New River in old-time, and modern Peoria, Arizona


I biked along the wonderful trail that parallels New River in Peoria, Arizona yesterday. The best way to get to it, by the way, is at the Rio Vista Recreation Center, which is just north of Thunderbird Road, and west of the 101 Freeway. The photo at the top of this post I took from the trail, looking east towards the freeway, across New River.

Because I have a silly sense of humor, I've always thought that New River was a goofy name. I mean, when the pioneers named it over 100 years ago, it was New River. And it still is. OK, well that's funny to me.

Map showing New River in Peoria in 1909

But seriously, it's not river at all, it's a wash. In fact, the Sonoran Desert really doesn't have rivers, in spite of the names put on maps, they're washes. And technically, they're riparian washes, which just means that a little bit of water flows all of the time, which may not even be visible, but that water supports the kind of vegetation that you don't usually see in the desert. In fact, to see a river around Phoenix, I tell people to look for the trees. The water has been rushing down through these washes for 10,000 years (since the end of the last Ice Age), then drying up in the desert heat, and becoming dry in spots, and muddy mostly elsewhere.

Looking north from the Rio Vista pedestrian bridge over New River, Peoria, Arizona. The water is flowing towards you.

The pioneers had to wait until the land was as dry as possible to cross these washes. Nowadays they're crossed by bridges that most people don't even realize are bridges. And when I was on the trail I crossed on the pedestrian/bicycle bridge at Rio Vista Park, and then crossed at Olive (there's no crossing on Cactus).

If you want to see what Phoenix was like before it was all paved over, it's easy to do. This area is only paved enough to provide a safe bike path. The loudest sound is the wind through the trees, the hum of a dragonfly overhead, the scurry of quail and roadrunners.

If you liked this article, and would like to see more in the future, please consider becoming a patron of History Adventuring on Patreon. If you're already a patron, thank you! Your pledge makes this happen!

 Click here to become a Patron!

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