Progressing with Arizona


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 been setbacks, major ones, if you know the history. But ultimately it is a story of "unrealistic optimism".

Sure, go ahead and complain about not getting good cell phone coverage somewhere. There was a time when just getting fresh water seemed something like a miracle. Phoenix has made a lot of progress, and there's still a long way to go!



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