History Adventuring

Parking lots are ugly, and they've been ugly all of my life. It's as if there's nothing that anyone can imagine that's uglier than a parking lot. When I was a kid, there were song lyrics that said, "They paved paradise, and put in a parking lot". And the message was clear: parking lots are ugly. Ugly, ugly, ugly. Even the most perfectly paved and striped parking lot, brand new, is instantly ugly. And now I'm trying to imagine a time when parking lots weren't ugly. It certainly was before my day, I'm stretching my imagination here. So let's try to imagine beautiful parking lots. Time-travel with me. 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 In order to see parking lots as beautiful, I suppose you have to se...

Whenever I look at old photos of Phoenix I wonder about the confusion. Vehicles and people seem to be going every which way. To me, they're supposed to stay to the right, right? Well, yes, and no. In the photo above, of Washington in 1905, one would presume that there was going to be a collision. Some vehicles seem to be going the "wrong way". But don't worry, what we can't see in an old photo like this is how slowly they were going, really not a whole lot faster than a walking pace. 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 To help picture this, just imagine pushing a shopping cart in a grocery store. Personally, I try to stay to the right, but if I see something to the left, I go the "wrong way" down the aisle. ...

I've driven between Los Angeles and Phoenix more times than I can count. And to me, it's dull, dull, dull. I've tried many ways of trying to make it interesting, listening to audiobooks, you name it. I just hated it, and I'm glad to think that I'll never do it again. There's a nice company called "Southwest Airlines" that gets me back and forth now, and all I have to do is eat peanuts and look out the window. But a lot of people do the drive. And the most common thing I hear them say is how quickly they did it. Six hours seems to be about average, and I'm pretty sure some of my "speed demon" friends who never stop for anything but gas have done better than that. And that makes me think of my personal record, which was three days in 1989. I like cars, and driving, but I hated just sitting in a box for hours on end, holding onto a steering wheel. Back when I was a kid I dreamed of adventuring when I got a car, the way I saw people on...

I need a used car, it's the 1940s, and we're in Phoenix. So let's go to the Phoenix Motor Company Used Car lot, which is on the southeast corner of 5th Avenue and Van Buren. I've been walking past this place for a long time now, and I see a car that I REALLY like. It's the '37 Ford Standard Coupe there, the one right behind the sign post. I wonder if it's a good car? And if I can afford it? Since I know nothing about cars (except what I like) I'm glad you're along. I've been to your shop and seen the work you do, which is amazing. You must have grease running in your viens! I'll follow your advice - if you like it, I'm going to get it. If it needs some work, it goes to your shop first. If it's a basket case, then I'll go on walking. 1937 Ford Standard Coupe There it is. Wow, I really like that car. Yeah, I know that you shouldn't let the salesman know that, so I'll try to calm down. I shouldn't have had a...

I wish that I could show you the wonderfully colorful buildings in Phoenix in the 1890s, but I can't. I've never found any color photos of Phoenix during that era, and photos that are "colorized" just look fake, so I won't do that. But the buildings were brightly colored, as brightly as the clothing that people wore, which is also mostly seen in black-and-white photos, or faded swatches of material. So I'll have to ask you to use your imagination, and time-travel with me. No, I don't know the exact colors of the buildings in old-time Phoenix, but they certainly weren't black-and-white, and they were anything but dull and subdued. This was the Victorian era, a time of what many people consider excessive ornamentation.  There was scrollwork everywhere, and lots of different textures. And paint! Lots of paint! And lots of colors! Support Arizona history by becoming a patron on Patreon Click here to become a Patron! History Adventuring blog posts...

I just love living in Phoenix, Arizona. I've only lived in two other places in my life, Minneapolis (where I grew up) and Southern California (where I spent my twenties), so it's not like I traveled around and have a lot to go on. But I made the decision, and it's my dearest wish that I will be able to stay in Phoenix for the rest of my life, which looks like it's gonna be a long one. Like most people who moved to Phoenix from Minnesota, I just wanted to get away from the cold and snow. It was during my first year of Junior College after High School that I started working part time for a company that hired college kids to do physical inventory. That is, busloads of people would be dropped off at a store and stay there all night, counting stuff. We wore big old-fashioned calculators (even for those days!) and wrote down the totals on a piece of paper on a clipboard. Pretty brainless work really, and perfect for someone like me who didn't mind being up all night ...

Let's travel back to old-time Phoenix, and be rich. Since this is a journey of imagination, we can be as rich as we want. Let's be stinking rich, and live in a mansion. Of course, no one really considers themselves to be "rich". In a longish life, I've known a lot of very wealthy people, who live in houses whose mortgages I could never dream of paying, and who vacation in places that make me wonder how there could be enough disposable income in the world to pay for them. People will only use the word "rich" if they're dreaming of wealth - once they have it, they will consider themselves comfortably well-off. So let's be comfortably well-off. We owned some desert land that we got a lot of money for recently, and is now a subdivision. We're the same people that we were before, except that now we have a lot of money. A LOT of money! I like Phoenix, so I'm going to stay here. A lot of people who became wealthy moved to California, bu...

If you live in the Phoenix area, you know about Snowbirds. "Snowbird" is the slightly derogatory, slightly affectionate name for retired people who stay in Phoenix during the winter and then "fly away" before summer. My parents (pictured above) were snowbirds for many, many years. And they arrived in late September or early October, about the time of the year that I'm writing this right now. So while you're enjoying the end of another horrific summer (I swear they get hotter and longer every year!) you will also notice that the valley gets a little bit more crowded, especially with large slow-moving vehicles (like my parents's Crown Vic, which was brand new when I took the photo). 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, A...

After five years teaching at a private college, I started teaching over at my local community college, Glendale Community College. Back in the late '90s and early 2000s, there was a huge demand to learn software like Photoshop, etc., so I had decided to go into business for myself, doing personal training, corporate training, and also teaching at the local community college, here in Glendale, Arizona. Although I had a teaching certificate, and wrote "teacher" on my income tax forms, I never was comfortable with calling myself that. To me, I was a trainer, nothing more. I considered real teachers to be working at High Schools and Elementary Schools, or even to be teaching more difficult subjects in college, like geography. I was just showing people how to use software, and how to do Graphic Design. It was a pleasure for me because I genuinely love doing those things. As far as the corporate and personal training was concerned, it was very much like the private colle...

I collect old photos of Phoenix, and share them on the Patreon for free. My collection is digital, which means that there's no paper, and that I can store an unlimited amount of them. And that's good, because I have an unlimited interest in the places and people of Phoenix. I place no restrictions. And that seems to puzzle some people, who are used to only seeing places that are important because of their association with rich and famous people. But I disagree, and I'll try to explain here. Maybe it's because everything can't be covered in school, or maybe it's because everything can't be reported on in newspapers, that people learn that the ordinary places and people don't matter. After all, what class curriculum could literally include everything that ever happened in the history of Phoenix? That would be a long class, and probably very boring. And no newspaper is going to report that a "Glendale man forgot to feed his dog first thing this m...

It's 1899, I'm hungry, so let's go eat at the Phoenix Restaurant. It's a new place that just opened up on 1st Avenue between Washington and Jefferson. Right across from the Court House. I just saw an ad in the paper that says that it's the best and cheapest eating house in the city. They serve meals at all hours, so we don't have to be there at lunch time, or dinner time, we can eat whenever we get there. Yes, I know it's a long dusty ride from the ranch to downtown Phoenix, but let's go. We just got our wages, and I'm tired of the food that they've been serving us here. If you can call that  "food"! The Phoenix Restaurant in 1899, next door to McKee's Cash Store Let's see, it's supposed to be right next door to McKee's Cash Store. I don't see it yet, we could ask. Wait, I have an idea, let's go to the top of the Court House and look from there. Say, it's quite a view from here. Now I see it! ...

As someone who learned to drive in the 1970s, I often consider myself the first generation of people who cared about safety behind the wheel. Not everyone my age did, of course, but my generation got to see movies during Driver's Ed that showed what happened to people when they wrecked their car. It's been a long time since I've seen those images, and I still remember them vividly. The attitude up to that time had been to hope that you would be lucky. Wearing seat belts was not cool, there were no air bags, and if someone died behind the wheel, or was maimed, it was just considered bad luck. And as the nation's roads got more and more crowded, a lot more people were having bad luck. Of course drinking and driving was common. The laws really weren't all that stringent, and if someone wrecked while drunk, it was just "bad luck". Seat belts had been in cars since the mid 1960s, and side-impact protection started in the 1970s, but that wasn't enough...

One of the wonderful things about living in the Phoenix area is that you can have fresh oranges and grapefruit that have just been picked right there at the grove. Let's go back to 1919 and get some. There are plenty of orange groves in Phoenix, but the one I have in mind will take a little bit of a drive. I hope you don't mind driving, I don't have a car. I'll help pay for the gas! And if it breaks down, I'm pretty handy with mechanical stuff. 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 OK, I'll navigate. We start on Center (Central Avenue) and go north to McDowell Road. From there we go east to Chicago Avenue (44th Street). It's a good distance, but it's a nice drive. You just put new tires on, right? And you have...

I'm a Western man. I've never lived anywhere except the West. And that includes Minnesota, where I was born, Arizona, where I am right now, and California, where I spent my twenties. These places are: the Old West, the West, and the Midwest. Minnesota is the Old West of Jesse James. Arizona is what most people think of when they picture a geographically Western state. And of course California is on the West Coast. So if you tell someone that you're going out West, you may have to do a bit of clarifying. Luckily, the name of the Old West to describe places like Minnesota, Iowa, and Kansas is rarely used nowadays and instead the term Midwest is used. Very few people question how a state that's about in the middle of the country could be described as Midwest, but it's just to differentiate that area from the Far West back when most of the population of the United States lived east of the Mississippi River. And the West runs deeper as a culture. It's associ...

If you're gay, I apologize in advance for my presumption of trying to write this. But gay people are, and always have been, an important part of the story of Phoenix, and in my opinion they deserve recognition, and in this tiny way I want to add a little bit. I'll tell you what I know. As someone who actually looked a bit like Jerry Seinfeld in the 1990s, slender, well-dressed, I was often taken for a gay man. Not that there's anything wrong with that! And since I came of age in Los Angeles (in my twenties), I absorbed much of the Southern California sensibilities. If you've lived there, you know. So when I moved back to Arizona in 1989, I was kind of puzzled by the attitude towards gay people. They hid. As you can imagine, this hiding and pretending led to a lot of confusion. I was used to people being more straight-forward about their sexual preferences (and if you lived in Southern California, you really know!). So in Phoenix I learned to play along with peopl...

As someone who has always loved old cars, and going to car shows, I often wonder what it would have been like to drive a car in old-time Phoenix. What I know of old-time cars comes from movies like "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang", so pondering the reality of them makes me cringe a little bit. Because from our modern viewpoint, early cars were just awful in so many ways. This is about all I know about old cars. From the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. First of all, they were LOUD. Yes, the engines were tiny compared to the cars of today, but you just have to image the sound of a lawn mower going down the street. No muffling of the sound, and very frequent backfiring. If you've never heard a car backfire, it's an extremely loud "bang" (that's where the "Bang" in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang comes from, backfiring). Having just a few vehicles going down the street with engines as loud as lawnmowers and backfiring all along must have been horrendous....

It's 1921 in Phoenix, Arizona, so let's go watch a movie. You know, a flicker, a moving picture. They'll all the rage. The Columbia is showing Constance Talmadge in "The Perfect Woman". Yes, I know what you're thinking - that those old movies were pretty tame, and boring. No sex and violence. But waitaminute, this is before the Hays Office and censorship of movies, which won't happen until next year. Now we'll be able to see some pretty outrageous stuff, like people kissing while a woman holds a gun, and, well, the things that next year would be banned in movies and wouldn't return until the "M" for Mature ratings, and and all of that begins in the 1960s. I'm sure that "The Perfect Woman" won't be X-rated, or even R, but it sure won't be G. Probably more like PG. Pretty outrageous for 1921. The Columbia Theater in 1917, 106 W. Adams, Phoenix, Arizona. The Columbia Theater is at 106 W. Adams, which is Adam...

Let's time-travel back to old-time Phoenix and fall in love. Birds do it, bees, do it, heck, I've even heard that educated fleas do it. Let's do it, let's fall in love. It's springtime, we're young, and Phoenix is growing. The population is absolutely exploding! And the old-timers are complaining about it, because they're looking at parking spots. But we're looking at girls. And, wow, look at the girls! I don't know about you, but I'm partial to blue-eyed blondes. And there are a lot of them around, mostly from places back east like Minnesota, where there are a lot of Scandinavian people. They're pretty, but you don't want to leave them out in the Phoenix sunshine too much, they'll burn. Waitaminute, look at her! Those dark eyes, that flowing black hair! She really brings out the fire in my spirit. I wonder if she would talk to me, or even look at me. And look over there, she must be from China, or Japan. I feel my heart beat...

Let's go watch a baseball game. We're going to Tempe, in 1929, to Arizona State Teacher's College (now ASU). I hear that they have a pretty good team now, lead by Bob Smith. What a beautiful day for a game! Let's see, before we time-travel, we need to get all of our stuff together. Maroon and gold? Yes, those have been the school colors since 1885. Peanuts and Cracker Jack? Of course, what's a ball game without Cracker Jack? It's been around since 1896. And yes, we need to bring along penants that say Arizona State. No, not Arizona State University - it won't be a University until 1958. 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 A lot of things have changed in the world since 1929, but not baseball. It may not be as po...

Let's ride a bicycle in old-time Phoenix. It's a very popular new invention, come on and give it a try! Of course, you have to watch where you're going! There are still plenty of horses on the streets of Phoenix, and even a few automobiles, although they're rare. Still, Phoenix is a great place to ride a bicycle because there aren't a lot of hills. And it never snows in Phoenix, and it rarely rains. It's 1904 and we're riding on Washington Avenue. Listen to the hum of those wires! There are telephone wires, and electric wires, and even wires specifically to run the Street Cars. By the way, don't ride your bike right in front of them, it irritates the trolley driver. In fact, it's a good idea to stay away from the Street Car rails, you don't want to get a tire stuck in there! OK, here we are at the store. Don't worry, we don't have to carry anything on our bikes, all we have to do is to choose what we want, and it'll b...

Let's time-travel back to Phoenix, Arizona in 1892, and stay at a boarding house. According to an ad I just read, Mrs. M.K. Wheeler has the best table board in the city. It's at the corner of Maricopa [2nd Street] and Adams, so let's go. Of course, we could have just gotten a room down by the livery stable, but we're making good money working in the gold and silver mines, so let's find a place with room and board. That is, a place to hang our hats, and that includes food. I've been asking around, and I'm told that Mrs. Wheeler lays out a great board. And since we'll be here for the holidays, I'm sure that it be a festive one! It's making me hungry just to think of it. Here's the place. Yeah, I know it doesn't look like much, but smell that home cooking! That's what I'm talking about. There's no sense us making all that money in the mines and then starving ourselves. A man can't live on whiskey and beef jerky, you...

Let's go back to Phoenix, Arizona in 1892 and get some horse shoeing done. Rapunzel threw a shoe yesterday, and the rest of her shoes don't look very good, so let's go into town, to W.H. Smith. You know, at Gilmour Brothers old stand, at Adams and Center (Central). It's going to be another hot day, but the sun hasn't really come up yet, so it feels good this morning. Yes, we'll have to walk there, but we can ride back. Sure, you can ride, Rapunzel may be old, but she's strong. How much do you weigh? We must be getting closer, I can hear the clang on the anvil. I wonder if that's old W.H. or one of his helpers? Yes, I can see the glow of the coal fire from here. That must be miserable in the heat, being a blacksmith. No wonder he's there before sunup. Central and Adams in 1908, Phoenix, Arizona. We're walking along the canal, so it's just a few blocks away. The canal runs just north of Van Buren, and I understand it's suppose...

In 1913, a bridge for cars was built over the Salt River to and from Tempe, Arizona. Before that, you had other choices. You could have crossed at Central after 1911, you could have gone across on the railroad, going back to 1887, or you could have walked across the river when it was low (and many people did), or you could have paid someone, like Charles Hayden to ferry you across in a boat. Let's time travel back to 1895 and take a ferry across the Salt River. It'll be another eighteen years until the Ash Avenue Bridge will be built, and we're not about to pay freight charges to take a train. It's winter, and the water is high, but it's flowing slowly, so we'll be fine. The horses are a bit nervous, but then again, they always are. I'll just sit here in the buggy and relax. I guess the women folk can stand in back. 1878 ad for Hayden's Ferry, Tempe, Arizona. I was talking to Charles Hayden, over at his store near the mill, and he's convi...

I enjoy visiting old-time Phoenix in my imagination, but the more I learn about it, the happier I am in modern day. The first thing that springs to my mind, of course, is air conditioning, but this morning I'm thinking of flies and mosquitos. I live in the suburbs, and at this time of year, after the monsoon rains, there are flies and mosquitos. Just a few, of course, but they're still pests. Like all insects, including butterflies, they're mostly attracted to water, and since I have a garden, and trees, there's water. Not standing water, of course, but there's still water. Water on the pedals of the flowers, moisture on the plants. Enough to attract insects. I also have a dog, and even though I'm clean up her "messes" in the backyard, often several times a day, that kind of thing attracts flies. And today I'm thinking about the number of flies and mosquitos in old-time Phoenix, and how difficult it would have been to get away from them, as op...

My two favorite cities in the world are Phoenix, and Los Angeles. I love to talk about them, and all too often I realize that my view of them is vastly different from most people's view. And it has to do mostly with my secret places. Most people that I talk to live in a world of sitting in their cars in traffic jams, staring at brake lights, and then being inside of buildings, looking at walls, inside of elevators, and their only relief is from that is to watch other people play a game on TV. And since that's all they see, that's all they know. And of course they insist that they have to live in that world because they're not rich. And even rich people do the same thing, it's just that they sit in more expensive cars, and watch other people play games on more expensive TVs. But that stuff never interested me. I did enough of it to realize that I didn't want to live my life staring at walls, trapped in spaces, watching other people play games. I wanted to ...