Walking around the Sahuaro Ranch in Glendale, Arizona


Walk with me. Let's wander around one of my favorite places in the whole world, the Sahuaro Ranch in Glendale, Arizona. Yes, they misspell it that way. It's been there since the 1880s, now lost in a suburb of Phoenix that hides the secret well. But I know where it is, and you know me, so let's go walk around.

1889, when it was called the Bartlett Ranch, and was waaay northwest of Glendale, Arizona, almost to Peoria. You're looking southeast.

It's just north of Glendale Community College, which is on Olive between 59th Avenue and 63rd Avenue, and it's just south of the Main Library, which on Brown and 59th Avenue, just south of Peoria Avenue. And if you're trying to picture driving past it, you may have never seen it, although it's gigantic. It isn't on a major road, and the entrance on 59th is so subtle (just a gate with a peacock on it) that you'd probably miss it if you weren't looking for it. I like to walk there.

Yesterday I had a friend drop me off for a haircut at the Glendale Galleria, which is a strip mall behind Manuel's, and Arby's. After "lowering my ears" I walked back home, through the Sahuaro Ranch, entering on 59th Avenue, through the Library. There's a wonderful garden there, by the way, along the south side of Library, worth a look, if you're not in a hurry, and I wasn't yesterday.

There's an entrance (for people, not cars!) south of the Library to the ranch. And as soon as you step through there, you're transported. I took the photo that you see up there, looking west, from just after I entered the property. There's room to breathe there, and the kind of wide open spaces that I like to imagine Phoenix having a lot of, before it became a city of subdivisions and shopping malls.


I stopped at the Packing Shed, where there was an art show, and looked around, but mostly the idea of the ranch isn't to shop, or socialize, it's to wander. I like to stop and take pics of the old farm machinery that's displayed around, as if I'm trying to make it look as if I'm doing more than just walking around. But I'm just walking around. I know that you understand, but most people don't, and never will, so they wonder what I'm looking for? I'm not looking for anything, I'm just looking, but I don't want to say that to strangers, so I try to act like I'm looking for something, or doing something practical, like taking a photo. To my friends, like you, I can say that I'm just looking at stuff, and time-traveling. To us it sound perfectly normal, and reasonable, right? Right?

Listen to the quiet. It's an overcast day, which is rare in the Phoenix area, and the sounds, which are still out there, like traffic, or planes going overhead, are muffled. Looks like we may get some rain later on, so we'd better get a move on.

Thank you for walking around the Sahuaro Ranch with me!
If you liked this article, and would like to see more, please consider becoming a patron of History Adventuring on Patreon. If you're already a patron, 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