History Adventuring

Let's go visit the town Marshal. Sure, I know him, and you know me, so let's go. He lives over on Papago, a few blocks west of Center Street, on Jefferson. It's the house there with the widow's walk on top of it. Yes, I'm sure he'll let us go up there! I've known him since he came to town, in '74. He's a good guy, and the best shot I've ever seen. Amazing. He's getting on in years now, nearly 35, so don't say anything to him about that, he may be touchy on the subject. Hello, Mrs. Garfias! Is your husband around? What a cute baby! Oh never mind, I can hear him in the backyard, practicing his shooting. Do you mind if we go and say hi? Howdy, Marshal! I'd like you to meet my friend, he's heard a lot about you. Yes, he speaks a little Spanish, but I don't, so if you don't mind, let's keep it in English. Yes, we met Luisa, she's out front with the baby. And here she is! Thank you, Mrs. Garfias! No, this is f...

Let's walk across the desert from Parker to Phoenix in 1872. We're starting at the Colorado River, at what was then called Parker's Landing, at the Colorado River Indian Reservation, actually several miles south of the modern city of Parker, Arizona. And we're walking east towards the brand new town of Phoenix, which is only two years old. Don't look for a road, there isn't one, nor is there a name for the route we're taking. We're simply going from well to well. Our first stop is Osborn Well. No, there's no town there, just a place to get water, which is just about all we need. Our mules are carrying our provisions. There won't be any type of town until we get to Wickenburg, which is nearly 100 miles away. At a healthy walking pace, and if we don't get lost or hurt, it should take us about three days to get there, and then we can go visit the new town of Phoenix after that. If you're wondering why there's a route there at al...

I took a walk to the little park in my neighborhood in Glendale, Arizona (a suburb of Phoenix) just now, with my dog, and noticed that there are a lot of new trees being planted by my neighbors. I like trees, as does my dog, and I also noticed how much cars love them. In the old photos that I collect, Phoenix had a LOT of trees. Long before there was air conditioning, there were trees. And somewhere along the line, in the late 20th Century, the trees started going away, and I've been blaming the cars. You know, more lanes, more parking spots, that sort of thing. But I'm wrong, because cars love trees. Go to any parking lot in Phoenix in summer and you'll see the cars huddled around the trees. They seem to understand something that most people don't - that trees bring shade, and cool down the intense heat of the desert. I'm seeing the trees return to Phoenix. Like I say, I really have no idea why, but the wonderful trees of Phoenix had mostly disappeared by ...

Since I lived in the Los Angeles area for many years, and still have a lot of friends there, I like to go back every year in the summer. I've lived in the Phoenix area now since 1989, and of course my mind is always flooded with good memories of my life in California, not the least of which is that I was younger. And I'm reminded of the smell. Our sense of smell is something that triggers memories. And certain smells remind me of Los Angeles, some of which are really not all that pleasant. I'll see if I can explain, starting with exhaust fumes. My friends who grew up in Los Angeles never smelled the exhaust fumes. It's the nature of lifelong exposure to something, you really don't notice it, because it's not unusual. The smell of exhaust fumes, especially diesel, in the air is the one thing that hit me the hardest when I moved to Los Angeles from Phoenix. Now don't get me wrong, there's the smell of exhaust fumes in Phoenix - there are cars and ...

The Arizona Center is a combination retail/office space complex in downtown Phoenix, built in 1989, and for the past few years has been really showing its age. For the 1980s, it was state-of-the-art, but times, and expectations, have changed. I was there today, August 25th of 2018, and while it's still very much in progress, at least you can walk around and take a look at what they're doing. And the redesign can be summed up in one word: shade. Or rather, dappled shade, the kind of shade that you usually get from walking under trees, not the kind of shade from big buildings that makes an area just feel closed in. It was actually quite amazing to see, and feel, and it's something that they really hadn't taken into consideration in the 1980s, human scale. The dappled shade is created by the new overhangs. Downtown Phoenix has been undergoing a transformation in the past decade, driven mostly by ASU. There are a lot more people walking around than I remember whe...

If you're interested in being a PhD (Phoenix History Detective), don't worry - it's easy. You don't even have to live in Phoenix, although that would be nice. A magnifying glass is optional, but the attitude of a detective is required. A PhD is a degree that you give to yourself as soon as you start wondering about Phoenix history. And it's not about reading books, although they're helpful, it's about looking at stuff. For me, to give credit where credit is due, it started with a show on PBS that I used to watch called "the History Detectives". They were given assignments to figure stuff out, maybe whether a particular diary was authentic, or something. I liked their attitude, they were bloodhounds, on the trail. Of course they always solved the mystery, and to me that was the dullest part. At a certain point they'd report back at what they'd found, and maybe if something was valuable, and their adventure was over. For a lot of peopl...

It's 1910, we're in Los Angeles, we're in a racing car, and we're going to Phoenix. Let's go! Don't look for a freeway, or a highway. Where we're going there aren't even any paved roads, we're making a run through the desert! Four wheels? Check! Noisy engine? Check! Steering wheel? Check! Windshield? No. A place to plug in your iPhone? No. We'll be carrying plenty of water, and of course spare tires, a lot of tools, and a lot of pure guts! This isn't going to be easy! 1910 road racing route from Los Angeles to Phoenix OK, here we go, heading to Pomona, San Bernardino, Beaumont, Banning, Whitewater and Palm Springs. We're in the desert now, here's a rag to wipe your goggles, that should help a little. The next stretch is going to be very difficult, there's some deep sand at Dos Palmas, but if we go fast enough we'll get through! Now some zigging and zagging to Chuckawalla, and then it's straight shot to the Co...

Like most people, I love dogs. I grew up during the era where the control of dogs was changing, leash laws being enforced, that sort of thing. When I was a little kid, dogs roamed all over my neighborhood, sometimes attacking children, and no one thought anything about it. Nowadays, of course, dogs are more carefully controlled, and most parks even have little plastic bags which people use to pick up their doggie's doo-doo, and throw it in the trash. And children being attacked by dogs nowadays isn't just laughed off, like it was when my little brother was viciously attacked by a neighbor's dog in the 1970s. And while I'm young enough to have adapted to the more modern way of thinking about dogs, some people just a little older than me find all of this fuss to be just ridiculous. It certainly was different in old-time Phoenix, when dogs roamed in packs. Time-travel with me and let's walk around Phoenix when it only had dirt streets, let's say 1899. Of cours...

As a history adventurer, when I'm out traveling I try to imagine how people did it before the days of roadmaps, and signposts. And no, I don't mean Boy Scout stuff like looking for the lichen on trees, I'm just talking about knowing which way you're going by looking at the mountains. Obviously, nowadays it makes sense to look at a map, and then match up the information there with signs. That's how most people that I've known travel, and essentially all they're doing is looking at signs, matching up numbers. Real "left brain" stuff, which I've never been good at. The mountains and the rivers don't factor into their navigation, and are ignored. In fact, when I say things like "we need to go south, cross the river and keep the mountains to our right", it can kind of freak people out. But I love seeing Phoenix and Los Angeles that way. Luckily, I'm not a delivery driver, or your package would probably not get there on time! B...

One of the hidden gems of the Phoenix area is the Sahuaro Ranch (yes, it's misspelled that way), which has been there since the 1880s, and not only has beautifully-restored old buildings, it gives a wonderful feel for a 19th Century ranch in "the middle of nowhere", Glendale, Arizona. I'm fortunate in that I live right nearby it, as it's just north of Glendale Community College, which is at 59th Avenue and Olive. Let's have lunch with the peacocks. The Sahuaro Ranch, Glendale, Arizona. Peacock at the Sahuaro Ranch, Glendale, Arizona. Since I like to "put my feet on the ground" to get a better feel for an historic area, I like to go there, not just read about it in books or on the web. When I go to historic places I squint my eyes a bit and time-travel back. At the Sahuaro Ranch I can see for hundreds of miles in every direction in my imagination. And while I can do this with just old photos, there's something magical that seems to ...

Since history adventuring is a journey of imagination, it really doesn't require traveling IRL (In Real Life), but every once in a while I like to do it. And I recently went to Bouse, Arizona. If you're wondering what Bouse has to do with Phoenix, or Los Angeles, that's exactly what I was trying to figure out. To me, Bouse was just a mostly-abandoned little town way out in the middle of nowhere, on the road to nowhere, and although I was right about how the town never really took off, I was wrong about it being in the middle of nowhere. It was along a main route, between Phoenix and Los Angeles. 1910 ad for Bouse, Arizona. On the road between Los Angeles and Phoenix, southeast of Parker, on what is now Highway 72 There's really only so much that you can do in cyberspace. I read about Bouse, I looked at Google images of Bouse. But I wanted to "put my feet on the ground", so I asked around of my history adventuring friends if they'd like to go on...

Even though my main interest is in Phoenix history, you really can't understand Phoenix without including California. If you go back to the 1800s, it was the connection to San Francisco, and after the beginning of the 20th Century, it was the connection to Los Angeles. And the story goes from ships sailing up into the Gulf of California to haul things into Arizona via Yuma, and then to trains, but what really captures my attention is when automobiles started to become popular, and people wanted to drive between Los Angeles and Phoenix, in the earliest part of the 20 Century. The earliest daredevils who did the trip would actually cross at Yuma, where hopefully they wouldn't get stuck in the muck and mud. Certainly there wasn't any other way to cross the Colorado River north of there - cars can't swim, and it was illegal, and probably not smart, to drive a car over a railroad bridge. So it all started with the old-fashioned idea of a ferry - a small boat that carr...

I was watching a nature documentary yesterday, and after it ended, they showed the "behind the scenes"  - that is, the people who were hauling around the equipment, dealing with traveling to the location, and just generally putting it all together, out in the wild. I've seen these "behind the scenes" clips before, and my first is "are they crazy?", but apparently they love doing it. So since I'm going to be out into the real world, away from my computer where I usually do my history adventuring, I thought that you might like a "behind the scenes". And if you're wondering if I'm crazy, well of course I am, but I also love doing this. It's 7 am and my fellow-adventurer will be here at about 9, and will be doing the driving. I'm a better sightseer than driver, so that's perfect for me. At this point we've studied some old maps, and of course new ones. I'll take a bunch of photos, and write it up after we...

A few years ago I started entertaining myself by doing what I called "history adventuring". I live in the Phoenix, Arizona area and love to collect old photos of Phoenix, and began just picturing in my imagination what it would have been like to have lived there "back in the day". I would look at old photos and see horses, and street cars, and wonder how it would feel? Of course, it would have been wildly uncomfortable back then, before the days of air conditioning, but it was just a journey of imagination. And then I started putting my feet on the ground. I really don't like history, but I like to time-travel. And I've discovered that wherever you live, you can retrace footsteps. I like to walk where the pioneers of Phoenix walked, going back to 1868. Sometimes I walk where the Hohokam people walked, hundreds of years before that. I walk where the Apaches were, back when they resented any trespassers in the Salt River Valley, when it was an empty place...

It's the middle of August, with temperatures well above 100, and high humidity, so let's go visit the Sahuaro Ranch (yes, it's misspelled that way). At least it won't be crowded! The Sahuaro Ranch is a magical place, which goes back to the 1880s, not far from where I live, in Glendale, Arizona. It's one of those places that you drive past a million times, and never even know it was there, even though it's huge, occupying the space between 59th and 63rd Avenues and just south of the Glendale Main Library, which is on Brown, south of Peoria Avenue, down to Glendale Community College, which is on Olive. I've been there more times than I can count, and I love it there. You have to get out of your car. Palm trees at the Sahuaro Ranch, Glendale, Arizona. Although you really can't tell by the pics, it was really miserable out there today, with the high humidity of the monsoon season, and the temperatures over 100 degrees. I traveled from shade spot t...

I was watching a documentary yesterday about how forests in Borneo are being cleared away to make way for "cash crops", with the disastrous effects on wildlife, the environment, and ultimately people, who suffer from flooding caused by the land eroding away, because of the lack of forests. And I saw a rescue of an orangutan and her baby, who had been trapped in an area that was too small for them, surrounded by row after row of "cash crop" plants, acre after acre. And since I'm interesting Phoenix history, I started thinking about the transition of the desert here in the Salt River Valley into "cash crops". Most of the older people that I know remember the endless rows of citrus trees, or cotton that stretched on for miles and miles in the Phoenix area. And of course none of these people are old enough to remember what the area was like before it was converted to cash crops. It's as if Phoenix had always been that way. And it strikes me as how...

Although most of the history adventuring I do just in my imagination, and in cyberspace, sometimes I actually get a chance to get out there on the Arizona highways IRL (In Real Life). This Friday I will be exploring the road between Phoenix and Parker, Arizona, at what was the best way to cross the Colorado River in an automobile in 1918, at Bush's Crossing at the Parker Cut-Off. Like all of my IRL history adventures, this started with something that I discovered which fascinated me, not the usual "historical" stuff. It's about everything that I'm interested in when it comes to history, what ordinary people did. In this instance, how did they drive from Phoenix to Los Angeles, considering that there's a fairly large river that needed to be crossed? Yes, I know that the railroads had done it for decades before that, but you can't drive a motorcar over a railroad bridge! At least you shouldn't. And by 1918, there were a LOT of cars that wanted to cr...

After my accident fifteen years ago which left me disabled, I floundered on what I should do. I made attempts to go back to work, which were disastrous, and while they weren't fatal to me, looking back now I'm wondering why they weren't? And since I've been a graphic design teacher, I turned to my computer and tried a lot of things, mostly as a way to try to keep my mind sharp while my body healed, as best it could. And that's when I discovered history adventuring, about seven years ago. If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know that there are a lot of posts, over 900 at last count. And that's because while I enjoy collecting old photos of Phoenix, I wanted to do more than just that - I wanted to step into them. Some of my earliest posts were simply walking around old-time Phoenix, which at the time I was often unable to do physically, which was frustrating to say the least. And it was a wonderful fantasy, just walking and looking at stuff,...

The more I learn about old-time Phoenix, the more I realize that the trees have been gone much longer than I had thought. Originally I kinda thought the 1980s, or the 1970s, but it looks like the end of Phoenix as a city of trees started much longer ago than that. Even the "old-timers" (wise and venerable ones if you prefer) that I know don't remember the way Phoenix once had trees. The best that they can do is remember the trees along the canals, and along the roads, and the orange groves. And some of them lived with trees, and have fond memories of climbing on them, going back to the 1950s, and even a few decades before that. But none of them are old enough to remember Phoenix before air conditioning, or swamp cooling. And that was the time that Phoenix was a forest of trees, not just here and there, but everywhere. In my imagination I try to picture what Phoenix was like when every house had several trees. Yeah, I like air conditioning, but before that the shade...

I've never really lived in a small town, but I like the idea. So when I lived in Los Angeles, in my twenties, I made it into a small town for me. Whenever possible I did the kind of things that people would do in a small town, like buying a lemonade from some kids who were selling it in front of their house. I also went to garage sales, not because I really needed anything, but because it was a way to make the kind of personal contact with people that's normal in small towns, and unusual in a big city. When I moved back to Phoenix I continued to do that. Yesterday I stopped at a garage sale and spent a dollar. And this is the important part - you gotta spend some money. It doesn't have to be a lot, but if you just walk up and talk to people who are at garage sales they're gonna consider you a total waste of time if you walk away empty-handed. So I spend a dollar. In the eighties I would spend a quarter, but inflation has changed that amount. I won't leave a gar...