The laterals of old-time, and modern Phoenix, Arizona


To really understand Phoenix and its history, you have to follow the water. That is, you have to see how canals have been used since prehistoric times to bring in water for irrigation. I have always had a fascination with the canals of Phoenix, which to most people driving around are completely invisible. They really aren't - they're open canals that always have water in them, and you can ride your bike next to them, or fish in them, if you want to.

If you had lived in old-time Phoenix, not only would you have seen the canals, but you would have seen the laterals. Laterals are the little "mini-canals" that bring water from the canals directly into neighborhoods. They're still there, and most of them have been covered. But in some areas of town, like where I was in Peoria this morning, you can still see open laterals. That's a lateral there in the pic at the top of this post, which I took just a few hours ago. No, there's nothing special about it, it's just a typical lateral, which you used to see all over Phoenix. In fact, when I lived in Tempe in the 1980s, my neighborhood had open laterals, which have now been covered. The water is still there, still flowing, but the closed laterals are just less messy, and smelly. Sorry about that, but it's true. You really don't want to romanticize too much about open laterals in old-time Phoenix - they were muddy and gunky and had nasty smelly stuff in them, along with the water.


I'm told by people who grew up in Phoenix that as kids they often cooled off by playing in the canals, and the laterals. It's a hot and humid day today, but as I looked at the water I thought that I would never have been that young, and that brave!

Still, it's just river water, really the same as the creeks in Minneapolis that I played in as a kid. They had mud, and gunk, and creepy-crawlies, because that's nature. Come to think of it, I really didn't like those, either! I liked swimming pools, and when I moves to Phoenix I found a LOT of them.

So anyway, those are laterals. And anytime you see one, you're time-traveling back to what old-time Phoenix looked like. Thank you for looking at laterals with me!

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

  1. diggerpdSeptember 14, 2019 at 3:02 PM

    Before the canals were lined with concrete, they supported ribbons of 'old growth', 'water wasting' (SRP's words) Cottonwood Forests cooling the air, providing habitat, much appreciated shade, and treehouses (shhhh). I was told by more adventuresome, older kids, that you could Tarzan through the overstory, even across streets like 15th ave which was but a lane back in those days.

    ReplyDelete

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