History Adventuring

I live in Glendale, Arizona, and grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and I had always wondered why Minnesota is called the midwest. Minnesota really isn't west at all, is it? I mean, Arizona is west, right? How could a place in the middle of the country be called west? And to make it even more confusing, Minnesota is part of the Old West and Arizona is part of the New West. Anyway, it all has to do with history. Luckily, I enjoy learning about history, and if you “time travel” back to the days when most of the population of the United States was living east of the Mississippi River, it all starts to make sense. That's because “The West” was anywhere west of the Mississippi River. And that included such Old West places as Kansas, and Minnesota. If Minneapolis doesn't make you think of the Old West, think of Dodge City. See what I mean? Google Jesse James and you will find him in Northfield, Minnesota. Of course, places like Arizona, New Mexico, etc. were west, but th

Like all kids, I love watching construction. Of course, I really have no idea what's going on, I just think that it looks cool. I enjoy seeing the Tonka Toys moving around, and I wonder what it would be like to be one of the guys in the hardhats. Luckily, I live in the Phoenix area, which always has stuff going on. OK, to be fair, construction hit a nasty bump about eight years ago, but it's recovering nicely nowadays. There are new buildings under construction, subdivisions, freeways, you name it. Yes, I understand how annoying construction is to grownups. They see the orange signs and know that wherever they're going, there's probably gonna be a delay. So, among all of the other things that make me weird, as I am well over ten years old, is that apparently I never really needed to get anywhere in that much of a hurry. So if grownups complain about construction, I nod and sympathize and secretly I am hoping that traffic will stop long enough for me to get a good

Today I'll be going history adventuring to Sedona, Arizona. I live in the Phoenix area, and it's really not all that far, but like most people I just can't seem to get away as often as I'd like. There's always something to do here, some project to finish, some errand to run. But unlike most of the people I've known in my life, who are much more responsible than me I guess, I do manage to get away. But there's a trick to it, and it may surprise you - there is no destination. When I tell people that I'm going somewhere, their first question tends to be "how long will you stay there?". Well, I'm not staying there at all. My adventure will be along the Arizona Highways. I could try to explain that just the view out of the window is so spectacular in Arizona that it looks like it was "just painted on", or when the sunlight hits the clouds just right I often joke that the sky looks "Photoshopped", but I usually just get b

I've always enjoyed history, and I got a real kick out of figuring out that I lived in three places at the same time in my late twenties - Los Angeles, Canoga Park, and Winnetka, California. To be fair, I lived in Los Angeles. And if you are reading this anywhere but in the LA area, that's probably enough. But if you live in LA, you know that you have to tell people exactly where in LA you live. I mean, it's a big city! So, I lived in Canoga Park, which is on the west end of The San Fernando Valley. And that's enough to tell most people where I was. But it wasn't enough for me. After I started exploring the area around my apartment complex, I realized that I was in Winnetka. Now, of course, there is a Winnetka Avenue, and most people just thought that I lived there. I lived a couple of blocks from Winnetka Avenue, at Saticoy and Mason. This tiny part of Canoga Park, which is a tiny part of Los Angeles, is Winnetka. It was actually a community between Canoga

San Diego, California is one of the most beautiful cities in the world, in the very best climate that planet earth has. That climate, by the way, is shared with places like the Mediterranean Riviera, which is between 30 and 40 degrees latitude. This Mediterranean climate is never too hot or too cold. Its position on planet earth, along with the tempering effects of either the Pacific Ocean or the Mediterranean sea (as the case may be) creates some of the most delightful weather in the world, summer and winter alike. Conversely, Phoenix Arizona, although it's at about the same latitude, gets hot in the summer. Really hot. Terribly, uncomfortably, horribly hot. And the people who live there, if they can, have always tried to get out of there for the summer, their first choice being San Diego. Being an old Angelino myself, I know nothing about San Diego. To me, Los Angeles seems to be the closest place to go sit on a beach, but it's not, San Diego is. And not only has San

I've lived in Phoenix for most of my adult life. And as much as I love living in the desert, you gotta admit the summers are just awful. Not just hot, but ridiculously, horribly, uncomfortably hot. And the heat starts coming on by April and the Sonoran Desert is a terrible place to be until October. So if you can get away, you really should. But I'm a desert rat. I learned how strange this was way back when I was going to ASU. I lived in Tempe, in a less-than-fashionable neighborhood, and in the summer I watched the town empty out. The people left behind I called "desert rats". And if you've never been a desert rat, you may be surprised at what these people do to make it through the summers in Phoenix. Here are a few things: • Early mornings. Desert rats know that the desert is at its coolest early in the morning, just before sunrise. When the sun comes up, wham, it starts getting very hot. So you'll see desert rats stir in early morning, and then scamp

I just loved teaching at GCC, and I still enjoy going over there nowadays, where I use the Fitness Center and the track, and I occasionally eat a cheeseburger (highly recommended!). And even though I haven't taught there for many years, I still feel at home there, which is strange since I was just an adjunct faculty. If you're not familiar with the term "adjunct" - it just means a part-time teacher who comes in, does a class or two, and leaves. They have no office, no telephone number, no guarantee that they will get any classes to teach the next semester, and they are about 80% of the teachers in the Maricopa County Community Colleges System. Now waitaminute, this isn't a conspiracy, man, this was just something that happened in order to keep the costs down and the schools open. I have no idea how long this has been going on, but based on the word "adjunct", which means "in addition to", it makes me think that all of this just kind'

The very first road that I ever drove on in Phoenix, back when I was 19, was Cactus Road. I was heading south from Flagstaff and somehow that name just seemed absolutely perfect. I grew up in Minneapolis, so the thought of seeing a road that was named Cactus just tickled me. And yeah, there are some cactuses (cacti?) there, but really that's not where the name came from. It came from the little town of Cactus, which has left without a trace, unless you count the road that once led to it. I love learning about Phoenix history, and something names can be a real clue. Like Los Angeles, Phoenix grew by having a lot of little towns grow together. Sometimes the names of the towns remain, sometimes it's just the name of a community, and sometimes the towns retain their independence. I wish I could tell you more about Cactus, Arizona, but all I have is this photo. And of course, it shows up on old maps. It was where Cave Creek Road crosses Cactus, which must have been waaaaay ou

I was staying at a friend's place in Calabasas last year and decided to take a tour of the neighborhood by jumping on to one of the free shuttle buses that do continuous loops through the neighborhoods. I just wanted to do some sight-seeing, and it was pretty cool. I was the only passenger most of the time, and the driver and I started talking. I recalled living in The San Fernando area, specifically Canoga Park, in the 1980s, and she asked, "was it nice back then?". That's when I realized, wow, that was a long time ago! To answer her question right away, no, Canoga Park was not nice back then. I'm sure there was a time when it was, but I'm not that old. My memories of Canoga Park, and the San Fernando Valley, are filtered through my being young, and just starting my career. And although Canoga Park was the cheapest place to live in the west valley, that's all it had going for it. I worked in Woodland Hills and was making plans to try to move to a n

If you've lived in the Phoenix, Arizona area, chances are you're familiar with Arcadia, which is a very pricey neighborhood between Camelback Mountain and the Arizona Canal. For many generations it's been big, beautiful mansions and lush landscaping, and before that there were miles and miles of citrus groves. So, using an idyllic term like "Arcadia" (that's Thomas Cole's 1838 painting "Dream of Arcadia" at the top of this post) just seems to make sense. But really, you have to look at it from a Real Estate agent's point of view. Getting people to invest in land that's miles away from the city limits, and that faces south in one of the hottest climates in the United States, takes some sales skill. Naming the area Arcadia painted a idyllic picture that took a while to live up to the name. In fact, it was kind of like naming the area north of Camelback Mountain " Paradise Valley ", which they did when it was nothing but dirt

If you ever walked out of the America West, or U.S. Airways, or Talking Stick Resort Arena, on Jefferson, anytime from the '90s up to the present day, and wondered why the two blocks on either side of 2nd Street looked kinda incomplete, it's because they are. The original design of the Collier Center, which is shown in this model on the 2nd floor of the Bank of America Building, included three more towers, one of which was to be a hotel. Of course, the Bank of America building was completed, and some smaller buildings, but the rest of the project was never finished. In fact, the block to the west ( Block 23 ) is still just a parking lot. Support Arizona history by becoming a patron on Patreon Click here to become a Patron! History Adventuring blog posts are shared there daily, also there's "then and now" photos, billboards, aerials, and super high-resolution photos of historic Phoenix, Arizona I visited the Collier Center for the first time just a few

If you're a serious fan of Phoenix history, you know the importance of Block 23. It was the original City Plaza, which was there from 1870 until 1931, when the Fox Theater was built there, on the northwest corner. In all of the time I've been in Phoenix, Block 23 has just been a blank space, which is now just an underground parking garage, with a parking lot on top of it. I visited the Collier Center yesterday, which is on Block 24, and was surprised to find out that the entire project, from the 1990s, was never finished. Collier Center is located between 2nd and 3rd Streets and Washington and Jefferson. On Washington is the Bank of America tower, but the southeast corner, which faces Chase Field, is unfinished, because the original plan, which included a high-rise hotel, was never completed. There's a model of it on the 2nd floor of the Bank of America building, if you're curious about it. The model also shows where two more high-rise towers were planned to be bui

If you're a Phoenix time-traveler, like I am, you notice the big trees. Even Eucalyptus trees, which tend to grow pretty fast, rarely get a chance to get really, really big in Phoenix. There always seems to be some excuse, making another lane for traffic, etc. And so for over twenty years I've been keeping my eyes on the historic Eucalyptus trees that are along the Arizona Canal on Northern just east of 7th Street. These trees were planted in the 1920s as a windbreak for the El Domingo Ranch citrus groves. That means that they're approaching 100 years old nowadays. I collect old photos of Phoenix and I see that the canals used to be lined with a LOT of trees. And I'm not talking about photos from territorial times, I'm talking up until the last couple of generations. And mostly the trees are gone. But the trees are still there along the canal at Northern and 7th Street. They are big, and magnificent. And no, I have no idea why they haven't been cut down,

As an average white guy, I will never really understand Res Time. Res Time, by the way, is the usually sarcastic term that describes how many people deal with the concept of time on an Indian Reservation. And I've dealt with it, both as a teacher, and as a man who is trying to gain a larger understanding of the world and how people see it. The first time that I learned about Res Time was back when I was teaching at the Art Institute of Phoenix. If you haven't noticed, there are a LOT of talented artists who are Native American Indians, and mostly because of the money that the Casinos have been making in the last couple of decades, there are often scholarships given to these people. And while the creativity, creating the artwork, and using the computers came easily to all of my students, including those who had grown up on Indian Reservations, the concept of time was not only bizarre to many Native Americans, it was frustrating. Sadly, many of these talented people were una

Since it's been so long since the late 1940s, not many people can actually remember the street car system in Phoenix and in Los Angeles. Street cars, or trolleys, have survived in museums, in imaginations, in popular literature, and in movies. And so, when the question arises as to why these systems went away after World War II, no one really likes to point out that they were a terrible mess by then. If you prefer conspiracy theories, then going back in time and seeing what was really happening will actually be kind of boring. Both Phoenix and Los Angeles had grown around what is now called "Light Rail". It was all financed privately by Real Estate developers, like Moses Sherman , and yep, it made these guys rich - especially in Los Angeles! Of course, once the real estate was all developed, the cities took over these systems, and by the 1940s, they were, to say the least, pretty beat up - especially in Los Angeles, where they got a LOT of heavy use. In Los Angel

If you live in Phoenix, Arizona, you've survived Valley Fever. I'm not exactly sure what it is, I just know that you breathe it in from the desert dust. For most people, it's hardly noticeable. It can be like a cold. Or you can die from it. I contracted Valley Fever right after I moved to Phoenix, when I was 19. For me, it was bad enough to give me pneumonia and put me in the hospital. I was in the County Hospital, the one at 24th Street and Roosevelt. Yes, it's connected to what was originally called the Insane Asylum. No, I wasn't insane, I was just indigent (you know, poor). So that's where I went. This must have been the very first time that I considered the possibility that I might die. And it just seemed to be so wrong. There I was, in Phoenix, where everything was beautiful, and life was filled with such possibilities. I remember asking the nurse if people died from this, and she just said, in a very matter-of-fact way, "yes". And it just

I didn't grow up in Phoenix, but a lot of my friends did, and whenever they refer to the park at 59th Avenue and Bethany Home Road, in Glendale, they call it "Chicken Park". Of course, the official name is Bonsall Park, but if you Google "Chicken Park", Google still finds it. Go ahead and try it, I just did. There haven't been any chickens there since the 1960s, but somehow the name has stuck, which I think is kinda cool. It goes back to 1913, when the U.S Poultry Experiment Station in Glendale was the Government Ostrich Farm. The chickens arrived in 1919, and from what I can tell, they were gone by the 1960s. Gone, but not forgotten! From the California Poultry Journal, Los Angeles, California, May 1921. 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 effort

No history of Phoenix, Arizona would be complete with a mention of its strip club signs. Now, don't worry, I'm not going into graphic detail here (this is the internet, you can find that elsewhere), but I am going to mention them, as they have been part of the background of Phoenix that I've been looking at since I was a teenager. I've only lived in two other places in my whole life, Minneapolis and Los Angeles, so I really don't know, but it has always struck me that the strip club signs around Phoenix were pretty blatant. There have always been these big signs all over the place, on city streets where everyone goes by all of the time, that say some pretty outrageous stuff. For those of you who have never been inside of a strip club, this is how it works: It's a dark room, filled mostly with men who are intently staring at a young woman on a stage. As a song begins, she dances in place, and during the course of the song, she removes her top. Then she put

I'm an outdoorsy person, but not in the way that most people think of it. I don't need to hike for miles (and I'd rather not) through distant mountains. I like to go outside, but I like sitting on patios. And since I've lived in Los Angeles and Phoenix all of my adult life, people have considered me pretty weird because of my tendency to go outside. When I lived in Los Angeles, in the 1980s, there was a popular song "Nobody Walks in LA". And I found it to be just as true in Phoenix. To be fair, the song really meant that only a "nobody" walks - that is, homeless people, poor people, people who aren't celebrities, etc. It's still the mindset in Los Angeles, and Phoenix, today. Ask anyone who has lived there for a long time - they never go outside, unless they're getting in and out of their car (with the closest parking spot available!), or if they're doing a hiking trip in Sedona. Walking around Phoenix is just considered kind'

You really don't hear the words "tramp" or "bum" anymore. Well, not in the way that they were originally used, to signify someone who travelled around. And nowadays, when we see someone who looks like what our grandparents might have called a bum or a tramp, we just lump them into a category called "homeless", and assume that they are bums. But this does many of these people a disservice, as many are tramps but not all are bums. Please let me explain. Time-travel with me, and let's tramp around the world. Yes, we're wandering around, from city to city, country to country. We have no permanent address. When we need money, we work for it. We take odd jobs, we follow migrant work. We may not have a permanent address, but that really doesn't matter. We're seeing the world, maybe waking up on a beach one day and then feeling the snow fall on us the next. We're tramps, we are not bums. Bums follow the same path as tramps - no perma

If you're like me, and you've driven between Phoenix and Los Angeles more times than you can count, you know that there is a particular stretch of desert is which is the most mind-numbingly boring stretch of road imaginable. It's between Indio and Blythe. And if you're a time-traveler like me, you have always stopped at Desert Center, which is halfway between those two places. I like to stop there on Ragsdale Road, which was the original highway before the freeway was built, and try to imagine what it was like. Yeah, it must have been pretty miserable - dusty and hot. The modern freeways may be dull, but they're safe, and as my car glides along I-10 with the A/C on, while I'm listening to my iPod, I hardly know that I'm in the desert. Anyway, I found an ad in Desert Magazine from 1939 which had a picture of "Desert Steve" Ragsdale. He seems to have had a good sense of humor, as he describes Main Street as 100 miles long (you know, from Indio

I've spent all of my adult life in Phoenix and Southern California, and I have to admit that I get a little uncomfortable when I can't see the mountains. No, I'm no expert on them, it's just that they are like old friends. If you live around mountains, you know what I mean. It wasn't until fairly recently that I decided that I would try to learn the names of all of the mountains that have been friends of mine for so long, and I'm still working on it, so here is a little bit of what I know: • North Mountain and South Mountain. Although I like to poke fun at the fact that Phoenix has long since grown around these mountains, they never indicated the city limits, anyway. They're the northern and southern edges of the Salt River Valley. North Mountain is north of Northern and South Mountain is south of Southern. I didn't say that this was going to be difficult. • The White Tank Mountains. Those are the mountains that you see to the west beyond the

If you were born anytime after the middle of the 20th century, it's probably very difficult to imagine a world without cars. I have always like cars a lot, and my interest in history has made me wonder what it would have been like seeing one for the very first time in a place that had only known horses, such as Phoenix, Arizona in 1905. The car I have parked in my garage right now has an engine that produces 140 horsepower and a top speed of 95 miles per hour. It can cruise easily for hours at 75 miles per hour. And if you're thinking, well, that's no big deal, that's my point. Cars, or automobiles, were first referred to as "horseless carriages". The power of a horse, although a pretty crude estimate, is how engine power was estimated from the beginning. And if you've ever stood next to a real, live horse, you know that these animals are powerful. So, an engine that could produce the power of a horse was pretty impressive. Yeah, one horsepower. W

Cities like Los Angeles, California and Phoenix, Arizona have the same problem. They need to get rainwater off the streets as quickly as possible. I've lived in both cities and see that there are two ways to do it - the ugly way and the beautiful way. In Los Angeles, ugly storm drains criss-cross the city. They are scars on the landscape, filthy concrete paths with barbed wire fences around them. They perform their function beautifully but they are so ugly it's unbelievable. If you've ever seen The LA River in movies, you know what I mean. All of the channels in the city look like that. And if you are a "form follows function" person, I ask you to go live next to something like that. Maybe it won't bother you, but it bothers me. In the Phoenix area, a different approach has been taken, and if you don't see any of it, well, that's the idea. Instead of just pouring massive concrete ditches everywhere, the process of channelization (yes, that's

When we think of the old west, we think of the faces of Clint Eastwood, or John Wayne. So when I first saw this photo of George Loring, one of the pioneers of Phoenix, I have to admit that I was a little surprised. Not exactly a rugged pioneer face! If you've never heard of George Loring that's not a surprise, either. He was a businessman, a good citizen, a family man, and that's about it. The fact that he came to Phoenix in the early 1870s is what makes him remarkable to me. He started a business called Loring's Bazar (yes, he spelled it that way) on Washington between Central and 1st Streets (at least that's what the streets would be called later). His place of business, which was made of adobe, was on Cactus Alley. For you serious Phoenix history buffs, that's where the Ellingson building was later built, which was where Donofrios Cactus Candy was. Arizona history is filled with so much nonsense, shoot-em-up stuff, that people like George Loring have

I grew up in Minnesota, and moved to Phoenix when I was a teenager, and had no idea of the connection between Arizona and the Confederacy. And so seeing the Confederate Memorial in Wesley Bolin Plaza (near the State Capitol Building in Phoenix) a few years ago really got me thinking. A little bit of research about the history of Arizona answered my questions about the Confederacy, but something that puzzled me is why the memorial was built, in 1961, and why it remains. The answer is on the memorial itself. It says, "A Nation That Forgets Its Past Has No Future". And that is exactly the point. Whatever history has to say after over 100 years, it should always be able to look back. The truth can be painful, but the truth is important. When this memorial was built, in 1961, there would have been people whose grandparents remembered the Confederacy. And in addition to a family connection, there was a reason why Arizona remembered the Confederate Army. It had to do with a

If, like me, you have decided to begin learning the names of the Indian Tribes in Arizona, and have been dismayed by the dizzying amount of them, and how a name that had been used in the past is no longer being used, and has been replaced with a tongue-twister, don't give up. I think that I can help. Walking up to a person while carrying a clipboard and trying to categorize them as if they were some type of wild bird, is not only insulting, it's foolish. So, if you're doing that to anyone, including me, don't expect a lot of cooperation, or even a straight answer. But if your research of Indians in Arizona is based on old movies, which were usually filmed in Monument Valley, it's time to start all all over again. And the best place to start in Arizona is right after the Civil War. I strongly recommend the History of Arizona by Thomas Edwin Farish. It was printed in 1918, and if you go to Volume VI, you can get a good look at Arizona, especially around the Sa

Yes, the 1912 Sine Hardware Building is still there, in downtown Glendale, Arizona. It's in beautiful condition, and there's even an historical marker on it. It's on 58th Drive about a block south of Glendale Avenue. If you're interested in Glendale history, and you can't find it, it's really not surprising. It took me many years to figure out why. The main reason is that the where it is seems to make no sense to our modern eyes. Now it's on a little tiny road that's so small that even people who have been in downtown Glendale a lot have never gone. But in 1912 it was the main entry into Glendale from Grand Avenue. Even in books, this road is often mislabeled as Glendale Avenue. But it was much more important to the town. It was 1st Avenue. Travel back in time with me and let's travel from Phoenix to Glendale in 1912. The edge of town for Phoenix is 7th Avenue, and Grand Avenue begins there, going northwest towards Glendale and Peoria. We'