Why cotton became so important to the economy of old-time Phoenix


One of the "Five Cs" of Arizona is cotton, along with Copper, Cattle, Citrus, and Climate. And if you're like me, you can understand how valuable copper is, even cattle, citrus, and climate. But cotton always puzzled me. It made me wonder if somehow Arizona had been the tee-shirt capitol of the world? Or maybe towels? I had no idea that cotton was important for tires. Yes, tires. Rubber tires.

Time-travel with me back to when automobiles were just becoming popular, after the turn of the century. Of course, back then, just as now they ran on rubber tires, which wore out. In fact, our modern tires have much longer wear than a tire from, say, 1918. And our tires are reinforced with steel, as in "Steel-belted radial tires". But back then they were reinforced with cotton. Really.

In the early days of automotive tires, cotton was ridiculously expensive, which drove up the price of tires, and the cost of owning a car. The best cotton for tires came from the Middle East, and was called Egyptian Cotton. So the idea hit businesspeople in the US that they could save money by growing it locally. And the climate of Phoenix, Arizona turned out to be absolutely perfect for it.

And this is where it gets really interesting, and ties into modern-day Phoenix. And that's a company called Goodyear. Yes, the tire company. They invested heavily in seeing if the cotton that they needed could be grown in the Phoenix area, and it paid off, big time. Goodyear started growing cotton in an area that they called Goodyear, south of Chandler, and then bought up a bunch of land where Sun City is nowadays. After World War II, they moved to a community that is still known by the name of Goodyear, and that's where the name came from, and the connection to cotton.

Of course nowadays cotton isn't used for tires, but cotton still grows well in the Phoenix area, and is still a valuable crop. It reached its height of value during World War I when the demand for tires with cotton inside of them, skyrocketed. The cotton grown in the Phoenix area was called "Pima cotton", along with "Sarival Cotton" (Sarival is short for Salt River Valley, which is where Phoenix is). There's even a road in the west valley named Sarival.

Go go Goodyear! And cotton!

The Goodyear sign in 1968, I-17 and Grand Avenue, Phoenix, Arizona.

Image at the top of this post: The Arizona Egyptian Cotton Company in 1918, 5th Street and Buchanan, Phoenix, Arizona.
If you liked this article, and would like to see more, please consider subscribing to history adventuring on Patreon. If you're already a subscriber, thank you! You make this happen!

Click here to become a Patron!
History adventuring posts are shared there daily. The basic tier is a dollar a month, and the PhD tier, which includes "then and now" photos, billboards, aerials, videos, and super high-definition photos, is five dollars a month, and is discounted for seniors, veterans, and students.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is ...
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the...
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me...
Read more