostly brand new. The reason for that is the the interior was completely gutted in 1994. And I mean there was just about nothing. I remember that the elevators were still there, but the interior was essentially blank. So the interior that you're see

The oldest pioneer cemetery in Phoenix, Arizona doesn't have an historical marker. There are no historic buildings next it, no groups who dress up and reenact "life back in the day". Even the headstones, like the one at the top of this post, are modern. It's no bigger than a tennis court and millions of cars go by all of the time. To find this cemetery, you have to find the original Phoenix Settlement, also called, among other names, Mill City, Swilling's Mill, and Pumpkinville. It began in 1868 by a group of men led by Jack Swilling, who had gotten the idea of digging canals to grow crops in the desert. They got this idea, by the way, by seeing the remnants of gigantic canals that had been long abandoned. They had seen the canals built by the Hohokam people. If you want to see where it all started, begin at Pueblo Grande and then go downstream along the historic canal. 48th Street and Van Buren may seem like a strange place for the first cemetery in Phoeni

I've been reading about the recent plans to beautify the Los Angeles River. And since Los Angeles history fascinates me, I'm curious to see what they will do. Of course, the most common thing I hear is "does Los Angeles have a river?" Most people are familiar with that big ugly concrete drain, but to call it a river just seems to make no sense. But it's a riparian river, like the kind we have in Phoenix, where I live now. And that means that it spends most of its time dry, or muddy, and then channels floodwater as necessary. So, no, the Los Angeles River was never a gentle, flowing, idyllic stream. It was, like all rivers in the desert are, a temporary river. Really just a big wash. The city of Los Angeles was built next to it, because all cities need a source of water, but really you didn't want to be too close to it, as it flooded when there was heavy rain, and it was muddy and smelly most of the time. So the city of Los Angeles doesn't really pla

If you're a neighbor of mine, in the northwest valley, chances are that you have driven north on Grand Avenue and gone under something called the "Peoria Underpass". It's south of Olive, and it's where the railroad tracks cross over Grand Avenue. Or, if you prefer, it's where Grand Avenue passes under the railroad tracks. If you never noticed it, that's not surprising. For me, the thing that I always noticed was that the railroad tracks switched from being on my left to being on my right as I went towards Sun City on Grand Avenue. And to understand why, you have to time-travel a bit. Come along with me. Contrary to popular belief, Grand Avenue was built before the railroad tracks. Yes, that's unusual, as usually towns grow up along railroads. But Grand Avenue was different. It was privately funded by the men who built the Arizona Canal , in 1885, and it was the route from Phoenix to the new towns of Glendale (where I live), and Peoria. Take a lo

When I went to ASU I couldn't have cared less about the story behind the names of the streets there. Over the years, however, as my life has gotten less hectic, I stop and think about it, and if you're wondering where the name “Mill Avenue” came from, yes, it was a flour mill. It all started when people discovered that there was money to be made by growing wheat and selling it to the U.S. Military at Fort McDowell, which was several miles north of Tempe. This was back in the days right after the Civil War, 1867 or so, and the expense, and trouble, of bringing in food to the soldiers back then was considerable. Luckily, all you had to do to grow wheat back then was to plant seeds in the Salt River and then harvest it. There was no need for canals, or anything like that. The river flooded, the water receded, seeds were planted, and with any luck a good crop would grow. Yes, the wheat was grown on the river bottom. If you stand at the intersection of Mill Avenue and Rio S

People often say that things were simpler "back in the day", but in many ways I disagree. Things like starting a car, for example, are much simpler now than they were. Here are the instructions for starting a Model T: • Pull the choke adjacent to the right fender while engaging the crank lever under the radiator at the front of the car, slowly turning it a quarter-turn clockwise to prime the carburetor with fuel. Get into the car. Insert the ignition key, turning the setting to either magneto or battery. • Adjust the timing stalk upward to retard the timing, move the throttle stalk downward slightly for an idle setting, and pull back on the hand brake, which also places the car in neutral. Return to the front of the car. • Use your left hand to crank the lever (if the engine backfires and the lever swings counterclockwise, the left arm is less likely to be broken). Give it a vigorous half-crank, and the engine should start. The car that I have now, which is nothing

One of the things that I really enjoy doing is browsing through the Phoenix newspaper, from 1890 to 1920. I enjoy Phoenix history, but I'm more interested in the ordinary day-to-day stuff. I really have no interest in "History Books". I want to know how people lived, what they did, what they ate, where they shopped, what was important to them. And just like today, it's trivia. The internet has been a wonderful thing for people like me, who used to sit in libraries for hours, paging through old newspapers. I was never really looking for anything, I was just looking. Today I call it "time-traveling" - where I just try to immerse myself in a different time. So now I spend my spare minutes at the Library of Congress online. Here's the link to the Phoenix newspaper  http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84020558/ which was called the Arizona Republican at the time. Nowadays it's called the Republic. Follow History Adventuring on Patreon Cli

If you live in the Phoenix, Arizona area, you've had Valley Fever. It comes from a fungus in the desert, and it can range from very mild symptoms to death. I survived it when I was 19, right after I moved to Phoenix from Minneapolis. No, I don't know anything else about Valley Fever, and I'm very squeamish, so if you want to learn more, you can Google it. If you have no memory of Valley Fever, yours was mild, like a cold. Mine put me in the hospital with pneumonia. When I asked the nurse if people died from this, she said, "yes". I still remember that. I had no health insurance, and I was at the County Hospital. Like I said, I survived. But every once in a while I think about it. I think about pioneers coming out to Phoenix and dying mysteriously. I think about people coming out to Phoenix for their health, catching Valley Fever, and dying. What I do know is that you only catch it once. And if you live in Phoenix, you're a survivor. If you liked thi

When Sam Korrick opened his store in Phoenix, in 1895, he called it "The New York Store". It seemed to be a trendy thing to do at the time, as there were other stores with similar names, most notably the Boston Store (Diamond's) . Over the years, the New York Store started adding the name Korrick's to it, until the words "New York Store" were dropped. In the 1970s, Korrick's was absorbed by the Broadway. The New York Store in 1905, 3rd Street and Washington, Phoenix, Arizona. This was their original location until the new building on 1st Street and Washington was built in 1914. Korricks in 1915, 1st Street and Washington, Phoenix, Arizona. Although the building has been enlarged and "re-skinned", it's still there. Korricks in 1962, downtown (lower photo) and Chris-Town Mall. From Arizona Days and Ways. If you liked this article, and would like to see more, please consider becoming a patron of History Adventuring on Pa

When the Diamond brothers started their store in Phoenix in 1897, they called it "The Boston Store". Other local stores, such as Goldwater's, choose to use the family name, but Nathan and Isaac decided against doing that, for fifty years. In 1947, the Boston Store celebrated their fiftieth year in Phoenix by renaming their store to "Diamond's". It remained that way until it was sold to Dillards, in 1984. 1906 ad for the Boston Store, Nathan and Isaac Diamond. Image at the top of this post: Diamond's ad from 1970, Phoenix, Arizona. If you liked this article, and would like to see more, please consider becoming a patron of History Adventuring on Patreon. If you're already a patron, thank you! You make this happen! Click here to become a Patron! History adventuring posts are shared there daily. The basic tier is a dollar a month, and the PhD tier, which includes "then and now" photos, billboards, aerials, videos, and super hi

As someone who was born in the 20th Century, I learned to drive a car. Like most people that I know, I take great pride in my ability to operate this type of heavy machinery. Of course, it's really the only type of heavy machinery that most people learn to operate. I have used a lawn mower, but that's not really all that close. I have never driven a tractor, nor have I ever used a chain saw. Operating heavy machinery, you know, the kind that you shouldn't use if you're taking cold medication, was never was part of my life. And the future without the need for ordinary people to operate heavy machinery is finally on its way, with self-driving cars. In case you never noticed it, ordinary people never got very good at operating heavy machinery. That is, cars. For the past 100 years, people have been killing each other with them. Yes, there are a handful of really good drivers, just like there are people who know how to use chain saws safely, but they're in the mino

If you shopped at the many places that were on Van Buren and 7th Avenue in 1913, like the ones shown in the ad above, you probably called the area "Five Points". I've lived in Phoenix for several decades, and even though I worked downtown for a while, it wasn't until I started collecting old images of Phoenix that I learned about Five Points. If you're wondering why the intersection of three streets would be called "Five Points", stand in the middle of the intersection of 7th Avenue and Van Buren. Well, in your imagination. This is where Grand Avenue begins, which runs at a 45-degree angle. Now count the different directions that you can walk. You can go 1) west on Van Buren 2) east on Van Buren, 3) north on 7th Avenue, 4) south on 7th Avenue, and 5) northwest on Grand. If you're wondering why Grand Avenue doesn't go the other way, it's because it was built to go northwest to the brand new towns of Glendale and Peoria at the turn of th

I've always been fascinated with history. And one of the most interesting things to me is how the value of money has changed over the years. I post photos of old Phoenix on the internet, and often I see comments about "how cheap things were back in the day" and that sort of thing. No, they weren't cheaper, money was just worth more. My favorite example is "shave and a haircut, two bits." Two bits (25 cents) would get you a shave, and quite possibility a haircut and a bath, in the 1880s. Of course, prices varied depending on the location. In a place like Phoenix, where clean water, and especially hot water, was rare, the price was higher. And rather than relying on The Inflation Calculator, I personally prefer to compare what you could buy then, and compare it to what you can buy today. I got a simple haircut yesterday and it cost me twenty dollars, plus a two dollar tip. Presumably a tip was expected in the 1880s, and if the haircut was 25 cents, then

Hohokam is the name given to the people who were long gone from the Phoenix area when the pioneers arrived. It's not much of a name, it just means "those who are gone", and it's what the Pima people called them. But names don't matter. They were the people, just as the Pimas are the people. And if you want to walk with them, and live in the greater Phoenix area, it's easy, just step out of your door. "The people who have gone" built gigantic canals, much larger than the modern ones you see now in Phoenix. They built large structures, mostly out of adobe, that have literally melted away with time. But they're all still there, under your feet, from Tempe to Peoria, and way beyond. If you're wondering why the the ruins of this gigantic and spectacular civilization couldn't be preserved, look again. The modern city of Phoenix was literally built right on top of it. A tiny portion of it has been preserved at Pueblo Grande at 44th Street

I like Parson's Restaurant. It's the kind of little place that I've always looked for when I moved into a new neighborhood. It's the kind of place that tourists never even see, and even locals mostly drive past. No, it's not the fanciest food in the world, but it's sincere. The restaurant has been there since the mid-sixties, and Alan Parsons took it over in 1986. I don't know why I get such a big kick out of seeing the person whose name is on the sign of a restaurant, but I do. I guess it's because I've been to so many places with names that mean nothing. So when I see Alan, I say hello. Unfortunately, when I first started going to Parson's it was in the bad old days when smoking was still allowed in restaurants in Arizona. I had moved from California in 1989, and so I had never had to deal with it, but it tends to take a long time for Arizona to catch up with California on stuff like that. And once the smoking ban kicked in, then Parson&

I live in Glendale, Arizona (a suburb of Phoenix) and have never really given much thought to farms. But research that I have done recently about the history of the Salt River Project is teaching me that it was originally all about farms, not suburbia. If you live anywhere in the greater Phoenix area, you may be surprised to know that the ground that your house, the streets, the malls, and the parking lots are on is some of the most fertile soil in the world. And the Salt River Valley sits at the bottom of one of the largest natural watersheds on the planet. Like the Nile Valley in Egypt, this area has been flooded for thousands of years, bringing in not only water, but rich soil. And when the Federal program of land reclamation began, most notably with the Roosevelt Dam in 1911, it was all about taking advantage of that generous amount of water and fertile land to create farms. People who lived in the valley, from the Hohokam to the Phoenix pioneers, knew that. And so the old-t

If you're a Phoenix time-traveler, like me, you notice some streets that aren't on the normal north-south axis. I call them "anomalies", and they usually indicate that the city was different back then. And while nowadays it's considered "trendy" to place buildings at an angle, when St. Luke's Hospital was built, its angle was along Villa Street. And Villa Street ran along the edge of the Salt River Valley Canal, the one that was built by Jack Swilling, and sometimes referred to as "the Town Ditch", or "Swilling's Ditch". And all of this was on top of La Ciudad, the prehistoric ruins of the Hohokam people. Time travel with me. Let's start in 1929 with Frank Midvale, who was the successor to Omar Turney. By that time, much of the ruins of the Hohokam village of "La Ciudad" (which is Spanish for "The City"), had already been covered over. When the 1917 map was created, much of the prehistoric remai

If you're an explorer who understands the concept of "leave only footprints, take only photographs", you know that it means that you are there to observe, and to enjoy, not to change things, or destroy. It's a very subtle concept, and for people who don't understand, there are signs that say "no littering, etc.". And there are laws against destruction of public property. I like walking, both physically and in my imagination. And I walk a lot around historic Phoenix. And it's wonderful for me, and it's puzzling for a lot of people. They ask me if I'm looking for something? Am I filling a room somewhere with a collection? Am I writing a book? And when I said "no, I'm just walking", I have a feeling that people think I'm kind'a crazy. I have a digital collection of old photos of Phoenix. Yes, it's digital, and that means that I have thousands of images that don't take up any space except on my computer. I pos

I started posting my collection of historical Phoenix images on Google+ a few years ago, and have learned an important lesson - most people who look at that page are not seeing what I am seeing. A few people do, and if one of them is you, well, you're kinda strange. And you're probably one of those people who helped build this city. What I am seeing in these images is progress, and change. "Progressing with Arizona" was the slogan of Valley National Bank, who financed most of it for almost 100 years. To me, these images don't show "the good old days" - they show the advances that the city of Phoenix has made in a relatively short amount of time. From raw desert to an oasis to a magnificent city, I see progress. I see the enormous task of digging canals, first with bare hands, then with shovels. From the Hohokam to The Salt River Project, people have been struggling here to build things. They have built canals, roads, buildings. And there have bee

If you've been on the Gila River Indian Community, southwest of the Phoenix area, you have probably looked towards the Estrella Mountains looking for the face of Montezuma. And if you're like me, you've seen it many times. It's a profile of an ancient Indian god would would someday return and release the native people from the tyranny of the oppressors, going back to the time of Spanish rule. No, I have no idea exactly where the face of Montezuma is supposed to be, except that it's along the edge of the Estrellas. And maybe there isn't just one place. Maybe looking for a place is as meaningless as the name. If you're puzzled about all of this, even though you live in Phoenix, it's not surprising. Looking west along the Estrella Mountains isn't something most Phoenicians see. But if you're interested, just drive south on 51st Avenue. Keep going south, cross the Salt River, past Laveen, past Komatke, past south Mountain. When 51st Avenue bec

One of the great time-honored traditions of living in Phoenix is showing your friends back east how nice it is at Christmastime. Personally, I like to post photos on Facebook of flowers blooming in my backyard in December. And my friends back east say, "Thanks for rubbing it in!" as they slog through the snow and cold. I collect old photos of Phoenix , and one of my favorites is this group of guys from 1893. This photo was obviously staged to do the most "rubbing in" possible. Although I can't read all of the sign, it clearly says "Merry Christmas", "93", and "Phoenix, Ariz". And aside from the smirky grins the guys have, you can see palm trees, agaves, and what looks like a long straw from some cooling drink. Not sure what's on the table, but Mr. Slick Hair is holding a fan. Photography was becoming popular, and inexpensive in those days due to the new invention "the Kodak" camera. And so silliness like this

If you’re wondering whatever happened to the old west towns that you see in western movies, don't worry, they're still around. You’re probably driving by them all the time on the freeway, no matter where you live in America. The one that I know of is Bluewater, New Mexico. Now, before you grab your camera and start thinking that you will see horses and wagons rolling down the street, please let me explain. The western towns of the 1800s that you see in movies have many things in common with places like Bluewater, New Mexico today. First of all, they are far away from the big city. The old western towns were not "picturesque" - they were practical. Even though to our modern eyes, old western towns in the movies are scenic, in reality, they weren't. Don't get me wrong, they did look like that. But those dirt streets and wooden sidewalks were there just because it was practical. The people in old western towns knew each other. They often had lots of relati

The song "White Christmas" is hugely popular. When it was recorded by Bing Crosby, it touched everyone who was away from home during the holidays, especially people in the armed services. It's still a wonderfully touching song for anyone who is wishing to be back home at Christmas. And for me, it hit me the hardest when I lived in Los Angeles. And I would wait to hear a recording with the original lyrics, which were: The sun is shining, the grass is green, the orange and palm trees sway, there's never been such a day, in Beverly Hills, LA. But it's December the 24th, and I'm longing to be up north. I'm dreaming of a White Christmas... Yep, those were the original lyrics. Go and Google them if you don't believe me, I'll wait. Kind'a silly, I'll admit. I mean, Beverly Hills, LA? It's probably just as well that most singers don't include that. It does seem hard to get all emotional for a songwriter who's in Beverly Hills dur

I like living in Glendale, Arizona, but it's very different from the neighborhood where I grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota. If you've always lived in Phoenix, it may not seem all that strange, but back in Minneapolis we could see our neighbors. I really like the privacy that six-foot block walls provide. I like the convenience of pushing a button in my car and driving into my garage, and never having to walk outside. But I do wave at my neighbors. And that's because all of this privacy can make people feel afraid. Now don't get me wrong, I don't go out and accost my neighbors. I respect privacy, and I know that this type of neighborhood is designed to give people the right to that. But I know who my neighbors are, and hopefully they at least recognize me. It wasn't until my friends from back east visited me that I saw anything strange about my ordinary little suburban house. But then I saw that it was like living in a cave (I like to think of it as t