History Adventuring

I never saw Legend City. I lived in Phoenix in the late '70s and early '80s, but I hadn't even heard of it until I started collecting old photos of Phoenix a few years ago. So I'll tell you what I know, which isn't much. Mostly I'll show you the photos that I have. If you remember Legend City, maybe you can explain it to me. Billboard for Legend City Amusement Park in the 1960s Billboard for Legend City, A Wild West Adventure, in the 1960s I did the collage at the top of this post based on images that I've found. And apparently Legend City was a Theme Park with a LOT of themes. Mostly, it was an Old West Theme Park, which advertised itself as a Wild West Adventure. It was, of course, an Amusement Park, with rides. Flying over Legend City in the 1960s, between Washington (foreground) and Van Buren. The address, 5555 E. Van Buren, I've seen described as Phoenix, and as Tempe. It was between Van Buren and Washington at about 55th Stree...

If you love Phoenix, like I do, you want to preserve the historic neighborhoods. And yes, there are a lot of ways to do it, most of which I have no idea about. You can be one of those people who walks around with a clipboard, or serves on a committee, that sort of stuff. But you don't have to do that to preserve an historic neighborhood in Phoenix. I help preserve my historic neighborhood, which was built in 1985. Yes, I mean it. And that's because everything is historic. If you just moved into your brand-new house today, it's historic. No, I don't mean that someone will be walking by with a clipboard, or talking about it in an Historic Committee. That's not what matters to me. If you're looking for a definition of historic, my favorite one comes from my brother who likes to show me a picture of himself, maybe from last week, and says, "Here's a picture of me when I was younger". It's kinda goofy, but it's true. To me, there's ...

If you've lived in Phoenix for more than a few years, you realize that the city tears down buildings, and builds new ones, all of the time. It's the story that I know personally of the Phoenix that I first saw in 1977, and from what I've been learning of its history, it's been going on since 1870, when Phoenix first began. The first buildings were adobe, then the railroad arrived, and those buildings went away to be replaced with brick buildings, then in the 1920s the embarrassing old brick buildings were replaced with streamlined buildings, and then after World War II those buildings were knocked down or re-skinned to look more modern, and on and on and on. I often think that anyone who lived in Phoenix, and went away for a few years, would come back to a city that looked very different, from Territorial times up to right now. If you're an old-timer like me, and are still giving directions by saying "Where the New Yorker restaurant used to be", it ...

I've always been fascinated with design, and my favorite era is the 1920s and early 1930s, the time of Art Deco, and Boogie Woogie. If you were around in the 1920s, you may remember seeing a lot of it. If you're like me, and were around in the 1970s and early '80s, you saw it, too. Because it made a "comeback" for a while. Design is like that. It's not unusual for a previous era to become wildly popular again. To my amazement, the 1970s has been making a comeback in the last few years. Yes, I've seen bell-bottom pants. But I digress, this is about the 1920s. 1920s Art Deco font on a 1981 yearbook for Saguaro High School, Phoenix, Arizona. I was talking to one of my PhDs (Phoenix History Detectives) this morning who showed me the cover of a 1981 yearbook, and wanted me to identify the font, which was Art Deco. Of course, I immediately thought of the 1920s, which is the era of Art Deco, and then I started hearing "Boogie Fever" (Google ...

I collect old photos of Phoenix, and one of the most common things that I see people say is how nice it must have been back then when there was so much open space, and solitude. And when I tell them that there's still a lot of it, right nearby, they don't even hear me. I suppose they think that I have quite an imagination. But it doesn't take any wild imagination to see open spaces and solitude in the modern Phoenix area. You don't need a time machine, and you don't have to travel for hundreds of miles. Just exit the freeway to Saddle Mountain, which is south of the 1-10, near Tonopah (which is near Buckeye). I went there with a friend of mine last year and when we got out of the truck to eat lunch, the silence was amazing. The freeway was still in sight, but we were standing in a place that has that special kind of desert quiet. If you've never heard it, I feel sorry for you. Once you have, it becomes an addiction to hear it again. Or to not hear it, if ...

If you've lived in the Phoenix area from the time that cars started becoming popular until right now, you've seen an unfortunate design mistake of combining cars with pedestrians. In the future people will laugh at it, the way that I'm laughing at the photo up there of the photo of the swimming pool in a parking lot at a motel, with the car just a few inches away from where people are sitting poolside. And it's not funny to imagine an excited child jumping out of the pool and running behind a car. Of course, in the 1950s, having a car just inches away from a swimming pool wasn't considered all that strange. People just didn't see anything wrong with it. And this type of design mistake has continued, and it seems to be just taken for granted that cars are combined with people walking around them, in parking lots. The next time you park your car in a parking lot in Phoenix, take a look at where people are expected to walk - behind the vehicles that are backin...

I've been on elevators a lot in my life. I used to work in downtown Phoenix, and I knew how to operate them - you pushed a button (either up or down), waited for the elevator doors to open, got out of the way of people getting off, got in and pushed a button for the floor that you wanted. To me, nothing could have been simpler. I've never been in an elevator that was operated by a person. I've seen them in movies, and read about them, but that's all. But if you lived in Phoenix before the 1940s, that all you would have seen, and all your parents would have seen, going back to the invention of elevators at the turn of the century. A person would stand inside of the elevator, you would tell them what floor you wanted, and they would operate it. But all of that changed when elevators were automated. And it must have been confusing, and frightening for a lot of people. I'm not kidding here. When the elevators in the Professional Building were equipped to be opera...

I've been exploring Phoenix, and Los Angeles, for many years now. And on a regular basis, I'm reminded that what I see is weird. I can look past suburbia. I can see the mountains, the rivers, the wide open spaces. And I've been doing it next to the doughnut shops of the San Fernando Valley, and the Starbucks of Phoenix. And it makes me sad when I realize that most people not only can't do it, they don't even try. I call this "history adventuring", but mostly it's just looking at stuff. I was a nerdy little kid who liked to draw (and I still am!) so I'd take my sketchbook out to places and draw things. I drew trees, and rocks, and flowers, and all of the things that the grownups didn't see. They saw traffic lights, and grocery stores. I still do this all of the time, and I often take photos of things that I find interesting here in the Phoenix, Arizona area. I see trees, rocks, flowers, mountains. And it's when I post them on Facebo...

If you live in Phoenix, you've survived Valley Fever. Luckily, you only get it once, and once you've survived it, you'll be fine. And chances are that you never even noticed it, it probably felt like a mild cold, or maybe even a bad one. So, congratulations on surviving! Valley Fever (I have to Google this, hang on) is a fungal infection caused by coccidioides (kok-sid-e-OY-deze) organisms. I got that from the Mayo Clinic site. You get it by breathing in the spores that live in the desert dust. OK, that's as technical as I'm gonna get. You can go read more if you want to, but I'd rather not. I survived Valley Fever when was I was 19, and got to spend some time at the County Hospital at 24th Street and Roosevelt. I had a neighbor drive me there, and he and I had no idea where to go, and it was kind of an emergency. I later found out that I was covered, as a college student, under my parents' insurance, and I could have gone to any hospital, but at the ...

If you've driven around Phoenix, Arizona, you've seen the white crosses. And they're what you think they are - markers, like over a grave. But don't worry, no one is buried underneath them. They mark the place where someone died in an automobile accident. As an average white guy growing up in Minneapolis, my attitude towards the dead has been that once someone is gone, they're gone. In my culture, we hardly ever speak of the dead, dead people are only "creepy things" during Halloween, having pictures of dead family members is seen as "not getting over it", and death is mostly ignored. So if you're kinda creeped out by the white crosses, and also by the "in memorandum" written on the backs of windows of vehicles in Phoenix sometimes, I understand. If this is part of your culture, you may wonder why people object to this. I'll see if I can explain. When I moved to Phoenix I discovered a world of connected families. Brother...

Walk with me. I've always loved to walk around, and explore. I live in Arizona, and it's March, and the weather is just beautiful for exploring on foot. I've explored a lot of places this way, from the little town in Minnesota where my Grandma lived, to the coast of Southern California, to the Arizona Highways. Well, Arizona roads. Actually Arizona foot paths. If you've never seen these places, I understand. Most of the people I know never get out of their car. And if they do, they drive miles somewhere, do some kind of laborious "hike" (hoping that it will be all be over soon so they can post it on their Facebook page, and go get lunch at a restaurant), and then go home to look at the pamphlet that they got at the gift shop. But that's never interested me - I just like to walk. If you're from Australia, it's called a "Walkabout". You just stumble out into the Outback, with no particular destination in mind (other than getting ba...

If you live in the Phoenix area, you see a lot of Mormon Churches. The signs say "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints", and it is often abbreviated as LDS. If you yourself are LDS, you know all about it, if you're not, I'd like to explain a bit. No, I'm not Mormon. And by the way, there's nothing wrong using using that term, it's just that LDS sounds just a bit cooler, making you seem as if you're "in the know". I've been learning about Mormonism since I was about 13, and I still have a lot to learn, but I'll tell you what I know so far. I'm an adventurer. I have an inquisitive nature, which I guess starts when you ask "why is the sky blue?" and for most people fades away after they start school. But I never outgrew it. I have a good friend who says that when he was a kid he wanted to know everything, and he never outgrew it. It genuinely puzzles most people that I meet, and the people who are intellec...

I have a particular fascination for fonts. After all, I'm a Graphic Designer, and I really wouldn't consider myself a very good one if I didn't. And if you see fonts, like I do, you're either a Graphic Designer, or weird, or both. Seeing fonts is part of what I call "seeing structure, not just content". And it applies to all types of design, automotive, architectural, everything. If it's completely invisible to you, don't be surprised, you're in the majority. For the vast majority of people, it's content that matters, not structure. When the average person looks at a poster, they are supposed to be inspired to buy the product, when they see a building, they're supposed to go in there. If most people just stood around looking at posters and admiring the fonts, then their function would be essentially lost. If you're like some people, you can see both. I'm working on getting better with seeing content, but I have to work on it, i...

I like living in Arizona, and I always wanted to live in the suburbs, which I do. It's quiet, peaceful, and safe, and I live on a "no outlet" street, so the only cars that go past my house are either my neighbors, or people who didn't noticed that the street doesn't go through, sometimes making a U-turn in front of my house. I have six-foot block walls, and the front of my house is mostly a garage door, which opens up with a remote control and allows me to enter my house without anyone ever seeing me. I like it here. But all of this leads to a strange feeling of being surrounded by strangers. If you're like me, you'd rather know the people who live around you. I grew up in Minnesota, and I have that typical "Minnesota friendly" spirit. And I do know some of my neighbors, in spite of the fact that most of them drive past with tinted windows and never get out of their cars, except when they're stopping at the mailbox, and their car door ...

My interest in Phoenix history has taken to to some fascinating places, often with experts who know all about stuff. And the more I learn, the more I learn how ignorant I am. If you know all about Gus Greenbaum, you already know why the marker at the Beth Israel Cemetery has the same date for him and his wife Bess, December 2, 1958. They were murdered. I'll tell you what I know, which isn't much. You can find a LOT of information out there, as this is a connection to True Crime in Phoenix, going back to the days of Prohibition. As a volunteer for the Pioneers' Cemetery Association, I am able to connect with a lot of great experts in Phoenix history. I'm mostly interested in collecting old photos of Phoenix, and how people lived, but it's also important to know how they died. Let's go to the Beth Israel Cemetery, which is on 35th Avenue and Harrison (just north of the railroad tracks, between Van Buren and Buckeye Road). The Pioneers' Cemetery Associat...

Phoenix, Arizona is a young city. That's part of the reason that I like it. There's a youthful vibrance that just sparkles in Phoenix. There's a vitality that the city displays all of the time, with new buildings, the newness of the Light Rail, and so many other things. I mean, have you been to downtown Phoenix lately? A lot of it looks as if it were just built yesterday. And some of it was! And by the time I finish writing this, there will be more. Phoenix is a young city, always under construction. So if you can't see how old Phoenix is, that's understandable. When I first started collecting historic photos of Phoenix I had a vague idea of the age of the city. My ASU tee-shirt says, "Since 1885" but it didn't really ever register with me. And by the time that school was being established, Phoenix had been there for fifteen years. Yes, Phoenix began in 1870. And Tempe is even older. So I don't care how old you are, Phoenix was there before ...

I just love it here. I live in the Phoenix, Arizona area. And I'm just crazy about where I live.  And I mean in that kind of way that makes people wonder about me. I want to be together forever with the place I where live. 'Til death do us part. I write love-letters to the place where I live (this is going to be a real mushy one), I spend hours just marveling at how lucky I am, I look at pictures of the place where I live. Of course, not everybody feels the same way about where they live. They grumble, make excuses, and put up with it. I've known a lot of these people, and they make me sad. When I ask "why are you here?" I want to hear that they've found the place that they love, where they want to make a home, not just because "it's where a particular job is, or because they need to be there for some other reason". I want to hear about romance. Let's see, I guess that would be Cityramce? or Placeromance? Follow History Adventuring on ...

The Light Rail in Phoenix is way cool. If you've been on it, you know. And if you haven't been, and think you know, like I thought I did, you'll be in for a pleasant surprise. And it comes down to a totally different feeling from being on a bus, or in a car. Like most people my age, I rode the bus before I got a car, when I was 18, and never really thought about public transportation after that. I owned some unreliable cars in my twenties, so I remember the disgrace of walking or riding the bus. I was just hoping that no one would see me at the bus stop. Yes, there's a stigma to riding the bus, sorry. Standing on a street corner while cars zoom by is just awful. The few times that I've ridden the bus in Los Angeles, and in Phoenix, I always feel as if someone should pull over in their limo while I'm sitting there, and hand me some cash through the window. But the feeling of the Light Rail is different. In principle it's the same thing, you sit somewhe...

I like everyday people. And that means everyone. Because we're all everyday people. We all sweat beneath the same sun (especially in Phoenix!), we all look up in wonder at the same moon. Rich or poor, young or old, male or female, etc., etc. And if you like everyday people, you're in luck. They're everywhere. I moved to Phoenix when I was 19, just because I had a car and I knew how to read a map. I was looking for something different, especially a place that didn't snow (I grew up in Minneapolis), and I was immediately frightened and lonely. I wrote back home to my parents, and my friends all of the time (always including a cartoon!) but it wasn't enough. I needed people. People in Phoenix are weird. Some of them are a lot like the people I knew in Minneapolis but some were so strangely exotic that I could hardly believe it. Some of them spoke a strange language, and ate things called "tacos". And I very quickly got over my fear and turned everyon...

I enjoy collecting old photos of Phoenix, and I especially like the old cars. But one thing that always seems to bother me is that before 1965, most of cars didn't have seat belts, nor did the cars have much in the way of protection for passengers during a crash. There were no air bags, no crumple zones, no side impact protection. And the kinds of accidents that people survive easily today were very often fatal back then. And even in the 1970s, and '80s, most people didn't wear seat belts in their cars. I remember when it became a law, and how strange it felt for my parents. They were way too cool for seat belts, but they were law-abiding. They were more afraid of getting a ticket for not wearing a seat belt that having it save their life in a crash. People who drove cars back then just hoped for the best, and when they crashed, they mostly died. No, I'm not trying to be a downer, man. I'm just saying that although I enjoy visiting old-time Phoenix in my imagin...

Phoenix, Arizona had a LOT of billboards in the mid-twentieth Century. I don't remember them, so apparently by the time I got to Phoenix, in the late 1970s, they were going away. And the reason that I know about the billboards is the Duke University Digital Collections website, which has a large digital collection of old-time advertising, including billboards. And of course people who grew up in Phoenix remember the billboards. I'm a Graphic Designer, so I've designed billboards, and ads, but like most people I'd really rather not see them all over the place. And billboards were the "pop-up ads" of the mid-twentieth century. If you remember "Ladybird" Johnson, the First Lady of President Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s, you may recall that she was instrumental in getting rid of a lot of billboards that had infested America's Highways. She helped beautify America. Phoenix has always had a lot of empty lots. And empty lots attract billboards. ...

Yesterday I visited the Arizona Falls. It's on the Arizona Canal just east of 56th Street at Indian School Road. It's been there since 1885, and if you've never noticed it, and if you kinda don't believe me that it's really there, I can't blame you. But it is. The Arizona Falls in 1885, Camelback Mountain is in the background. The Arizona Falls in 1895. From a postcard. I've always had a fascination for the canals of Phoenix. I've never lived anywhere that has canals, and most of the people I know confuse them with storm drains. They're not. Canals bring water into the city, drains carry it away. Phoenix, of course, has both. And of course all cities have ways to bring water in, but it's usually covered up. My favorite example is the gigantic aqueduct that brings water to Los Angeles from the Owens Valley. It's just pipes, so it's not much to look at. Phoenix canals are different, they're beautiful, and they have alway...