Beginning history adventuring in Phoenix, Arizona


History adventuring is a lot of fun. I've been doing it, uh, longer than I care to admit and I hope that I can do it until this old body is finished - which I'm know will be a long, long time!

If you're wondering how history adventuring is done, let me tell you that you've already started. That's because it begins in your imagination. If fact, if you don't have any imagination, you can't do it. Luckily, we all have it. For most people it begins at age four, and if you're one of the lucky ones, it never goes away, no matter how much the world tries to beat it out of you. If the world has beaten it out of you, you can regain it, I guarantee that. It just takes a different way of thinking, the kind you knew when you were four.

So put away your history books, there won't be a test. Because the history adventuring is just an excuse for imagination. It's just a reference point to get your mind, and possibly your body, moving. You can start anywhere you want, and you never have to leave your computer screen, but of course you can. You can go history adventuring in your own backyard, and I do that often. You can go history adventuring in your neighborhood. You don't need to pack luggage and go somewhere else - because you're already there. Walk with me.

If you're like most people, who were taught to hate history by boring classes in school, then you may wonder if you have memorize dates, or names. For history adventuring you don't have to - you can cheat as much as you want. If you want to imagine Phoenix before the railroads arrived, you can Google it (it's 1887, by the way). I look stuff up all of the time. If someone were to suddenly walk up to me and demand a series of memorized answers about the history of Phoenix I would just smile and try to edge away. That gives me a headache just thinking about it.

If you go history adventuring you will learn things, and the more important things will stay with you. You may learn the names of the mountains near where you live, you may learn the names of the streets in your neighborhood. You may learn when your local church was built. You can't avoid learning things, it just happens. And people will probably ask you what you've learned, and you can try to recite names and dates, but I recommend that you try to avoid that. History adventuring is a journey, and it's all about fun. Ask them to just walk with you, and point their eyes to a mountain.

Image at the top of this post: Looking north at Camelback Mountain in the 1920s, Phoenix, Arizona. This is where I walk both in my imagination and in real life every day.
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 efforts to preserve and share precious digital historic images, please consider becoming a patron. Thank you!

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