Prescott: The Mile-Hi City Was Where It All Began

The Territory of Arizona was created during the Civil War, and undoubtedly as a result of that conflict.  Residents of southern New Mexico Territory had lobbied Congress for independence from Santa Fe for years, finally turning to the Confederacy (see the Tucson history posted on this blog June 29, 2011).  But Congress wanted to preserve the Union and finance the effort with silver and gold.  Silver claims had been staked at Tubac in 1856 and Patagonia in 1857, followed by a gold rush on the lower Gila River in 1858 and the Colorado River in 1861-1862 (see the Arizona Gold Rush article posted here December 21, 2009).  Congress acted and President Lincoln proclaimed the Territory of Arizona 24 February 1863. 

Midwestern Republican carpetbaggers appointed by the President to hold offices prepared to journey to northern Arizona and create a capital city where no other town existed.  Meanwhile, Colorado River gold placers were playing out, leading two parties of prospectors to explore the mountains of central Arizona where they knew the geology was favorable.  Sure enough, in the spring of 1863 the A. H. Peeples (1842-1892) party led by mountain man Pauline Weaver (1797-1867) found gold along the lower Hassayampa River and on top of Antelope Peak (later named Rich Hill).  The latter discovery proved the richest single placer in Arizona history.  At the same time, the infamous Walker party who instigated the murder of Apache chief Mangas Colorado (see the Arizona Indians article, Part 2, posted February 14, 2011) ended up panning glitter out of the headwaters of the Hassayampa.  As 1863 drew to a close, Governor John N. Goodwin (1824-1887) and fellow officials finally entered the territory and ceremoniously took office constituting a government as snow fell at Navajo Spring.  With their military escort January 22, 1864 they reached Camp Clark, established little more than a month before at Del Rio Spring in Chino Valley.  The army issued tents for their quarters and offices.

Pauline Weaver, considered Prescott’s first resident, and Van C. Smith (1837-1914) had log cabins in the forest 20 miles south of Camp Clark.  There also, in the shallow valley of Granite Creek, Manuel Yesera (or Ysario, or Yrisorri) built a log cabin store in December 1863, later called Fort Misery.  With the coming of spring 1864 Arizona Territory’s new capital quickly took shape.  Governor Goodwin selected a site on the banks of Granite Creek in April and potential residents met in May to organize a town and name it Prescott, after the popular historian William Hickling Prescott (1796-1859).  That same month the military encampment moved close to the town site and became Fort Whipple.  Smith helped Robert Groom (1824-1899) survey streets and sales of lots began June 4^th.  July 4 the town held its first celebration and the first hotel opened.  The first Sunday school met in August, followed by the first session of the Legislature September 26, the first formal dance in November and opening of the first private school in December. 

Richard J. Hinton’s Hand-Book to Arizona (1877) offers this view of Prescott’s “broad streets” around a central plaza, “giving ample space, thus avoiding that density of structure and population which so jeopardize the sanitary condition of many of our large cities.”  Descendants of Europeans were adopting American urban design.  The view looks northwest toward Miller Valley and Granite Peak (now Mountain).  Soon, the tall pines on the Plaza would be cut and a Victorian style courthouse built.  The business district lines Montezuma and Gurley Streets.  “There are no adobes here,” Hinton tersely noted.  In addition to the Plaza there was another public square just out of view at right that would provide a location for the capitol building.  The two squares were joined by Union Street.

The unfinished log cabin built as the first capitol proved so uncomfortable that early legislative sessions were held instead in this larger log cabin, which also served as the Governor’s residence.  Constructed July-September 1864 on Gurley two blocks west of Montezuma Street, its cost of $6,000 was exorbitant at the time, but necessary in order to get tools and supplies to such a remote part of the territory.  The largest house in town for a number of years, the eight rooms also provided a home for the military commander for the first year and a home for the Governor’s secretary for more than thirty years.  Secretary Henry Fleury (1817-1895) gained title to the building in 1876 and lived there until his death.  It then passed through private hands and was renovated in 1899.  Fortunately Tony Johns (1864-1944) convinced the State of Arizona to acquire the building in 1917 so it could become a museum.  Territorial Historian Sharlot Hall (1870-1943) began working to accomplish that in 1929, partly at her own expense.  Today, it is one of a number of historic structures preserved at Sharlot Hall Museum.

Early settlers of Arizona did not take for granted the structures of their western European culture, but aggressively built in the wilderness institutions based on liberal ideals.  “The influence and sophistication of the government officials and other early settlers was extremely important in determining the character of this infant community.  Despite the constant threat of Indian depredation and the inconvenience incurred in obtaining food, clothing and luxuries, the cultural climate of Prescott was ‘mile high.’”  (Kitty Joe Parker Nelson & Charles Franklin Parker, “The Founding of Prescott,” Ariz. Highways, April 1964, pp. 2-11)  Tucson as a capital would have offered culture too, and more comforts, but the “Mexican” and “southerner” influences could not be tolerated.  Prescott became the Arizona city that most resembled communities east of the Mississippi.

There were fringe benefits that came with the capital.  Prescott was home to the first private school in the territory (1864), the first Masonic Lodge (1865) and the first protestant church (1870), and enjoyed the commercial and security benefits of Fort Whipple becoming district headquarters of Arizona in 1866.  The town was incorporated in 1872, obtaining legal title to a town site originally established without regard for federal law.  An active Chinese community arrived that year followed by settlers from Kansas and eastern states.  An economic downturn in mining in the 1880s was ameliorated by the cattle industry developed during the previous decade.  The first Fourth of July rodeo was held in 1888.  An electric light plant powered up in 1889.  As the 1978 nomination form for the establishment of a Prescott historic buildings district concludes, “its history has been one of steady, unspectacular growth.”

Prescott’s first public school opened in 1867 in a log cabin.  A local brick factory allowed construction 1874-1876 of the large schoolhouse shown in this woodcut which appeared in the 1885 edition of Charles S. Gleed’s Guide from the Missouri River. . ., and was reproduced in Andrew Wallace, Images of Arizona (1971).  Richard J. Hinton also included a version of this woodcut, saying, “Prescott can boast of the finest school building of this or any other sister territory.”  There were classrooms for 300 students on the first floor of the $20,000 facility and an auditorium upstairs.  In 1877, two teachers supervised an average daily attendance of 150.  The building was torn down in 1902 to be replaced the same year by Washington School (300 E. Gurley), now the oldest schoolhouse still in use in the county.  Across Gurley and one block west the territorial government built a two-story, red brick capitol building in 1884.  After Phoenix became capital, the building was remodeled in 1904 to become Prescott’s first high school.  It was demolished in 1914 to be replaced by a larger high school.  After the high school moved to the banks of Granite Creek, the entire block was cleared in 1973-1974 to make way for the present Yavapai County Administration complex.

Prescott’s entitlement as capital was sealed by one vote over La Paz by the first legislature.  But by 1867, Tucson was able to gain its rightful place as capital and largest city.  Ten years later the seat of territorial government was returned to Prescott until another dozen years brought it permanently to Phoenix.  This birds-eye-view of the capital of Arizona Territory published in 1883 by Bancroft looks northeast toward the Plaza and Yavapai County Courthouse (1878) just before another building boom added a number of tall brick structures to the business district.  At upper right edge is the schoolhouse (1876) on east Gurley Street.  Granite Street is in the foreground, closest to the viewer.  The outhouses (white roofs) at lower left along Granite Creek, which was usually dry most of the year, illustrate Hinton’s concern for sanitation.

Though Tucson merchants provided banking services years earlier, California interests organized the first bank in the territory, in Prescott in 1877.  Soon after, The Bank of Arizona erected a fine brick building (at left) on the southeast corner of Gurley and Cortez Streets with law offices on the second floor.  Emil Ganz (1838-1922) opened the Capitol Saloon in 1877 in a building rented from N. Ellis but moved to Phoenix two years later.  Also in 1879, Bowen, Knowles & Co. general store announced a going out of business sale to concentrate on its sawmill and mining operations in the Bradshaw Mountains, while Bank of Arizona opened a branch office in Phoenix.  In 1895, the tallest building in Prescott was completed for the Knights of Pythias fraternal order on the Capitol Saloon site.  Around the same time a drugstore occupied the Bowen, Knowles building.  Just before the fire of 1900, the bank began construction of a larger building that displaced the drug store (see below).  That building has survived but the bank did not.  The Bank of Arizona combined with others to form First National Bank of Arizona, long one of Arizona’s largest.  First National went through a number of mergers and Wells Fargo ended up occupying the Prescott building until it closed the branch in 1998. 

In 1879 there were three very similar brick buildings on three successive corners along the east side of Cortez Street bordering the plaza:  Bank of Arizona, Goldwaters and Howey Hall.  Goldwater Brothers from La Paz opened a store in Prescott in 1876 in a leased building newly constructed by blacksmith James Howey on the southeast corner of Goodwin and Cortez Streets (seen at right about 1877).  Howey’s blacksmith shop shared the next building on the south with a Flour & Grain Depot operated by the Goldwaters.  In 1879, the Goldwaters had the building in the photo at left built one block north on the southeast corner of Union and Cortez.  The older store had been called J. Goldwater & Bros., but the newer became M. Goldwater & Son after Joseph Goldwater (died in 1889 at age 59) left the partnership with his brother Michael (actually spelled Michel, 1821-1903).  In 1884 the former Goldwaters building became Howey Hall, a popular opera house.  It was sold to the city in 1904 to become a fire station, along with the shop next door where the fire truck was parked.  Both buildings were demolished in 1959 to make way for the present City Hall, dedicated 29 December 1963.  The Goldwater store closed upon the retirement of Michael’s son Morris (1852-1939) and their building became a Clarence Saunders grocery in 1930 and then the Studio Theater (a cinema, demolished in 1979 or 1980).  Clarence Saunders founded Piggly Wiggly in 1916 in Memphis, the first self-service supermarket.  By the 1930s, Kastner’s Piggly Wiggly would be located on the northeast corner of Gurley and Montezuma.  In 1938, Goldwaters reopened in the Otis Building (1888) on the northeast corner of Cortez and Union, across the street from their 1879 location.  That store closed in 1978. 

A fire 29 July 1880 destroyed several buildings next door and came close to burning down Goldwaters, causing $3,000 in damages to their store.  The Prescott Hook and Ladder Company was founded a few days later, followed by hose companies in 1884 and the Volunteer Fireman’s Association in 1885.  Still, fires struck the business district again in 1883 and 1890.  Wells were drilled and fire pumps installed at each corner of the Plaza.  Despite precautions, July 14, 1900, fire began on Montezuma Street and destroyed most of the business district surrounding the Plaza on the west and north sides.  However, the courthouse, and a handful of substantial commercial buildings survived to preserve Prescott’s Victorian architectural heritage.

Upon completion of A&P and SP rails across Arizona in the early 1880s Prescott was disadvantaged for lack of a railroad.  But within hours of a January 1, 1887 deadline set by investors the Prescott & Arizona Central Railroad (“the Bullock road”) reached the capital city from Prescott Junction (renamed Seligman) on the A&P.  Undependable train schedules, high freight rates and cheap construction plagued the P&AC and it went bankrupt within a few years.  The Santa Fe, Prescott & Phoenix Railway was incorporated in 1891 and built despite an economic recession from Ash Fork to Prescott by April 1893, continuing on to Phoenix in 1895.  The difficult mountain construction was widely acclaimed and its curling trestles and looping roadbed earned it the affectionate nickname “The Peavine.”  The route made it possible to travel by train from northern Arizona to southern Arizona without first leaving the territory.  The SF, P&P built this depot in 1907 at the north end of Cortez Street.  Rail transportation decreased cost for mines and cattle growers, lowered retail prices in town and brought more visitors.  But with the triumph of the automobile, the main rail line from Ash Fork to Phoenix bypassed Prescott in 1962.  Passenger service was discontinued the same year with freight service discontinued December 31, 1986, exactly one hundred years after the first train arrived in town.  Tracks have been torn up and Prescott now has three former railroad depots without rail service.  In addition to the building shown here, two former depots were moved to Prescott from Drake and Hillside to be used for other purposes.

The A. J. Head Hotel was built in 1900 on the east side of north Cortez Street, in the middle of the block just north of Gurley.  At first only the center portion was constructed.  Then, an addition on each end was added about seven years later.  The Prescott and Mount Union Railway began streetcar operations in 1904 and 1905 on Gurley Street running to Fort Whipple, with a spur running north on Cortez to the railroad depot, a total of 2-3 miles of track.  Regular service discontinued in 1911 and the track to Fort Whipple was removed in 1915.  The Head Hotel housed various businesses on the ground floor, including the Post Office and Calles’ Saddlery with the horse statue pictured in this postcard view from about 1910.  J. C. Penny’s was in the building at one time and then Western Auto.  The hotel was extensively remodeled in 1980 to become Prescott Inn.

The Sisters of Saint Joseph of Carondelet came to Prescott in the fall of 1878, raised money and built a hospital by 1881.  They founded an academy next door in 1885.  Construction of a gothic church on the northwest corner of Marina and Willis began in the summer of 1891 and services were first held 17 February 1895.  St. Joseph’s Academy constructed a new building 1901-1904, barely seen in this view on distant Murphy Hill at lower left.  The old academy building, pictured at far right after a snowfall on this postcard from around 1909, was demolished in 1915, and the rectory was replaced with a larger stone building.  The church has survived in more modest proportions.  After being struck by lightning, the 115-foot steeple was removed in 1930.  A parochial school opened in 1956 on Summit Avenue and St. Joseph’s Academy closed in 1966.  The building was demolished.  Sisters of Mercy took over operation of the little cottage hospital in 1893 and the building was moved to Grove Street (now Avenue) in 1898.  There, construction had begun in the fall of 1896 and 24-bed Mercy Hospital opened 19 March 1897.  The hospital building expanded in 1902-1903 and added a new convent and chapel building 1914-1915.  A bungalow visitation suite was built in 1917 and a new surgery wing completed in 1937.  Then, most of the hospital burned in 1940, leaving Prescott without a Catholic hospital ever since.  Prescott College acquired the Convent in 1975 and built classrooms where the hospital had been.

This view from about 1910 shows Prescott National Bank (at left) on the northeast corner of Cortez and Gurley Streets, with The Bank of Arizona across the street followed by the three-story Knights of Pythias or Tilden Building (built 1892-1895).  The Tilden Building originally provided a meeting room for the Knights of Pythias on the upper floor.  Next door to Brekke’s Jewelry for many years, it was purchased by John Brekke in 1978 and restored in 1995.  It’s now an art gallery.  Behind the awnings in The Bank of Arizona building is A. Blumberg’s New York Store, which opened in May 1901.  Prescott National Bank was organized in 1892-1893 and housed in the Levi Bashford Building.  The sturdy structure seen here opened 13 January 1902.  Not as durable as its premises, Prescott National Bank was liquidated in 1916 and succeeded by Prescott State Bank, which then failed in 1925.  First National Bank In Prescott then opened in the same building in 1928 only to begin liquidation during the Great Depression in 1932.  It was absorbed by Valley Bank & Trust Co. in 1933 to enjoy decades of stability.  Valley Bank moved out in 1957 and the building was restored in 1998.  There was a third bank founded in Prescott, in 1906, First Savings Bank.  It became Pioneer Bank of Arizona in 1960 and moved its headquarters to Phoenix two years later to become Great Western Bank & Trust in 1970.  (see:  http://arizonanationalbanknotes.blogspot.com; Prescott Journal Miner, 2 Sept. 1916; Prescott Evening Courier, 31 May 1923; Casa Grande Bulletin, 12 Dec. 1925) 

This birds-eye-view of Arizona’s eighth largest city in 1920 looks northeast from Pioneer Hill toward the county courthouse (white) in the middle of the Plaza.  The 1878 brick courthouse was pulled down in 1915 and the cornerstone of this building laid 19 October 1916.  Behind the courthouse to the right is the top of the Elks Theatre (yellow), the top of the Yavapai Club (white & pink) and the High School (red) on “Nob Hill.”  The spire of Sacred Heart Church is in the distance to the left of the courthouse.  Granite Creek is hidden in the trees among the cabins in the foreground.  About 15 to 20 years before this scene was captured Prescott’s China Town and red light district lined Granite Street (in front of the row of light brown buildings in center).  C. T. American Art published this postcard.

A health camp and sanitarium industry revitalized the local economy after the 1900 fire.  Dr. John W. Flinn (1870-1944) and his wife Margaret (1873-1950) offered a cottage sanctuary for tuberculosis patients called “Pamsetgaaf”, a name created from the first letter of each of the main elements of treatment:  pure air, much sunshine, equitable temperatures, good accommodations and food.  It operated 1903-1945.  When antibiotics became the treatment of choice for TB, Prescott promoted its climate as a remedy for asthma.

Cattle ranching in Yavapai County grew steadily until the drought of 1894-1895 nearly ended the whole industry.  Around two-thirds of the animals had died on the range by 1896.  After rains returned cattle baron Charlie Mullen (1873-1948) showed up in 1917 and purchased many of the surviving ranches to become the county’s biggest producer by 1920.  Then he lost everything in a bank foreclosure in 1928.  Ranchers struggled through the depression years to hang on to their beloved lifestyle.  (see: “The Yavapai Calf Plan,” Arizona Highways, May 1944, pp. 30-33)  And through it all Prescott maintained an exciting image as a cowboy town.

Proximity to the mines at Jerome and in the Bradshaw Mountains sustained the Prescott economy long after the capitol was lost.  Extension of railroads to the mines began with the United Verde & Pacific to Jerome in 1894 followed by the Prescott & Eastern to Mayer in 1898, the Bradshaw Mountain Railway to Crown King 1901-1904 and the Verde Valley Railroad in 1911.  All of these short lines eventually came under Santa Fe Railway ownership and fell into disuse as mines closed.  In 1988, the Verde Valley Railroad found new life as the Arizona Central, to serve the Clarkdale cement plant and offer tourist excursions.

Gurley Street looking west toward Thumb Butte about 1925 is lined with a number of historic buildings that survive today.  The Benevolent & Protective Order of Elks opened a fraternal lodge and opera house 20 February 1905, on the south side of Gurley between Cortez and Marina.  It became a cinema around 1910.  The next building west, with the red roof over the bay window, is the Electric Building (1898) and then The Bank of Arizona (1901), with the trees on the Plaza beyond.  Across the street is Prescott State Bank.  And Brisley Drug is across Cortez Street from that bank in the red brick Bashford Block with awnings.  Bashford-Burmister store is on the same side of the street, in the building with the flag.  The flag across the street is on top of Hotel St. Michael.

Early automobiles obtained gasoline by filling cans at hardware or general stores.  But after 1920 the now familiar gasoline station appeared along well-traveled Arizona highways, including US89 through Prescott.  “Close to the business section, hotels, opposite High School,” Sill’s Service Station must have been on Gurley Street on the hill, opposite the old site of the high school.  The back of this Curt Teich and Co. of Chicago postcard from about 1925 describes the “spacious driveways, attractive rest rooms, sanitary drinking fountain, full line of accessories, gas and oils, prompt service and courteous attendants.”

The Smoki People of Prescott began as a one-day “Way Out West” celebration in 1921, held to benefit the Prescott Frontier Days Association.  Anglos dressed as pueblo Indians mimicked indigenous religious ceremonies like the snake dance to entertain tourists.  It was a popular August event for several generations.  In the face of increasing criticism by real Indians the shows ended and the group disbanded in 1991.  The museum is still open. 

The Civil Aeronautics Administration built Ernest A. Love Airfield northeast of town in 1942 and it became a Civilian Pilot Training facility for navy aviation cadets under the direction of the non-military War Training Service.  Navy pilots began their training in very light planes, eventually to become ensigns in the US Navy Air Arm. (see Arizona Highways February 1943.)  Following the war, Love Field offered flights by Frontier and Bonanza airlines.

Fort Whipple became a tuberculosis sanitarium during the First World War, and then a veterans hospital in 1920.  Now named Bob Stump Veterans Affairs Medical Center, it is still generally refered to as Fort Whipple by locals.  Incidentally, unlike the historian’s name, most residents pronounce the name of their community “PRES-kitt.”  Medical care for the poor was a responsibility of county government and there are references to a Yavapai County Hospital for indigents as far back as 1885.  When Mercy Hospital burned in 1940 the small county hospital could not fill the need.  Prescott Community Hospital Association was formed in 1942 and opened the hospital pictured here in March 1943.  The building is the former Jefferson Elementary School (1923) on Marina Street, which had closed about three years before due to declining enrollment.  The community hospital was combined with the county hospital in 1964 in a new facility on Willow Creek Road.  That institution survives as Yavapai Regional Medical Center.

Looking west on Gurley in the 1940s from the intersection with Marina in the foreground, the Carnegie Library (1903) is on the southwest corner of the intersection across from the Hassayampa Inn (1927) on the northwest corner.  Valley National Bank is on the northeast corner of Gurley and Cortez.  Beyond the library is the Elks Theatre.  Carnegie Library moved into a new building on East Goodwin in 1974 but the older structure survived to house offices.  Built with community support, the Hassayampa was restored in 1986 and is still one of Prescott’s finest.  On the hills above downtown are the Pioneer Home (at far left) and St. Joseph’s Academy.  The photo for this L. L. Cook of Milwaukee real photo postcard appears to have been taken from the roof of the old high school building.

The intersection of Gurley and Cortez was still the center of the commercial district when Petley Studio issued this postcard about 1955.  Eagle Drug Store in the Bashford Block (1901) is on the northwest corner, across the street from Valley National Bank (out of view at right).  The next building to the left is the Union Block, then a small store front for Karl’s Shoes, then the former Bashford-Burmister building housing F. W. Woolworth and J. C. Penney, followed by a small store front for Franklins and finally Piggly Wiggly on the corner.  The northeast corner of the Plaza is at lower left.  Granite Mountain is visible above the Bashford Block.

For many years Highway 89 was the principle route across central Arizona from north to south, giving Prescott the chance to provide accommodations to travelers.  The Mile-Hi Motel opened in 1953 among a number of similar businesses along South Montezuma Street before it turned into White Spar Road, US 89 south to Wickenburg.  The business offered 11 units and a restaurant.  Ralph (died 1976) and Mary Crotts opened the Mile-Hi and then Harvey Avenson (1916-2008) and his wife Katherine operated it more recently.  The postcard is from 1953 or 1954.

Businessmen profited from the mines not just through direct investment and grubstaking, but when miners spent their money in stores on Cortez and Gurley Streets and Saloons on Montezuma Street.  The block of Montezuma opposite the courthouse has long been known as Whiskey Row.  The Palace Saloon, in the center of this photo postcard from about 1955, with flagpole on roof, opened in the 1870s and rebuilt after fires in 1883 and 1900.  It became a soft drink parlor during prohibition then returned to stronger beverages as the Palace Bar.  The northwest corner of the Plaza is at lower left and the Pioneers’ Home is visible on the hill in the distance.  Arizona Territorial government established the Arizona Pioneers’ Home in 1909 as a retirement home for early settlers.  The building was built in 1912.  Before the St. Michael Hotel building was built, the southwest corner of Montezuma and Gurley was the site of The Diana (1868) bar and billiard saloon, “the largest and best in northeastern Arizona.”  Built in 1900-1901 as Hotel Burke, the present building became the St. Michael in 1907.

In 1950, Yavapai County found itself without a dominant industry at a time when the population and economy of Arizona was booming.  Emerson Electric opened a motor factory near the airport in 1964.  It became Emerson’s US Motors division in 1967 then closed in 1988.  Sturm Ruger moved into the building in 1989 and still makes castings there.  In recent years, Arizona’s Christmas City restored its Victorian architecture and developed a diverse art community.  Prescott also benefited from upscale real estate development that created suburban style subdivisions at Prescott Valley that now extend all the way south to engulf and enliven the mining ghosts of Dewey and Humboldt.  Chino Valley, Prescott, Prescott Valley and Dewey-Humboldt are dubbed the Quad Cities by realtors.

This view of downtown, pictured for Prescott’s centennial on the cover of Arizona Highways magazine April 1964, looks northwest.  St. Joseph’s Academy is prominent on Murphy Hill (red roof at upper left).  The orange facade of St. Michael Hotel is just to the left of the Courthouse in the center of the Plaza at upper right.  The Federal Building and Post Office (built 1931, orange & gray) is across the street from the courthouse to the south.  Continuing south on Cortez, note the Hotel Vendome (1917), two-story, red brick with white porch, still in business.

 See:

Lucile Anderson, Railroad Transportation Through Prescott (1934) U. of A. thesis

Ariz. Highway Dept., Arizona Highways, April, 1964, “Prescott’s Centennial”

A. W. Bork, “Bert Tilton Remembered. . .” [and other articles in this issue], Prescott Courier, June 1, 1988

Linda G., “Prescott Past” blog at prescottpast.blogspot.com

Sharlot M. Hall, First Citizen of Prescott:  Pauline Weaver [ca. 1930]

Sharlot M. Hall, The Arizona Rough Rider Monument. . . (1928)

Evelyn B. Merritt, Arizona’s First Capitol (1971)

Raymond E. Miller, Prescott (2010)

Larry Schweikart, A History of Banking in Arizona (1982)

Fred & Milly Singletary, Prescott Has Everything [1994]

Dean Smith, The Goldwaters of Arizona (1986)

Robert L. Spude & Stanley W. Paher, Central Arizona Ghost Towns (1978)

Toney Publishing, The Prescott Story (1964)

USDA, US Forest Service, Prescott National Forest (1941)

Melissa Ruffner Weiner, Prescott Yesteryears (1976)

Yavapai County-Arizona Centennial website at http://www.yavapai100az.org

Arizona Highways Were Built by the Numbers

 

A modern roads movement took hold of the US in the 1890s as a stimulus to expand corporate sales far beyond local markets and provide farm produce to growing cities.  Roads that were built or begun with private funding often were finished or maintained by the government.  The best roads during this era were in cities, paved and maintained with municipal funds.  County government built and maintained wagon roads connecting communities, sometimes with state subsidies.  Then state highway departments were created.  Starting with corporate sponsorship matched by local funding, the good roads movement would eventually evolve into a system of federal highways. 

 

Throughout history the federal government has generally funded rather than constructed roads.  But it was the US Army that built the first long distance highways in Arizona Territory beginning in the 1870s.  Cooke’s Wagon Road was built for the California expedition of 1846 and located an easier route for the Gila Trail.  The Beale Wagon Road (1856-1857) was mentioned in the histories of Flagstaff and Kingman on this blog.  The Reno Road was used by the military from 1868 until 1870 between Camp McDowell and Camp Reno.  General George Stoneman lent his name to the Stoneman Grade that afforded passage over the Mogollon Rim.  And General George Crook had his troops build the Crook Trail from Camp Verde to Fort Apache in 1872.

 

Army wife Martha Summerhayes described an 1874 journey in the most comfortable vehicle in the military livery, a wagon type widely used for cross-country travel by both military and private parties.  “It did not surprise us to learn that ours was the first wagon-train to pass over Crook’s Trail.  For miles and miles the so-called road was nothing but a clearing, and we were pitched and jerked from side to side of the ambulance, as we struck large rocks or tree stumps; in some steep places, logs were chained to the rear of the ambulance, to keep it from pitching forward onto the backs of the mules.  At such places, I got out and picked my way down the rocky declivity.” (Vanished Arizona, pp.66-69 of the 1979 edition)  Traveling Arizona roads would long remain an adventure.

 Mining camps went where the ore was but still required transport of supplies to remote canyons.  The ubiquitous burro hauled almost anything needed, then returned with sacks of ore for concentration and smelting.  The animals needed no road and required no expensive upkeep.  This artificially colored postcard published by the Benham Company of Los Angeles about 1910 depicts a group of donkeys, facetiously called “An Arizona Freight Train.” The card was mailed from Kingman with a personal note on the back, continued onto the front.  Until March 1, 1907, the Post Office required any message on a postcard be written on the front in order to qualify for the one-penny rate and these early cards sometimes provided space for text next to the picture.  But correspondents often wrote on the picture.  Here the postcard artist gave a rust color to the corrugated metal sheets, like those commonly seen on old buildings.  I bet they were actually shiny silver-colored, new sheets.  Hopefully, the carpenter was happy with the condition of the 1 X 12 boards after having been dragged in the dirt.  Larger mines required wagon trains, two or three heavy freight wagons linked together and pulled by teams of 20 or more mules.

The federal government had to build an improved highway from both Mesa and Globe to the Roosevelt dam site in 1904 (see the Roosevelt history on this blog).  It was called the Apache Trail, a brand name to attract tourists.  For almost 20 years it was the only way to drive between Phoenix and Globe and it became part of the cross-country route named Lee Highway.  This looks like the ascent out of Fish Creek Canyon, heading west toward Mesa (now Apache Junction).  Since the Roosevelt cement mill supplied the work at Granite Reef Dam in 1908, this may be a load of cement.  Here a dozen mules pull a single wagon, dragging a safety device between the rear wheels that would dig in and prevent roll back if needed.  The road was very narrow before much effort and expense was expended in widening and realigning. 

 

The first territorial legislature authorized and taxed a number of private toll road companies.  Then in 1866, following common practice in many states, the legislature shifted the responsibility for road construction to county government.  But counties did not build efficient long distance routes and the needs of the automobile demanded expensive designs beyond the means of county coffers.  The first automobile owned in Arizona reportedly arrived in 1900 but the following year there were 20.  By 1913 Phoenix was home to 17 automobile dealers and 646 cars were registered in Maricopa County alone.  The motor car quickly came to dominate Arizona. 

 

The Office of Territorial Engineer, responsible for a highway department, was created in 1909.  By 1912, 1,500 miles of state highway had been designated.  Repair of the washed out Gila River Bridge at Florence was the first project funded by the Federal Aid Road Act of 1916.  The first state highway maintenance engineer went to work in 1920.  By then, the Arizona Highway Department employed more workers than all other state agencies combined.  Still, there were complaints of lost jobs due to extensive use of prison labor on new construction.  In a state known for big railroad and mining operations, the highway department had become the leading employer of engineers, maintained the largest fleet of trucks and purchased the most explosives.  Arizona instituted its first state gas tax to pay for roads in 1921, followed by the first state drivers licenses in 1925 and the first state issued roadmap in 1926.  The following year, the Office of State Engineer was replaced by the Arizona State Highway Department.

 Based on photos held by Sharlot Hall Museum this postcard appears to show a 1912 Yavapai Board of Supervisors tour of the Senator Highway.  The publicity probably stimulated the first state legislature to appropriate funds for improvement of the route from Prescott to Crown King.  The Senator Highway was Arizona’s first toll road, constructed 1866-1867 as part of the Prescott-Lynx Creek Toll Road.  It was named for the Senator Mine, in turn likely named for two Arizona politicians and mine investors who hoped to become US senators.  It was extended over the years until it eventually reached Crown King by the end of the 1880s.  Originally constructed with private funding, the road became a state highway in 1912 and was reconstructed over the following two years.  At the time it was meant to connect with Phoenix, and it did on some maps but through very difficult terrain, usually via Bumble Bee.  Prescott boosters turned to an alternative route in 1923, the White Spar Highway, built with US Forest Service funding.  To the west of the Senator Highway, the route from Prescott to the White Spar Mine continued via Yarnell Hill to Wickenburg and finally Phoenix, soon earning the designation US 89.  Paved to Groom Creek in 1941, the Senator Highway survived as part of another federal highway system, as Prescott National Forest Road 52.

 

Between 1909 and 1920, state highways were developed along three east-west routes and one running north and south.  Those four highways across Arizona would become federal routes 66, 70, 80 and 89.  (Refer to the highway map of Arizona on the maps page of this blog).  Much later, the Interstate system would replace US 66 with I-40, US 70 with I-10, US 80 with I-8 and I-17 would become the principle north-south route.  Two additional north-south routes would be developed, US 95 running up and down the border with California and Nevada and US 666 (now 191) not far from New Mexico.  US 60 came later, crossing the middle of Arizona from Ehrenberg to Wickenburg to Phoenix to Globe to Show Low and Springerville, combined with other highways for much of the way.

 During 1914-1915 the Phoenix-Tempe Highway was improved to meet the demands of automobile traffic.  Wagons and automobiles had to cross the Salt River on Hayden’s ferry until a bridge on Central Avenue was built in 1911.  The route along Van Buren Street again became popular after the bridge at Ash Avenue in Tempe opened in 1913.  The road was paved with concrete in 1920 and eventually carried US 60, 70, 80 and 89 to Phoenix.  A Ford Model T touring car is shown zipping across the Maricopa Canal on the way to Phoenix in this Arizona highway department photo from 1914.  The canal used to cross Van Buren at the angle pictured, where 32^nd Street now crosses.  But 32^nd Street wasn’t there yet in 1914.  Instead there was a road that followed the west bank of the canal, seen in the foreground in this view looking east.  Over the years, the canal was realigned and finally eliminated.  Today this spot is an urban intersection.  One hundred and forty-five years ago it was the location of the first Phoenix settlement.  Swilling’s “castle” was about a half-mile east and the Maricopa Canal was one of the earliest in the valley, finished in 1870.

 

Locating water sources for the US Geological Survey along remote roads across southwestern Arizona 1917-1921, Kirk Bryan described the conditions that characterized Arizona highways at that time.  “Except in the vicinity of towns little has been done to improve the roads of southern Arizona.  They are usually only natural highways where first one and then another traveler has made his way across the country with good or ill fortune.”  But on the wide plains, “stretches can be found where an automobile can make 40 miles an hour without trouble.” (p. 258, The Papago Country, USGS Water-Supply Paper 499, 1925)

 The canyons of the Colorado River isolated from the rest of the state Littlefield, Arizona and the Arizona Strip with its access to the Kaibab National Forest and the north rim of the Grand Canyon.  From 1872 until 1928 the only crossing of the Colorado from the Strip was on a dangerous ferryboat at Lee’s Ferry.  Travel to this part of Arizona was so hindered that state officials took days to make the trip from Flagstaff to Fredonia in 1914.  The three men and a driver found the 10-foot wide “dugway” down to the ferry nearly washed out and had to blast a boulder in the way with explosives.  Their Ford Model T finally broke down along the Vermillion Cliffs and they walked 31 miles over two days to reach Jacob Lake, where they took horses on to Fredonia.  Using federal funds appropriated for the Navajo people, work on the steel arch bridge shown on this postcard began in June 1927.  But before it could be completed the ferryboat capsized in high water June 7, 1928, drowning the three men on board, one of whom was the ferry operator.  The auto and boat were lost too, and motorists had to wait until Grand Canyon Bridge opened for traffic January 12, 1929.  The state legislature renamed it “Navajo Bridge” and it was dedicated that June.  It’s still there.  Spanning Marble Canyon on US 89 from Nogales to Prescott to Fredonia, at 467 feet above the surface of the Colorado River the arched deck-truss was one of the highest highway bridges in the world.  A twin bridge with a wider roadway was built in 1995 next to the older span, which was then assigned to pedestrian use as a historical artifact.

 The Old Spanish Trail had to cross the Gila River in order to get to Arizona’s capital and largest city.  At first the route crossed at Antelope Hill east of Wellton on a long concrete bridge, then continued on to Phoenix by way of Texas Hill, Agua Caliente and Arlington.  But the bridge washed out in 1916, only a year after it was built, and drivers started favoring a route through Gila Bend.  After Gillespie Dam was built in 1921, motorists found they could cross the Gila on the dam’s concrete overflow apron as long as the water level permitted.  In 1926, the state highway department erected this steel through-truss bridge.  It carried all Highway 80 traffic until a 1956 realignment bypassed Arlington.  The dam now has a big hole in it from the January 1993 flood, but the bridge is still maintained by Maricopa County.  Harry Herz of Phoenix published this “CT [Curt Teich] American Art Colored” postcard, postmarked in 1929.

 Building through the rugged canyons between Superior and Miami provided an alternate to taking the Apache Trail from Phoenix to Globe, but it would cost a million dollars.  Like the Apache Trail, the route followed an old Indian footpath.  Queen Creek Canyon required a 200-foot tunnel, called Claypool Tunnel, named for the junction with the Apache Trail between Globe and Miami.  Construction began in 1919 and was completed by 1921.  In 1926 the Route became part of US 180 at a time when US 70 ran from Holbrook to Springerville.  In the early 1930s it was Routes US 180 and US 60 combined.  By 1939 US 70 had relocated and the Superior-Miami highway became US 60 and 70 combined.  For another million dollars the one lane tunnel was replaced in 1952 by Queen Creek Tunnel, a lighted, two-lane passage higher on the same rock formation.  This illustration was cropped from an un-attributed “real photo postcard” mailed from Globe in 1945.

 When the American Association of State Highway Officials proposed numbered highways in an October 1925 report, US 60 was conceived as a Chicago to Los Angeles crescent-shaped route.  But several eastern states pointed out that the new numbering plan gave two-digit numbers ending in zero only to cross-country highways.  After considerable juggling of numbers the Chicago-LA route became US 66 and US 60 went from Virginia Beach to Springfield, Missouri with its western extension remaining to be built.  In 1931, AASHO approved the completion of US 60 to LA and moved US 70 to the south.  This brought federal funding to improve the section of US 60/70/89 shown here, running east of the Hassayampa River south of Wickenburg.  L. L. Cook Company of Milwaukee issued the “real-photo postcard” about 1940.

 Leaving Globe, Highway 60 had to blaze a new route to Show Low as an alternative to the old road from Rice to Fort Apache and McNary (SR 73).  Completely new construction also left Show Low to connect with the former National Old Trails Road (Highway 70, later 260, then 180 & 666, now 180 & 191) at Springerville and then continue into New Mexico.  For a time in the late 1930s SR 73 was also designated Temporary US 60.  The major obstacle between Globe and Show Low was the Salt River, tumbling over rapids in a steep canyon on the way to Roosevelt Lake.  The result is shown in this postcard view looking south at US 60 switchbacks descending to William A. Sullivan Bridge (1934) across the Salt (lower right).  Upon leaving the river, the road loops around a gas station with some tourist cabins out back, named over the years I. R. “Rex” Graham’s Jimana Inn or simply Canyon Inn.  There are more switchbacks climbing out of the canyon and a route across smaller canyons through the forest to Show Low.  Construction was accomplished from 1931 to 1936.

 

Despite the hardships of the Great Depression, development of long distance trucking, passenger bus service and automobile tourism continued in the 1930s.  Those industries greatly benefited from federal highway improvements designed to stimulate employment.  All primary state highways were oiled or paved by 1937 and Route 66 from Topock to Gallup became the first completely hard surfaced highway across Arizona in 1938, paved with either asphalt or concrete.  Tucson’s Miracle Mile on the way to Florence became the state’s first divided highway in 1941.

 World War Two production demands reduced tourist traffic on Arizona highways but greatly increased use by trucks, as shown in this view west of Salome on US 70 in 1943.  At the time there were 2,303 miles of federal highways in Arizona, 1,376 miles of state routes, 15,285 miles of county roads, 3,632 miles in national forests, parks and monuments, 5,926 miles on Indian reservations and 1,033 miles in cities.  In those days, Highway 70 crossed Arizona combined with Highway 60 from Ehrenburg to Quartzsite to Salome and Wickenburg.  There the two routes joined US 89 from Prescott to continue to Phoenix, entering the capital on Grand Avenue.  On Van Buren Street 60, 70 and 89 joined with Highway 80 on the way to Tempe and east.  At Florence Junction, Highways 80 and 89 went south to Tucson via Florence and Oracle Junction while 60 and 70 headed for Superior, Miami and Globe.  At Globe, just as they do today, US 60 went north to Show Low and 70 went east to Safford.  Following World War Two, US 70 could boast 2,926 miles, all paved, from North Carolina to California, or the “Smokies to the Rockies.”  It was also branded “The Hospitality Route,” lined with motels and passing through every capital city of the states along the way.  This photo by Guy Jackson appeared in the July 1943 issue of Arizona Highways magazine (p. 7).

 

It’s nearly impossible to cross Arizona without climbing over rugged mountain ranges, presenting formidable challenges for highway engineers and motorists.  While there have always been many miles of wide and flat highways in the state, much of its history is a story of difficult passage over mountain trails.  Nell Murbarger (Ghosts of the Adobe Walls, 1964, p. 245-247) braved the corkscrew switchbacks of the Coronado Trail in 1951 with her mother.  “I am told that this is now a splendid road, largely paved, beautifully engineered, and adequately wide.  It was not always so,” observed the younger Murbarger.  After descending the rim for more than 50 miles they came upon a maintenance crew “tearing loose a lot of boulders and heavy roots which still covered the roadbed, along with hub-deep dust.  Grinding along in low gear, lurching, roaring, and floundering, our gallant old Mercury made her way over this rock-and-dust chaos until reaching a stove-sized boulder that even she could not surmount.  As the road was altogether too narrow for us to pass around the boulder on either side, we had no choice but to wait patiently, half an hour or so, until a bulldozer came along and pushed the rock off the edge of the grade.  For almost a full minute we could hear it crashing down the canyonside through the trees and underbrush, bumpity, bumpity, bounce.”

 The 124 miles of Coronado Trail between Springerville and Clifton were constructed 1916-1926 and dedicated June 19, 1926.  Difficult as it was, it offered an alternative to an earlier wagon road along the Blue River which was longer and slower.  The new route was the first example of US Forest Service highway construction in Arizona.  By 1939, the Coronado Trail had become part of US 666, so designated because it was originally the sixth branch off US 66.  The final six miles of asphalt paving were completed in the summer of 1962.  After “ghost highway” and “devils highway” legends led to theft of road signs and unsavory publicity, Arizona was granted a request to renumber the route US 191 in June 1992.  L. L. Cook Company of Milwaukee issued this postcard showing a snowy canyon, mailed from Morenci in 1943.  (I have added color to the black and white “real photo postcards” on this blog.) 

 Ranches and farms around Sedona supplied Flagstaff and other towns on the Santa Fe Railway with food, transported by a long round-about journey over the rim on the stage road via Woods Spring and Munds Park, similar to the route taken by I-17 today.  Early in the Twentieth Century two shorter routes were built from Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon to Flagstaff using a combination of private and county funding.  Construction in 1901-1902 converted the Munds Trail, blazed about 1896 and climbing the rim out of Bear Wallow Canyon, into a usable wagon road called at first The Verde Cut-Off and later Schnebly Hill Road.  At the same time, work had begun on a road out of upper Oak Creek Canyon.  It was finished from Flagstaff to the confluence of Oak Creek and West Fork by 1906 and then extended down the canyon over the years until a final bridge completed in July 1914 allowed travel from Flagstaff to the Verde Valley.  Rebuilt after a 1918 flood and widened in 1922, the highway was improved 1929-1932 and moved from county to state responsibility as SR 79.  Descending from the canyon rim at upper left, the highway rounds the knoll in the center of this view, going through slushy snow to a hairpin curve out of view at lower left, then returning to another tight curve at upper center, coming down into Sterling Canyon for another curve at lower right and then crossing Pump House Wash on a curved bridge (1931) at upper right.  This alignment, though difficult in winter is still in use, designated US 89A from Prescott to Jerome and Sedona and on to Flagstaff.  Mike Roberts of Berkeley, California issued the Natural Color postcard in the 1950s showings a two and a half mile portion of US 89A dropping nearly 1,000 feet into the canyon.

 Highway 80, leaving Yuma for Phoenix, went around the Gila Mountains on the north through Dome until the Telegraph Pass cutoff was constructed through the mountains in 1928.  The road was paved in 1931, realigned in 1948 and then replaced by Interstate 8 through the same pass.  Burton Frasher (1888-1955) of Pomona pictured Summit Service Station in Telegraph Pass at least three times in the 1930s and 40s, here about 1941.  There are no services in the pass today.  When US 80 was replaced by I-8 the old alignments through Telegraph Pass were sliced up until little remains.

 This double underpass structure at the east entrance of Benson, built in 1941-1942, allowed SR 86 from Texas Canyon (replaced by I-10) to pass under the Southern Pacific Railroad and US 80 from Tombstone.  Highway 86 then merged with Highway 80 to follow 4^th Street, the main commercial street, through town.  Running 85 miles from Benson to the New Mexico border, SR 86 offered a shortcut to El Paso, but bypassed Tombstone, Bisbee and Douglas.  Improving “The Sunset Trail,” as the route was dubbed, drew travelers through northern Cochise County towns and construction of this underpass helped revitalize the transportation economy of Benson.  This view from about 1958 looks west as a billboard urges travelers to turn south after the underpass and visit Tombstone.  The welcome sign lists local service clubs:  Rotary, Lions, American Legion and Alianza Hispano Americana.  The Alianza was a mutual aid society founded in Tucson in 1894 that grew into the biggest and best-known Mexican-American organization in the southwest, offering death benefits to members of 88 chapters by 1919.  By the mid-1960s, however, its financial model had become unsustainable and it disbanded. 

 

Interstate highways across Arizona were largely constructed between 1963 and 1979.  State highway mileage grew from 3,945 miles in 1951 to 6,800 miles in 2005.  Motorists who now speed along multi-million dollar miles of broad pavement surely give little thought to the difficulties overcome in years past.  Good economic times brought improvements, which were then followed by potholes during hard times.  But all the time, rapid population growth placed great demands on Arizona highways.

Here, a Greyhound bus is pictured heading west between Flagstaff and Williams around 1942 with the snow-capped San Francisco Peaks in the background.  The Model 743 Super-Coach, manufactured exclusively for Greyhound by Yellow Coach of Chicago 1937-1939, pioneered a new design for large busses that moved baggage from the roof to below the floor and placed a diesel engine in the rear with an angled drive shaft to the rear differential.  The design persists today.  (Compare the old-style Greyhound bus at Crozier 7-V Ranch, pictured in the Valentine post on this blog.)  This section, from east of Flagstaff to west of Seligman, was paved with concrete, giving vehicles a durable surface and motorists the monotonous slap-slap of expansion joints.  Known as a hardship highway during the Great Depression, Route 66 was re-branded with a song after World War Two, becoming the “Main Street of America” or the “Mother Road.”  “We Got Our Kicks on Route 66,” said the postcard sent home as family vacations took to the highway. 

Seventy-four miles east of Holbrook and 165 miles east of Flagstaff, Route 66 enters Arizona in the shadow of the Painted Cliffs, where a welcome billboard gives a hint of the scenery ahead.  By the 1940s this section of Route 66 was carrying the largest volume of traffic on any Arizona road outside the state’s two urban areas.  By the early 1950s, as pictured on this Petley photo-chrome postcard, the asphalt was showing wear and tear.  Lupton post office is about a mile ahead, but before that, save 5-cents on gas at the Whiting Brothers station.  Also, behind the welcome sign was a café and curio shop called State Line Station.  Once it was replaced with Interstate-40 US 66 was decommissioned as a federal highway in 1985.  The portion pictured here was chopped up by freeway construction but a frontage road on the north side of the Interstate approximates the old alignment.  (For more on Route 66 go to oldhiways.com/Route66.html and oldhiways.com/PFNP66.html)

See:

Ariz.Dept.Transportation (ADOT), Travel Arizona: The Back Roads, (1989)

Ariz.Dept.Transportation (ADOT), Travel Arizona: The Scenic Byways, (1997)Arizona

Good Roads Association Illustrated Road Maps and Tour Book, (1913) reprinted 1987.

Eldon Bowman, A Guide to the General Crook Trail, (1978)

Melissa Keane & J. Simon Bruder, Good Roads Everywhere: A History of Road Building in Arizona, (2004) ADOT report.

A. M. McOmie, et al., The Arizona Strip, [1915] Ariz. State publication

Evelyn Brack Measeles, Lee’s Ferry, (1981)

Joseph Miller, “Trucking in Arizona Today,” Arizona Highways, July 1943, pp. 6-13, 40-43.

Richard L. Powers, History of Arizona’s Transportation System, PowerPoint presentation at Arizona Pavements/Materials Conference, ASU, Nov. 15, 2011.

W. L. Rusho & C. Gregory Crampton, Desert River Crossing, (1975) Lee’s ferry

Sedona Westerners, Those Early Days. . .Oldtimers’ Memories, (1968)

Betty Slocum, “The Coronado Trail,” Arizona Highways (ADOT magazine), August 1963, pp. 6-12, 28, 29, 32-35.

Robert Spude, “Could McCormick be the ‘Senator’ of the Senator Highway,” Sharlot Hall Museum website, Days Past articles.

Richard F. Weingroff, “U.S. 666: ‘Beast of a Highway’?” (revised 06/18/2003)  US DOT, Fed.Hwy.Admin.

Yuma: Gateway City and Sunshine Haven

In the southwestern corner of Arizona the capricious Colorado River meanders among hills and around mesas toward a confluence with the Gila.  The combined flow then heads west for a few miles before turning south again and into Mexico.  There, the Quechan people found good places to cross.  There too, Europeans headed to California were floated across the river on rafts made by the Quechan, either near the base of Pilot Knob or farther upstream where the river is squeezed between two hills.  Padre Kino crossed at the dawn of the 18th century, followed by Fray Garces closer to the century’s close.  On the California side of the river, Garces established two missions but died there when the Quechan rebelled in the summer of 1781.  (More at the March 16, 2011 posting on the Quechan in Part Three of Arizona Indians article.  Includes photos of Fort Yuma Quechan school students.  Picture of Quechan at Yuma depot posted in Part One, January 25, 2011.  A 1910s view of Yuma’s railroad bridge was posted July 9, 2010 with the Arizona railroads history.  The article on the Five “C’s” of the Arizona economy, posted February 15, 2010, included a picture of Yuma orange groves and the Climatic Hotel along with text on Yuma agriculture.)

Lieutenant Hardy with the British navy mapped Yuma crossing in 1826.  Mountain man James O. Pattie passed through the following year and the Mormon Battalion crossed at Yuma in 1846 on the way to seize California in the Mexican War.  With the west bank of the river (actually north at that point) added to the United States, Army Lieutenant Coutts supplemented his income by running a ferry for miners rushing to the California gold placers in 1849.  In 1850 New Mexico Territory was created (see maps page of this blog) and California became a state.  Camp Independence was sited by the US military December 1, 1850 six miles below another ferry operated by George Johnson from San Francisco at the two hills near the confluence with the Gila.  The camp moved to the top of the hill in California at Johnson’s ferry and became Fort Yuma in March 1851.  Across the river, a few hundred feet beyond the south bank, was Mexico.  But that changed with the Gadsden Purchase of 1853.  At that time, Sarah Bowman (ca1813-1866), a cook at the fort, and her husband built the first house on the Arizona side of the river between the other hill (later called Prison Hill) and a mesa that stretched south for many miles (later called Yuma Mesa). San Francisco lithographer George H. Baker (1827-1906) drew Yuma crossing about 1875, showing Jaeger’s rope ferry (formerly Johnson’s) crossing from the base of Prison Hill to the California bank of the Colorado River below Fort Yuma on Indian Hill.  Indigenous residents (at right) idly watch the flow of commerce, having been shut out of their own ferry business about 20 years prior.  It would take another decade to get most of the Indians to quit running around naked.  There must have been a way to raise the ferry rope to pass steamboats like the one at center.  The office and warehouse of the Colorado Steam Navigation Company, incorporated December 1869, is at left, at the north end of Main Street.  The trees by the office, remembered by Baker as evergreens, were actually tall leaved trees.  Within two years the Southern Pacific railroad would arrive, bridge the river and cut through the hill behind the building to run the main line down Madison Avenue (first named Brinley Ave.).  But even after the railroad came steamboats, which could tow un-powered barges for extra capacity, continued to supply mining towns up river.  By 1875, Colorado Steam Navigation Company operated four steamers.  Between 1852 and 1907, 16 paddlewheel boats, three screw driven boats and at least 11 barges operated on the lower Colorado.  Following construction of Laguna Dam (1909), steamboats were consigned to a few odd jobs below Yuma and quickly disappeared.  Today, this riverfront area is historically unrecognizable, having been totally transformed by development, which even included removal of several small hills.  Madison Beach Park was developed in 1995.  The old Quartermaster Depot became Yuma Crossing State Historic Park in 1997 and a National Heritage Area in 2000.  Gateway Park opened in 2007, and then Pivot Point Park.  A Hilton Inn and Conference center opened 2008-2009 where the old railroad settling basins and water tank had been on a hill out of view at left in this scene.

With the addition to the United States of territory south of the Gila River at least two small towns appeared within a mile of each other on the Arizona side of the Colorado River:  Arizona City, where a number of adobes gathered around the Bowman home; and Colorado City farther downstream.  There is some confusion over the naming and location of these communities.  The Theobalds (see bibliography below), tracking post offices, report a community called Colorado City, New Mexico Territory 1857-1858, renamed Arizona, Dona Ana County, New Mexico Territory in 1858, with the post office discontinued in 1863.  Then, a post office re-established as Yuma, Arizona Territory 1866-1869, renamed Arizona City 1869-1873, again named Yuma from 1873 onward.  However, Woznicki sees three separate towns, Colorado City, Arizona City, and what Lingenfelter calls Jaeger City located where Algodones, California is today.  Most sources place Jaeger’s ferry opposite Fort Yuma.  Douglas D. Martin (1885-1963) describes three crossings of the river:  Upper or Yuma Crossing (at north end of Gila Street), Emigrant or Pilot Knob Crossing seven miles west and Lower Crossing another three or four miles downstream.  The Colorado River gold rush of 1858-1859 and 1862-1870  (see the gold rush posting on this blog) led to the populating of Arizona City.  A federal supply depot was located in 1864 on the west side of the hill that would be cut through by the railroad in 1877.  The railroad placed settling basins and a water tank on that hill.   Stocked by riverboats from the Gulf of California, the quartermaster supplied government posts in Arizona, Nevada, southern Utah, New Mexico and west Texas until the depot closed in 1883.  When the Colorado meandered away from Yuma County seat, La Paz, ever growing Arizona City was made county seat in 1870.
An early photograph of Main Street shows a collection of adobe homes and stores baking under a summer sun, probably about 1870, rebuilt after floods in 1862 and 1864 had dissolved their walls back to the earth.  According to American custom, Arizona City enjoyed a wide main street to encourage commerce.  According to Mexican custom, most of the structures were adobe or “mud on sticks” (daub and wattle) to shelter from the oppressive heat and make use of cheap building materials at the site.  At upper right, Fort Yuma is visible on Indian Hill across the river.  The tall trees at the steamboat company office are visible in the distance on the left side of the street.  SP Water Tank Hill is at upper left.  In January 1873, the territorial legislature renamed Arizona City, using the name given the local Indian tribe by the Spanish, “Yuma” (probably from the Spanish word for smoke, humo).  The Indians called themselves Quechan.   At the same time, the legislature incorporated the community and authorized it to collect a tax to build a flood protection levee.  Yuma, with a population over 1,100, was the territory’s second largest community.  Yuma incorporated again, as a “Village,” in the summer of 1876, a “Town” in 1902 and finally, a “City” in 1914.

Building across the continent along the 32nd parallel, the Southern Pacific railroad arrived at the Colorado River opposite Yuma in 1877 and began work on a bridge.  Competing with the Texas Pacific to see who could build fastest and thereby gain the most land grant, the SP was hindered by the federal government.  The railroad didn’t have permission to run trains across a military reservation.  Politics in Washington, D.C. probably played a role.  But even before the 1,200-foot long wooden pony-truss of six spans plus a longer swing-span to pass river traffic was completed the first train crossed into Yuma under cover of darkness on September 30, 1877.  Tracks had already been laid down Madison Avenue to a roundhouse and switchyard on the south side.  That first bridge washed away in the flood of July 1, 1884.  The replacement, of only three longer spans plus the swing span burned completely less than a year after it was completed.  This picture shows the third wooden bridge completed in 1886.  The 1877 swing span survived the flood and had been opened to avoid burning in 1885.  Here, it is opened to pass the small gasoline powered stern-wheeler Aztec in 1893 or 1894.  The railroad replaced the wooden spans with a through-truss steel bridge, built in stages 1894-1899.  Then in 1923, the SP moved to the crossing once reserved for the Texas Pacific between Indian Hill and Prison Hill, placing a single-span arched, through-truss.  Prison Hill is visible in the background in this photo.  At right is the steam plant at the Southern Pacific Hotel with the trees at the Colorado Steam Navigation Company building visible behind.  A steam engine opened the swing span while steam was undoubtedly also provided to the hotel.  The pier for the swing span, dated 1895, is now preserved at Pivot Point Park.

Looking south on Main Street about 1900, the downtown is centered around the Gandolfo Hotel building (1899) and the Althee Modesti (1893) building (at right) on the northwest corner of Main and First Street.  Way down Main Street, the steeple of the Catholic Church is visible on the southwest corner of Main and Fourth Street.  The Gandolfo building offered stores on the ground floor, including two drug stores, with hotel rooms on the second floor.  By the 1930s the Gandolfo had become the Roosevelt Hotel.  After the building was demolished the corner was the site of Thrifty Drugs and now Hoppstetters.  The Modesti building featured a bar, billiard room and the International Restaurant.  Main Street was originally 132 feet wide.
This birds-eye-view of the Yuma waterfront also dates to around 1900, shortly after the last wooden span of the railroad bridge on Madison Avenue had been replaced with steel.  The view is to the northwest from a vantage point on the side of Prison Hill with homes along north Gila Street at lower left and a few of the Indian School buildings (former Fort Yuma) at upper right.  The mix of adobe, “mud on sticks” (at bottom) and lumber construction (tiny structure in center) is evident.  At upper left is the two-story Southern Pacific Hotel and Depot, located where the hill behind the steamboat company office was before it was cut away.  Moving to the right, the electric company powerhouse with smoke-pipe is visible and then the railroad warehouses (white roofs) located on a spur track.  The ferry is out of view at right, at the north end of Gila Street.

The first prison in Arizona Territory opened at Yuma July 1, 1876.  Contrary to the hell-hole image, it was considered a humane and model institution in its day, with a hospital, library, electric lights and more than bread and water to eat.  The real hellish aspect involved disciplinary confinement in a dark, windowless cell and forced labor in the summer heat.  A guard shot to death four prisoners during an escape attempt in 1887 during which the warden was severely knifed.  When the facility became overcrowded and worn out, prisoners went to Florence and built their new lockup in 1908-1909.  The Village of Yuma had donated the prison grounds so ownership reverted to the city.  Yuma High School was housed at the former prison from 1910-1914, resulting in “Criminals” for a team mascot.  Yuma High School’s “old main” was constructed 1914-1915 on Sixth Avenue.  This view from Indian Hill of the prison above the river a few years before it closed shows (left to right) guard dormitory, stables, offices, and warden’s residence with flagpole on west side.  The walled cellblock compound is behind the trees.  The tallest roof at left (with cupola) is the main guard tower, built on top of a water tank.  The arched entrance gate (“sally port”) is visible in center, with the west wall and two more guard towers at right.  Just out of view at right is the Yuma waterfront.  The tall roof (with two ventilators on top) is the hospital, built on top of a cellblock within the walls.  Yuma was a relatively peaceful town, but it reportedly witnessed the first legal hanging in the Territory in 1873.  The death penalty was carried out at county court houses in those days, not the Territorial Prison, before state government mandated in 1909 that all executions take place at the Florence penitentiary.  Yuma County Hospital used the remodeled former warden’s home 1910-1923.  Half the cellblock area on the west side was demolished to make way for the railroad approach to the new bridge in 1924.  About one-third of the upper part of Prison Hill was removed for the tracks.  What remained of the prison was abandoned to deteriorate until it became a tourist attraction in the late 1930s.  The local VFW used the former guard dormitory as clubhouse until it burned in 1958.  A museum opened in 1941, followed by Yuma Territorial Prison State Historic Park January 1, 1961.

An early attempt to irrigate Imperial Valley, California via private enterprise turned disastrous and Yuma witnessed an epic battle between human labor and the forces of nature.  The entire Imperial Valley is below sea level, having once been under the ocean where movement of an underground fault line created the Gulf of California.  The Salton Basin used to periodically become a lake via the Alamo River fed by the Colorado River in flood, as for example in the summer of 1891.  Seeing the agricultural potential, developers built the Imperial Canal in 1901 but skimped on the Andrade head gates at the river below Yuma.  Record floods in 1905 caused the Colorado to break through the head gates and form New River, filling Salton Sink once again but now damaging valuable development, even flooding the SPRR main line.  A railroad trestle was constructed across the break in the riverbank and tons of rock hauled from New Mexico dumped into the stream.  Three attempts before June 1906 failed to close the break and that month the entire flow of the river headed for the new Salton Sea.  Extraordinary effort on the part of the Southern Pacific railroad closed the break in November only to see the river level rise in December and break through again.  A final closure was made in February 1907 and the mighty Colorado once again peacefully meandered into the Gulf.  More than 30 years later the All American Canal would replace the Imperial Canal and today, the Salton Sea remains, kept full by irrigation runoff.

When it was Yuma’s turn to benefit from irrigation, residents looked to the federal government.  In order to stimulate settlement and agriculture, the Reclamation Act of 1902 gave the federal government authority to designate large tracts of land in the West irrigation projects and construct dams and canals to provide water and electric power for those projects.  The first two reclamation projects in Arizona were the Salt River Project (see history of Roosevelt on this blog) and the Yuma Project.  Following surveys and purchase of existing private irrigation infrastructure 1902-1908, the Department of Interior, US Reclamation Service entered into a contract for the construction of Laguna Dam on the Colorado River 10 miles north of Yuma, the first dam on the lower Colorado.  Rather than attempting to control floods, Laguna Dam was a 4,470-foot long weir that raised the level of the river ten feet in order to divert it into canals on each side but allowed the entire flow to pass over in flood stage.  Construction began 19 July 1905 but design changes and flooding forced contractors in August 1906 to ask for a new contract and then withdraw from the project altogether in January 1907.  Acting as a general contractor, the federal government finished the dam 20 March 1909.  In order to irrigate the Yuma Valley, the canal from Laguna Dam’s California side had to cross under the Colorado River through a tunnel located just west of the Madison Street railroad bridge.  Work on the inverted siphon began in November 1909 but proved too difficult.  So it would be safe from river scouring during flood stage, the 14-foot diameter tunnel was designed to pass under the river at a depth of more than 100 feet below the water surface.  However, the underlying rock proved too porous, keeping the caisson full of water.  Divers were brought in, and then east coast “sand hogs” assisted by up to 1,300 “Mexican” laborers.  The siphon was finally completed 29 June 1912, but at a depth of only 44 feet on the California side and 74 feet on the Arizona side.  It is still in service, passing 1,400 cubic feet per second to fields of lettuce, cantaloupe and wheat.

The Yuma Mesa Auxiliary Project bill was signed into law by President Wilson 25 January 1917 and the Mesa received irrigation water in 1922.  The installation of Siphon Drop hydropower plant on the Yuma Main Canal in California came in 1926.  Imperial Dam was constructed about four miles upstream of Laguna Dam 1936-1938 to divert water into the All-American Canal in 1940.  Yuma canal intakes were then moved from Laguna to Imperial Dam in 1941.  In 1947, Congress funded the Gila Project to provide irrigation water to additional acres on the Yuma Mesa and farms in the Wellton-Mohawk Valley 20 miles east of Yuma.  Operation of the Arizona water infrastructure was transferred from the federal government to the Yuma County Water Users Association in 1951, with California operations transferred in 1961.  Yuma Valley’s 53,000 irrigated acres now make up a third of the cropland in the county.  And Yuma County is the leading crop producer in the state.  In order to ship fresh produce and survive the blistering summers, the “Queen City of the Colorado” once had two large ice plants.  One supplied railroad refrigerator cars from one of the largest icing platforms in the world.

Shortly after Lieutenat Coutts gave his ferry to the Quechan tribe a gang of scalp hunters from Texas led by John Glanton took over operation of another ferry under the ownership of a Doctor Lincoln.  The gang killed one of the Indian ferrymen and destroyed their boat.  When the Quechan then killed most of the Glanton gang and returned to operating a ferry California sent the state militia to punish the Indians.  Accounts of the incident differ on important points.  “Johnson and Hartshorn took over after the Lincoln massacre,” according to Roscoe G. Willson, “and a member of their organization, L. J. F. Jaeger succeeded them and continued the ferry service many years.”  Louis Jaeger (1824-1892) operated the rope ferry shown in George Baker’s drawing until 1877 when the railroad bridge was built.  Pedestrians were welcome to cross the rail bridge but wagons and autos still took the ferry, as shown on this postcard from about 1908 published by Newman Post Card Company of Los Angeles & San Francisco.  The first highway bridges across the Colorado River in Arizona were at Yuma (1915) and Topock (1916).

In order to attract motorists to Yuma, work on a highway bridge began in 1914 but immediately encountered problems.  Seasonal high water twice swept away pilings driven in the river bottom to support false work.  Instead of assembling the 4,400 pounds of steel for the through-truss design in place, workers had to build the 336-foot span on land just west of the prison.  Then as schools were closed and the whole town turned out to watch the delicate operation, the finished bridge floated across the river on a barge May 22, 1915 to be bolted in place over the next four hours.  Significant highway improvements followed.   By the end of the named highway era, at least four transcontinental routes converged at the “Gateway to the Southwest,” the Lee and Bankhead Highways, Dixie Overland Highway and Old Spanish Trail.  But a lighted sign on the bridge proclaimed “Ocean-to-Ocean Highway,” nomenclature used by another route running through the northwest corner of Arizona on its way from New York to LA.  The distance from San Diego to Yuma was shortened in 1915 by laying a wooden plank road across the Imperial dunes.  It was believed that blowing sand would quickly bury a conventional road while planks could be moved out of the way.  But a bold engineer designed an asphalt paved US 80 in 1926 that was carefully placed to cause drifting sand to blow over the surface.  US80 was rerouted in 1956 to cross the river on a new concrete span, entering Yuma on Fourth Avenue.  Then the present I-8 freeway viaduct came in 1978.  The 1915 bridge enjoyed a restoration in 2002.  As shown on this postcard issued by Harry Herz about 1928, the south pier (at right) is in the river, with a short deck truss reaching Prison Hill.  The 1923 railroad bridge is on the east side.  The cost of the highway bridge was shared, $25,000 each from the US Indian Department, State of Arizona and the people of southern California, with the City of Yuma contributing $1,000.

 Situated near the mouths of the Gila and Colorado Rivers, Yuma was vulnerable to flood until those rivers were dammed.  Destructive floods came in 1862, 1864, 1867, 1884, 1891, 1903, 1905, 1909 and January 23, 1916 as shown here.  Looking east from a vantage point near the SP Hotel, water from the broken Gila River levee is rushing down Main Street and through the Yuma Electric & Water Company power plant at right.  The Ocean-to-Ocean highway bridge is at left, spanning from Prison Hill to Indian Hill.  Both it and the railroad bridge located behind the photographer survived the flood, but Main Street shops were under up to five feet of water.  Laguna Dam wasn’t meant to hold floodwaters, so it offered little protection.  High water came again in 1921, but both the town and rail bridge were spared.  Then Coolidge Dam, constructed 1924-1928, held back the Gila River and Hoover Dam, constructed 1931-1936, subdued the Colorado.  Still, the 1993 flood on the Gila River destroyed the Highway 95 bridge north of Yuma and caused more than $100 million in damages in the county.

There has long been a significant military and aviation presence around Yuma.  The first airplane to land in Arizona touched down in Yuma in 1911, prompting the city to develop Fly Field south of 32nd Street.  It became a county airport in 1928 and was then turned over to the military in 1941 to become Yuma Army Air Field advanced flying school.  General Patton’s tank troops trained for the north Africa invasion at Desert Training Center north of Yuma.  Yuma Test Station was established in the desert east of Imperial Dam in 1943 and became Yuma Proving Ground.  When the Army abandoned the airfield at the end of World War Two, enterprising residents came up with a stunt to promote Yuma’s good flying weather.  They established a world flight endurance record, remaining aloft for nearly 47 days in a single-engine Aeronca with no bathroom.  Day and night, three times a day, the plane would chase a Buick convertible 12 times down the abandoned runway at 80mph, the copilot reaching down to grab fuel cans and sacks of food.  After three attempts, 1,124 hours in the air and 1,692 meetings with the Buick the third time, the two flyers had the record and Continental Motors replaced the worn out engine for free.  Their endurance paid off.  In 1951, the old Army Air Field became Vincent Air Force Base and then in 1959 Marine Corps Auxiliary Air Test Station with the longest concrete runway in Arizona.  It became Marine Corps Air Station, Yuma in 1962.

Architect F. S. Allen (1860-1934) designed Yuma’s first really nice elementary school building, constructed in 1908 on the mesa facing the southwest corner of Second Avenue and Third Street.  Viewed from Third Street on a postcard sold by druggist J. Homer Smith, Second Avenue Grammar School was a popular mission style design.  Allen, who moved from Illinois to southern California in 1904, specialized in school buildings.  The first school in Yuma opened in 1871, followed by a parochial school in 1874.  The block just west of Second Avenue Grammar School was made Sunset Park and became the site of a Carnegie library (opened 24 Feb. 1921, demolished and replaced with existing library building 1965-66).  The school burned in 1946 and Yuma Fire Station Number One was constructed where the playground had been.  Third Street has now been transformed into Harold Giss Parkway but one can still make out where the school used to be.

Highway 80 enters Yuma from California in about 1948 on First Street (looking west), where marriage chapels greet young couples.  Reverend Coleman’s “Famous Drive-In Chapel,” offers quick ceremonies “day and nite” in a remodeled building that a few years before was Rich’s Super Service, Associated Flying-A gasoline station.  Behind Coleman’s is R. H. Lute’s Wedding Chapel, the former “Cupid Corner,” housed in a remodeled former Rio Grande brand gasoline station.  There were a couple more wedding chapels farther west on First.  Behind Lute’s is the Dixie Hotel and the taller Hotel San Carlos (1930), advertising its American plan (in-room baths) and air cooling.  The intersection in the foreground is at First Street and Gila Street, while Main Street crosses a block farther west.  On the south side of First is a new Standard station, the Harris Garage selling Firestone tires and a bowling alley.  California instituted a three-day waiting period before marriage November 1, 1927, sending couples across the line to Nevada or Arizona for an immediate ceremony.  After several popular movie stars married in the Grand Canyon State and before Arizona required a syphilis test like California, the wedding industry in Yuma thrived until the 1960s.  Today, the wedding chapel site shown here is occupied by North End Community Center.

Protection of public health gives broad powers to government authorities in the United States, including the power of a state to use search and seizure to protect agricultural crops from insects and disease.  Both California and Arizona placed Agricultural Inspection Stations on major highways to subject travelers to search of vehicles and personal property, confiscating all fruit, vegetables and plants.  This is the Arizona station under a buttermilk sky, photographed by Bob Van Luchene about 1953 for a postcard issued by Petley Studios of Phoenix.  The building is located on US 80 at the south end of the Ocean-to-Ocean bridge on Prison Hill, just before the highway curves to the west and goes down the hill to become First Street in Yuma (as shown above).  Hotel San Carlos is visible behind the welcome signs.  In 1924, Arizona blocked the federal highway to prevent the spread of foot and mouth disease from California.  Guards reportedly required motorists and rail passengers to walk through pans of disinfectant before proceeding.  Apparently some were denied entry because newspapers reported that on “the night of April 17 many of the tourists, tired of waiting for the quarantine to lift, and rushed the guard.”  In 1956, the inspection station moved to the new Highway 80 entrance on Fourth Avenue, just south of the new bridge. 

Geography has always provided a living for Yuma.  At first, Yuma’s economy was transportation based.  The river around Yuma offered convenient crossings for wagon trains on the way to California and then stage lines to and from the west coast.  Yuma was Arizona’s seaport, via riverboats from Port Isabel, Sonora.  And then the railroad came, followed by an Ocean-to-Ocean automobile highway.  By then, the Yuma Project began “reclaiming” the desert, shifting Yuma’s economy in the Twentieth Century to an agricultural base.  The sale of 5,500 acres of land on the Yuma Mesa beginning 19 November 1919 was a significant boost for both agriculture and the service sector.  The “Gateway City of the Great Southwest” that some described as a sizzling hot hell-hole was slowly transformed into a haven from icy winters.  Records over an 80-year period showed Yuma averaged 90% of possible days of sunshine.  The “Sunshine Capital” expended considerable effort, perhaps disproportionate to the economic benefit, to attract tourists, lovebirds, retirees, “snow birds,” sand buggies and river recreationists.  Government employment, especially military, has been important to the economy since the establishment of Fort Yuma.  To provide more local benefit from its tax base, the population of northern Yuma County voted to split off and form La Paz County beginning January 1, 1983.

The Peach family came to Yuma in 1916 and soon entered the hotel business.  In 1932 they built Peach Auto Court on Highway 80 (Fourth Avenue) on the mesa one and a half miles south of downtown, adding Coronado Motor Hotel closer to downtown in 1938.  The junior John Peach remembers planting the palm trees as a child.  The Coronado was the first modern design motel in Arizona, replacing auto court style rooms separated by garages with side by side rooms.  One of the oldest still operating Best Western hotels in the world, John and Yvonne Peach still own and manage the Coronado, now expanded to 127 rooms and 23 suites.  This Portraitone postcard produced in the 1950s by Associate Services of Pasadena, noted that the Coronado was recommended by Best Western, Triple-A and Duncan Hines, and was located at 233 4th Avenue in the “Sunshine Capital of the US.”

Main Street looking north at the intersection with Third Street about 1954 illustrates a still vibrant business district.  Looks like the same neon “Bowling” sign in the 1940s view of First Street has moved to Main, across from the Western Auto Supply Co.  Centre Drugs, Rexall store, (formerly McCallum Cutrate Drugs, and before that Carl D. Farrar Drugs) is on the northwest corner of Main and Third.  The Kress building still looks much the same today, now housing a number of shops with the Top of the Kress comedy club on the roof.  You can still read the painted sign on the brick wall.  Down the street on the same side is the marquee for the Yuma Theater (1912) and red roof over First National Bank of Arizona.  First National Bank of Yuma was chartered in 1905 and built on the northwest corner of Main and Second Street in 1924.  But after the financial collapse of 1929 it had to be liquidated and absorbed by Yuma National Bank.  To increase the comfort of pedestrians in summer covered sidewalks (arcades) were added to storefronts on Main in the 1920s, replacing canvas awnings.  The introduction of evaporative coolers in the 1930s, followed by affordable air conditioning based on the refrigeration cycle helped Yuma thrive.

Despite the straight line shown on maps, Fourth Avenue (US 80) makes a gentle S-bend at the intersection with 8th Street, shown here about 1954, looking north.  By the 1950s, the commercial district had spread from Main Street to the top of the mesa and south down Fourth Avenue a few miles.  Pictured (left to right) are a Shell station, Texaco station, Firestone dealer, Sant Drug Co., Garland Jewelers, Western Fashions and Susie’s Eats (steaks, fried chicken).  The city ended at 8th Street by 1923 but the business district reached 24th in the early fifties and then the big curve at 32nd Street in the 1960s.  South of 8th Street businesses remained spread out, typical of the unplanned strip development along major highways that came to dominate nearly all American cities and towns by the mid-1930s, and has continued despite recent attempts to re-centralize commercial districts.

The Mexican Farm Labor Program, informally known as the Bracero Program (bracero, “one who works with his arms”), began 4 August 1942 to import guest workers in order to meet wartime demand for farm labor.  Braceros entered the US under individual contracts that required them to return home at the end of the season.  More than three million participated over the course of the program, which was continued following the war.  The number of braceros peaked at more than 445,000 in 1956 and declined after 1960.  The program ended in 1964, around the time this postcard of the Yuma cantaloupe harvest was made.  By then, growers were opting to hire even cheaper illegal workers and American labor unions intensified objections to the wage-lowering effect of bracero contracts.  The end of the bracero program was followed by the rise of the United Farm Workers Union led by Cesar Chavez, born in Yuma, Arizona in 1927.

This airplane view of Yuma Crossing, issued as a postcard about 1958, shows (top to bottom) the 1956 Highway 80 bridge (on Fourth Avenue), the siphon outlet on the East Main Canal, remains of piers in river from Madison Street rail bridge, the 1915 Ocean-to-Ocean highway bridge (white) and the 1924 railroad bridge (black).  California side of the river is at right.  Old Arizona Inspection Station is the white roof south of bridge while abandoned California Inspection Station is orange roof (lower right).  The old highway 80 goes past the former prison site (lower left) and curves to become First Street.  Gila Street is the first north-south street, ending at water treatment basins on the riverbank, the site of the last ferry crossing.  The road away from the ferry on the California side of the river is still evident.  The next street crossing First to the west is Main (red roof of bank building on Main & 2nd is visible), and then Madison.  Railroad Tracks ran down Madison Avenue until 1966, curving through the water treatment and electric plant site to meet the new rail line on Prison Hill.  The County Court House is obscured by the word “Yuma.”  City Hall is the red roof below the first letter in “Arizona.”  San Carlos Hotel is the tallest building, on northeast corner of First and Main.  New agricultural inspection station on Fourth Avenue (US 80) is above the letter “n.”  The diagonal street at upper left is Orange Avenue.  One block north of Orange is the new fire station with site of Second Avenue Grammar School still recognizable on opposite corner of same block.

Commercial development continued to move south on Fourth Avenue in the 1960s.  This Curteichcolor photo by Don Cordery Photography looks north over the four mile strip development along Fourth Avenue (four-lanes plus center turn lane), with Crescent Center in the foreground and Circle Square a mile north (another high-rise).  Crescent Center is on the southwest corner of Fourth Avenue and 24th Street, with the Stardust Motel on the northwest corner (Fry’s Food Store today) and the Flamingo Hotel on the southeast corner (now the site of a restaurant).  Circle Square is on the northeast corner of Fourth Avenue and 16th Street (Highway 95), across from Yuma Mesa Shopping Center on the southeast corner.  The old downtown along Main Street is under the word “Colorful” at top of the postcard, behind Black Hill.  The south rail yards are below the word “Yuma.”  Development along Fourth Avenue is on the Yuma Mesa, raised above the agricultural land in Yuma Valley to the west and the Gila Valley to the east.  The Mesa is the site of miles of citrus groves, south of the area shown here.  Bob Petley of Phoenix published a postcard using this same photograph.

As shoppers followed stores south on Fourth Avenue, a battle of the malls ensued.  Downtown merchants opted for a radical makeover of Main Street, eliminating cars and turning it into an outdoor pedestrian mall as shown here, looking north in the block between Second and Third Streets (same block shown above in 1950s).  The project was completed in November 1969 just as competition was ramping up at the big curve several miles south on Highway 80.  Westgate Mall, a conventional shopping center located on the east side of Fourth Avenue between the curve and Catalina Drive, had already opened.  The more logically named Southgate Mall opened in 1973 on the west side of Fourth at the big curve and underwent a $5 million facelift in 1993.  In 2005 Yuma Mall, as the pedestrian plaza on Main Street was originally called, was removed and a narrow Main Street reopened to vehicle traffic.  The building with the red roof is the First National Bank of Arizona building (1924), today, restored as Yuma County Administration Building.

See:
Bill & Millie Brent, This Is the Yuma Country, (1965)
William & Milarde Brent, The Hell Hole, (1962)
John Mason Jeffrey, Adobe and Iron, (1969)
Charles P. Kendall, “Planks Across the Dunes,” Jour. Az. History (Winter 1980) pp.391-410
Robert Lenon, It Seems Like Only Yesterday, Vol. 1 The Yuma Years, (2004)
Richard E. Lingenfelter, Steamboats on the Colorado River, 1852-1916, (1978)
Frank Love, From Brothel to Boomtown: Yuma’s Naughty Past, (1981)
Douglas D. Martin, Yuma Crossing, (1954)
Robert Nelson, Early Yuma, (2006)
Frank D. Robertson, A History of Yuma, Arizona 1540-1920, (1942) U. of A. Masters Thesis
John & Lillian Theobald, Arizona Territory Post Offices & Postmasters, (1961)
US Dept Interior, Fifteenth Annual Report of the Reclamation Service 1915-1916, (1916)
Roscoe G. Willson, “Arizona Marks A Century As A United States Territory,” Arizona Days and Ways Magazine (Arizona Republic Sunday magazine), February 24, 1963
Robert Woznicki, The History of Yuma and the Territorial Prison, (1968)

Winslow: The Meteor City
Is Still In Motion

In 1876, the LDS church called missionary families to colonize the relatively unpopulated Little Colorado River valley in northeastern Arizona. They were to establish towns along a transportation corridor down the eastern part of the territory all the way into Mexico, along what would come to be called the Honeymoon Trail because so many of the colonists married just before setting out on their journey. Making the perilous crossing of the Colorado River at Lee’s Ferry, wagon trains forded the Little Colorado at Sunset Crossing, before the stream plunged into a deep gorge on its way to the Grand Canyon.

Two of the first four groups settled at the crossing, where they made Smith’s Camp and Ballinger’s Camp, named after their leaders. The others made Lake’s Camp and Allen’s Camp farther upstream. They were directed by church leaders to build forts for protection and they were skilled at placing brush dams across the river and running ditches to irrigate fields. The importance of cooperation to efficient agriculture and a desire to maintain discipline in the wilds of eastern Arizona must have convinced many of these settlers to follow the communal lifestyle known as the United Order. Life in the forts would require shared work. They enjoyed private sleeping quarters but ate meals in a common dining room. United Order communities adopted a communist economy, without ownership of animals, tools, furnishings or housing. The community at Lakes’ Camp was named Obed, while those in Smith’s Camp called their place Sunset City (USPO “Sunset”). Two years later, Ballinger’s Camp was named Brigham City and Allen’s Camp became St. Joseph (later Joseph City).

But the harsh environment, which included strong winds, alternating drought and flood, and alkali soil, led to the failure of three of the four communities within five years. Brigham City was abandoned in 1881, while Sunset survived until early 1887. The United Order failed too. It was dependent upon free public land, it tolerated no dissent and some families desired the full benefit of their individual initiative. When Atlantic and Pacific Railroad construction crews reached Sunset Crossing toward the end of 1881, they could stay in the abandoned Brigham City fort until a town was built closer to the tracks. The railroad named the new town Winslow, after a former president of the St. Louis and San Francisco Railroad, which had partnered with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe to bankroll the A & P.

Note how Brigham City was located on the west side of the river in Section 18 (on the east side of the present day golf course). Sunset City was located on the east bank. When section lines were resurveyed, Sunset was found to be in the northwest corner of Section 16. In the 1880s, the A & P rail yard was on the east side of Winslow, putting downtown at the left edge of this map. Clear Creek provided an abundant supply of water, leading the railroad to locate refueling facilities, machine shops, a roundhouse and a housing for workers. Additionally, Winslow was a convenient maintenance point because it was the lowest elevation between the Continental Divide at Gonzales, New Mexico and Arizona Divide at Riordan, Arizona. (Map by David F. Myrick from his book, The Santa Fe Route, (1998), page 19.)

Boys pose for the photographer on a string of coal cars parked on the turning wye that used to run along Campbell Avenue in this photo looking east around 1892. In those days locomotives burned coal mined near Gallup but Winslow would remain a refueling point even after the switch to oil. St. Joseph’s Catholic Church (1892), on the NE corner of Winslow Avenue and Front Street has the dark roof (Second St. today, not the Front Street south of tracks). There are two other churches on either side of the Catholic church. Front Street, also called Railroad Avenue and finally Second Street, runs by the churches, past the commercial district, leading to the railroad roundhouse and shops visible at upper right (last white building at right). Today’s First Street is also at right, but only extends two blocks. In the 1890s there were no commercial buildings on the south side of Railroad Avenue, only a wide vacant space extending to the tracks. You can see that at extreme right. The tops of a few stores are visible in front of the plume of smoke coming from the roundhouse. The tracks are out of view to the right. On the south side of the tracks, the A & P provided 13 railroad employee cottages by 1887 (not visible here). The number expanded to 63 by 1891. The cookie-cutter roofs at upper left resemble employee housing and may be some of the newer cottages on the north side. (National Archives and Records Administration photo.)

Railroad Avenue (now Second St.) looking east about 1906, shows two blocks of a basically four block business district. Some of the buildings (from left) are: Winslow Opera House (red brick)—later site of B. P. O. Elks bldg.; Hotel Navajo (whitewashed); news stand, confectionary & post office (dark parapet); men’s clothing store, then a plumbing supply (greenish); drugstore (yellow); Babbit Brothers Mercantile with Masonic Hall above (red); Star Grocery with Knights of Pithias above (white); and then Williamson Avenue. The Arizona Central Hotel (1885), first business in Winslow, is the two-story white building near the end of the next block. Then comes the railroad shop attached to the roundhouse (red) blocking the street at far right. The LaPrade family owned the Opera House with Holbrook druggist Frank Wattron (1861-1905) as partner. There was also a jeweler and tailor shop at the front of the building.

The eastside roundhouse and machine shops completely burned in 1895 but were replaced by the structure in the view above. The A & P Railroad went bankrupt and was reborn in 1897 as the Santa Fe Pacific Railway under Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe control. The ATSF purchased Santa Fe Pacific railroad property in 1902, adding it to the Santa Fe System. Then in 1913, the Santa Fe Railway began a major expansion on the west side of Winslow that included a new roundhouse, machine shop and power plant as shown here. The east side facilities were then demolished. This roundhouse lasted until recently. The correspondent who mailed the postcard in 1918 wrote on the front, “The train shoke [shook] so much I can’t write very good.”

Santa Fe Train No. 7, shown here about 1910, was a westbound fast mail and express from Chicago to Los Angeles (No. 8 was the eastbound fast mail). Double-headed to maintain speed on the steep grades in New Mexico and Arizona, it pulls a long string of express cars, followed by passenger coaches. This view looks east from a point near the railroad hospital (constructed 1902). The combination depot, Harvey House hotel and restaurant building is at right. The employee reading room (see below) is out of view behind the trees at right, within the fence. Fred Harvey (1835-1901) contracted with the A & P and the Santa Fe Railway to provide “eating houses” along the line, later attached to hotels. The first was at Topeka, Kansas, staffed by iconic “Harvey girls.” There were Harvey House hotel/restaurants in Arizona at Winslow, Williams, Grand Canyon, Ash Fork, and Seligman, with an eating house at Kingman and a café on Route 66 overlooking the Painted Desert.

The Glessner family of Minnesota preserved some postcards from an ancestor’s March 1929 trip on the Santa Fe through Winslow and have made them available on the internet. Grandpa Harry wrote on this Fred Harvey published Phostint card, “This is the ‘old noise’ hotel. They are going to build the biggest & best of all on the other side of the track.” A Fred Harvey eating house opened temporarily in boxcars in Holbrook then relocated to Winslow in 1887. It was replaced in 1897 with a larger hotel and restaurant. That building was gutted by fire in 1914 but rebuilt and enlarged as shown here. Construction began in 1929 on La Posada depot, restaurant and hotel on the north side of the tracks. But even after La Posada opened, this building survived for many years. It’s gone now, but Winslow has a Harvey girls group that interprets the atmosphere of that era for visitors.

Patterned after Women’s Christian Temperance Union reading rooms, the Santa Fe System established similar rooms for employees in 1889 as a recreational alternative to billiard rooms and roulette tables in saloons. The reading rooms were closed during the recession that began in 1893, which soon led to both the A & P and ATSF railroads filing for bankruptcy protection. Widely praised for their positive effects on morality, reading rooms reopened as the railroads emerged from receivership in 1896. There were 23 reading rooms by 1901. In 1913 there were 13 rooms and five combined reading rooms and clubhouses costing $50,000 a year to maintain. This building was constructed in 1903 at a cost of $20,000. I don’t know how long it stayed open, but the one in Belen, New Mexico closed in 1980. The building with the orange roof visible through the trees is the railroad hospital.

When La Posada Hotel opened 15 May 1930 the economy had just crashed and it was the last of the Harvey House hotels built in the grand style. The attached passenger depot is just out of view at right. Fred Harvey architect and interior designer Mary Colter (1869-1958) chose a Spanish-Mediterranean design, which had replaced the mission style in popularity. She created a mythical history for the building as a Spanish hacienda, furnishing the 70 rooms and five suites with antique and replica furniture. Throughout the hotel, dining room, lunchroom and train station, every detail from reverent statues of patron saints to whimsical jackrabbit ashtrays stimulated the emotional experience of guests. But after rail passenger traffic began to falter, La Posada closed in 1957 and the furnishings were auctioned off in 1959. An east wing was remodeled to serve as Santa Fe Railway offices for the Albuquerque-Winslow Division. When the railroad announced in 1994 that it would leave, Allen Affeldt and Tina Mion purchased the building and began a restoration 1997-1999. The railroad decided to stay and the hotel and restaurant reopened. The original exterior had been painted light pink, but it is now beige, closer to the color on this Fred Harvey postcard issued in 1937.

The Santa Fe Railway began running diesel electric freight locomotives in 1941 and picked Winslow as a diesel service point. At the time “Winslow was a cowtown of 3500, shopping center for Navajos and Hopis and jumping-off place for tourists who had read the ads about the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest (p.44, Roderick M. Grant, “The Navajos Call It ‘Lightning Wagon,’” Popular Mechanics, Sept. 1945.) Then, servicing nearly 80 of the General Motors built units, which made the trip from LA to Chicago at 60 mph in 41-and-a-half hours, doubled the population, making Winslow “Diesel Capital of the World” according to the railroad. Wartime traffic had a train arriving or leaving every 12 minutes. But after World War II a dispute with city government over expansion of Santa Fe shops persuaded the railroad to move its diesel service to Barstow.

Cross-country automobile and air transportation offered competition for trains beginning in the 1920s, and Winslow was in a good position to capitalize on both new forms of traffic. Local druggist and lawyer, Grover Cleveland Bazell (1889-1938), established a Buick dealership in 1921 and then Bazell Camp Ground for tourists at 800 West Second Street. Extensively remodeled in 1950, it became Bazell Modern Court. It closed many years ago and is now a private residence. Besides Bazell’s, earliest auto courts in town included Drumm’s Auto Court, Union Auto Court and West End Tourist Camp.

Route 66 was not a fun highway in years past. In the hot August of 1926, a traveler wrote home to Oklahoma on a postcard showing Winslow’s Second Street, “Here we are down the street a block in a garage getting a piston rod fixed. It burned out ours. We have had five punctures [in tires]. I bought a frosted Coca-Cola yesterday in this drug store, and they soaked me two bits for it. Across the street a soda only cost $ .15.” Coca-Cola in a 6-ounce bottle usually sold for 5-cents at the time. The garage was likely Bazell Motor Company, where the Dodge dealership used to be in the 1960s. Even after paving 1932-1937, in most places US Highway 66 was a narrow two-lane, dangerous highway. Some in Missouri called it “Bloody 66.” At one time, one in seven highway accidents in Arizona occurred on Route 66.

Standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona was popular even back when Burton Frasher of Pomona made this photo about 1941. That’s Frasher’s car at the curb. The city street is carrying thru traffic on Route 66. Winslow Drug Company, the Walgreen Agency at 100 W. Second Street, had recently moved closer to the corner. To the west are the J. C. Penney and Babbitt’s Hardware stores. St. Joseph Catholic Church, rebuilt in stone with a tall steeple, is visible two blocks away. On the south side of the street you can see the neon sign for Bruchman’s Indian Curios. R. M. Bruchman (1880-1986) established an Indian crafts business in 1909 and opened his store at 113 W. Second in 1921. It closed in 1996. The Walgreen drugstore on the NW corner of Second and Kinsley was demolished and is now the site of Standing on the Corner Park. The J. C. Penney building burned in 2004, but the east wall with its mural was saved.

Moving almost a block east on Second Street, Frasher took this photo about the same time as above. This is the same block of buildings shown on the circa 1906 postcard above, only looking in the opposite direction. Down at the intersection with Kinsley is Central Drug Company, the Rexall store across the street from the Walgreens Agency, in the building built in 1912 for the Elks club on the site of the Opera House. Moving east is the Palace Hotel (formerly Navajo Hotel), then Quality Bakery (former newsstand), Grand Café, Chief Theater, White Café (in the former Babbitt Bro. bldg.), Skylark Cocktails, National Café and Sprouse-Reitz 5-10-15-cent Store (in 1916 Old Trails Garage bldg.). Many of these buildings have survived. The Chief Theater was torn down.

While America improved cross-country highways it also began building a transcontinental airline industry. Hardly rested from his 1927 trans-Atlantic flight, Charles Lindbergh flew into Winslow the following year to select a site and design an airport for his new airline, Transcontinental Air Transport (TAT, became TWA, “The Lindbergh Line”). Passengers traveling from New York to LA over two days would fly in the clouds all day but sleep on a speeding train at night. TAT constructed Winslow Barrigan Airport and beginning 7 July 1929, Ford Tri-Motors from Clovis, New Mexico stopped there for 15-minutes on the way to Los Angeles. The first airmail flight out of Winslow soon followed, on October 25, 1930. Twin-engine DC-3s, as pictured here, were used by 1936. And by 1948, when this photo was made, Winslow was still a busy maintenance site for TWA, one of its interstate hubs. But TWA was already adding bigger planes with much longer range. The airline gave the airport to the City in 1941, making it Winslow Municipal Airport. Today, its name reflects its history: Winslow-Lindbergh Regional Airport (INW). Frontier Airlines replaced TWA at Winslow in 1950. SkyWest Airlines began service at Winslow in 1978. Though all airline service ceased in the 1980s, the hangar is still used for private planes. In addition, the forest service has a strategic slurry bomber base at INW. Winslow’s largest ethnic minority has long been a number of Hispanic families, followed in number by American Indians. Historic Hispanic neighborhoods were South Side, and Coopertown, located south of the tracks and just north of the airport.

At an elevation slightly over 4,800 feet (USGS 1986), Winslow is at the lowest elevation on the Colorado Plateau in Arizona. Consequently, it has long been subject to flooding from the nearby river. The greatest flood came September 17-18, 1923, when the maximum river flow ever recorded at Holbrook was nearly three times that of other floods. The river overtopped its banks again in 1927 and on August 3, 1959 caused $25,000 in damages at Winslow. The flood of August 1964 put water in many streets and even flooded the airport according to a government map. A levee protecting Bushman Acres on the northeast side broke in December 1978 and several neighborhoods were inundated. That flood hampered construction of the new I-40 bridge across the river.

Motel Town House, at 1914 W. Third Street, remained close enough to the west freeway exit to survive after I-40 bypassed Winslow to the north. And it’s still in business as a TraveLodge. But many other Mid-Century Modern design motels are a thing of the past. Post-Modern design motels are now clustered around North Park Exit. This postcard by Petley Studios of Phoenix shows the 56-room hostelry about 1960. Vacationers found Winslow, “The Meteor City,” a comfortable stay while visiting the impact crater 25 miles west or the Hopi pueblos 70 miles north. Recently, city leaders switched the catch phrase from “Meteor City” to “A city in motion,” referring to the transportation economy. The idea is to “move forward,” while still “cherishing the past.”

As in Ash Fork and Williams, Route 66 was split through downtown Winslow, with eastbound traffic on Second Street (right of center) and westbound on Third. It’s easy to trace the highway in this Agfachrome aerial photo looking east, made by Bob Petley in the 1960s. The roundhouse is out of view under the tail of Petley’s airplane. The tall, white water tank (at right) is in the middle of the turning wye where it leaves the rail yard. La Posada is located in the trees near the other water tank. Navajo Ice & Cold Storage Company plant is visible at lower right. The icing platform with icing machine lines a side track. Under a 1904 contract with the railroad, A. P. Maginnis (1848-1911) of Los Angeles built an ice plant to supply rail refrigerator cars and electricity to the town. Rail cars switched to mechanical refrigeration by the 1960s and the ice plant is no longer there. The Little Colorado River runs across the top of the postcard. Bushman Acres is at top left.

Winslow enjoyed the largest population in northern Arizona from 1900 until 1950. It was the most populous community in Navajo County until passed by Show Low in the last five years. But Winslow’s transportation based economy could no longer offer widespread prosperity by 1970, leaving a large population of low-income families with difficulty finding affordable housing. A BVD T-shirt factory at Hopi Industrial Park only lasted from 1969 to 1975. Workers there had a choice of daily driving 140 miles to and from the Hopi pueblos or paying for housing in Winslow. Interstate-40 bypassed the downtown in 1979 and shortly afterward the railroad began cutting back operations. There were more than 950 railroad employees in town in 1970 but only about 500 in 2004. Winslow got the state legislature to open a medium security prison in 1986 that would eventually employ 500 workers by 2004. In 1958, there had been two sawmills in Winslow cutting logs from the nearby mountains, the Nagel mill in operation since November 1942 and Gallagher mill operating since 1950. Duke City Lumber Co. acquired the Gallagher mill in 1958. Precision Pine purchased from Duke City in 1991 but closed the sawmill eight years later.

Winslow has faced few options. Despite access to transportation, attracting factories hasn’t panned out. From its founding, Winslow benefited from large nearby cattle ranches, recently supporting as many as 100 jobs. Shopping still brings American Indian families for the day. But like many rural Arizona towns, government is the biggest employer, largely at schools and the prison. With a need to once again promote tourism, on historic Route 66 this time, the La Posada Foundation dedicated Standing on the Corner Park 11 September 1999. The park is a tribute to the 1972 song “Take It Easy,” sung by the Eagles. They even keep a flatbed Ford parked at the curb. Just as Mormon farmers found, prosperity won’t come easy in today’s economy either, but maybe preserving history can keep Winslow in motion rather than left standing on a corner.

See:
Arizona Dept. of Commerce, Economy of Winslow, (2008)
William Patrick Armstrong, Fred Harvey, (2000)
Center for Desert Archaeology, Archaeology Southwest, Spring 2005, several articles on Mormon settlements at Winslow.
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Flood Insurance Study of Navajo County, (2003)
Virginia L. Grattan, Mary Colter, (1992)
Janice Griffith, “La Posada Catered to Route 66 & Santa Fe Crowd,” Route 66 Magazine, Winter 1993-1994
Ann Patterson & Mark Vinson, Landmark Buildings, (2004)
Charles S. Peterson, Take Up Your Mission, (1973)
Joe Sonderman, Route 66 in Arizona, (2010)
Michael Karl Witzel & Gyrel Young-Witzel, Legendary Route 66: A Journey Through Time Along America’s Mother Road, (2007)

U-V-X-Z: The Sad History
of Valentine
This blog has presented histories of Arizona Communities, one for each letter of the alphabet. But few places took names beginning with U, X and Z. “Union” was the first name chosen for the town of Eagar in Apache County, and Lehi, now absorbed by Mesa, was first called Utahville. Zenos was the first designation for Mesa, and there was a ranch community called Zeniff about 25 miles west of Snowflake. Arizona Place Names has no listings beginning with “X” and the USGS Geographic Names Information System gives no populated place beginning with “X.” There are, however, a number of small places, including Vail, Valle, Vekol and Vernon, beginning with “V.” And then, there was Valentine.

Place names are confusing in the Valentine area. When the Atlantic & Pacific railroad built across northern Arizona 1880-1883 it followed the Beale Road of 1857. Beale had traveled a dry wash through a canyon in order to descend the high Grand Wash Cliffs, one of the western stair steps off the Colorado Plateau. He named a spring in the canyon Truxton Spring, using a family name. When the A & P built through the same canyon, railroad workers saw Truxton Wash flowing through two canyons really, the upper, narrow Crozier Canyon and the lower, wider Truxton Canyon. There were three important springs in the area, Crozier Spring to the north, Truxton Spring in the Canyon and Cottonwood Spring to the south. The Cottonwood Cliffs are a southern extension of the Grand Wash Cliffs. In 1883, the A & P put in a large pump and tank fed by Truxton Spring to provide water for thirsty steam engines.

The Fred Harvey Company issued about 1915 this postcard of the Santa Fe Railway (successor to the A & P) passenger train called The California Limited in Crozier Canyon. The route offered a convenient grade but was subject to washouts when the normally dry stream would suddenly become a tremendous rushing torrent thirty feet deep. The tracks had to be relocated to slightly higher ground after a 1904 flood. The line was double-tracked through the canyon 1922-1923 and is still in use. This “Phostint” card by Detroit Publishing Company relates: “In this canyon is a U. S. Government Indian school, where the Hualapai and Havasupai Indians are made over into educated citizens.” The school was not located in the canyon depicted, but at least five miles downstream.

The Massachusetts Indian Association founded Hackberry Day School in 1894 on the railroad along Truxton Wash. Hualapai families had objected to sending their children far away for education, especially after two students died at Albuquerque. The day school soon moved four miles east of Hackberry, to the George Aitken (1844-1912) ranch on the railroad, where President McKinley established the Hualapai Indian School Reserve in 1898. There, the federal government established Truxton Canyon Indian School in 1901, in a small valley on the west side of the railroad. This is a picture of the brick dormitory as seen from the tracks before 1912. Sleeping porches for health and comfort were added in 1912 at each end of the building since there was no air conditioning in those days. Students lived at the school September to May, wrestling with disease, culture shock and homesickness. Spanish influenza took the lives of 22 children and adults between October 1918 and January 1919. The school closed in May 1937 and the dorm was demolished in 1960. Its bricks, manufactured on site with Indian labor, were recycled to build the Mohave County Museum of History and Arts in Kingman.

This structure housed the boarding school office and US Post Office. The Post Office was established in 1901 as Truxton. The name was changed in 1910 to Valentine, in honor of Commissioner of Indian Affairs Robert G. Valentine (1872-1916). When the school closed, the post office moved off reservation, two miles away, to the service stop on Route 66. The old post office building is one of the few survivors from school days. The boarded-up classroom is also still there. A short distance away the Truxton Canyon Agency of the US Bureau of Indian Affairs now maintains its offices. Non-Indian children used a nearby wood frame building called the Red Schoolhouse 1924-1969.

After finding the Hackberry Mine with a partner, Sam Crozier (1840-1901) acquired Crozier Ranch in 1880, established by others in 1872. C. J. Shank leased the property in 1923, built a swimming pool and created a little resort, mostly for well to do families from Kingman. Not long after the National Old Trails Road became US 66 Edward M. Carrow (1876-1945) and his wife Edith opened a tourist camp at the ranch. The facilities shown here were located along the highway about a half-mile east (the highway actually runs north at that point) of Crozier station on the railroad. This hand-colored Albertype view, looking south, shows the Carrows’ 7-V Ranch Resort (or 7-V Bar, see map below) about 1934. A cross-country bus has stopped at the café and filling station just off the dirt road that was Route 66 back then. Most of the resort and swimming pool, are in the trees (cabins at right). Truxton Canyon is in the distance. Carrow was a cattle rancher, in partnership with his brother Murray and then with I. M. George of Kingman for a time. The normally dry wash from Crozier Spring would sometimes flood, stopping traffic on the highway, despite the bridge visible at lower left. In 1936 the Arizona highway department relocated Route 66 to higher ground out of view at right and the Carrows’ business was ruined. They were compensated by the taxpayers (see 1941 court case “State v. Carrow” Vol. 57 Arizona Reports pp. 436ff.) and the site reportedly provided housing for railroad workers by the 1940s. Others purchased the Crozier cattle ranch and tried to keep it open for tourists until the 1990s.

Section points on the railroad west of Peach Springs in 1921 were named Cherokee, Truxton, Crozier, Valentine and Hackberry. Cherokee Point, on the mountains southwest of Peach Springs, probably gave its name to the section point on the railroad. Crozier was named for cattleman and state legislator Sam Crozier. The Hackberry Mine, named for a large hackberry tree, was located around 1875 in the hills south of the railroad. Truxton Spring gave its name to a point on the railroad, the Indian school, and later, a service stop on Route 66 six miles east of Valentine. In the 1880s, Truxton on the railroad may have been located at the point now called Crozier, but when the place name “Crozier” shows up on rail maps, “Truxton” is then applied to a siding at the eastern entrance to Crozier Canyon, where it remains today. In 1951, two men located a café and gas station on Route 66 between Crozier and Peach Springs, naming the stopping place Truxton because the siding was the closest point on the railroad. Named points on the railroad were placed where section maintenance gangs lived or stored tools, or where passenger stations, passing and parking sidings or cattle loading sidings were located.

The Automobile club of Southern California 1932 guidebook to Route 66 maps the area around Valentine. The location of the future Valentine service stop on the highway is identified as “Oasis,” watered by a nearby spring. Later there would be an “Oasis Store” at Valentine. The only Valentine on this map, however, is Valentine siding on the railroad. Notice how the dirt road that was US 66 crossed under the railroad at Crozier by following a side drainage under a bridge and then returned to the west side of the tracks via another underpass before the school. Route 66 was a slow and winding road back then, subject to closure during flood or heavy snowfall. By making deep grade cuts, the highway was straightened 1936-37 to avoid flooding and no longer crossed under the tracks. In 1937, the route through Truxton Canyon was the last section across Arizona to be paved. At the same time the government school closed and Oasis became the new location for the Valentine post office.

The service stop of Valentine was built on private land about a mile west on Route 66 (actually south at this point) from the Crozier depot. You can see the Santa Fe tracks at right and a Texaco station on the west side of the highway (view is to NNE). In addition to cabins for spending the night, for a time there was also a small store. It was called Oasis Store when operated by Mr. & Mrs. William Scaggs in the 1950s. The school was located almost two miles west of here on the highway.

At some point, the Valentine post office began re-mailing holiday cards for postal customers, applying a unique heart-shaped cancel to the stamp. Soon, bundles of valentines from all across the country would arrive at the remote post office, spreading fame for the Arizona place name. For a time, Valentine, Arizona became associated with happy thoughts. Traffic on Route 66 increased every year after World War II until the new Interstate-40 freeway bypassed 159 miles of Route 66 from Ash Fork to Kingman. The freeway bypass opened 22 September 1978, leading to the immediate decline of business along the old alignment of Route 66. US Highway 66 was decommissioned as a federal highway in 1985. In 1990, Congress began the process to designate Route 66 remnants part of a historical transportation corridor with US Park Service interpretation. In August of that same year, a man robbed the Valentine Post Office and murdered Postmaster Jacqueline Ann Grigg. The post office and Union 76 station closed, located at that time at least three miles west of the old Oasis site according to one source, close to Valentine siding on the railroad.

On to histories of Winslow and Yuma, and then attention will be given to some of those communities passed over in the alphabet, like Prescott, Safford, Scottsdale, etc.

See:
Will C. Barnes, Arizona Place Names, (1935, 1988)
Spencer Crump, Route 66, (1994)
David F. Myrick, The Santa Fe Route, (1998) Railroads of Arizona, Vol. 4
Sam Negri, “Crozier Canyon Ranch,” (1994) at Arizona Scenic Roads website.
Russell A. Olsen, The Complete Route 66 Lost & Found, (2008)
Jack Rittenhouse, A Guide Book to Highway 66, (1946)
A. F. Robinson, “Floods on the Santa Fe System,” The Railway Age, December 16, 1904, pp. 850-852
Joe Sonderman, Route 66 In Arizona, (2010)
Michael Wallis, Route 66: The Mother Road, (1990)

PART TWO
Tucson: The Old Pueblo
Got a Modern Makeover

The economy improved as Tucson entered the Twentieth Century, and despite the financial Panic of 1907, city leaders embarked upon a cleanup campaign that involved a new wave of building, further marginalizing minorities. Movement of the business district east on Congress led to removal in 1902 of The Wedge on west Congress, a narrow triangle of buildings formed as Maiden Lane angled toward Congress. Maiden Lane was the red-light district. Removal of the narrow street forced these unofficial small entrepreneurs to move to Gay Alley between Meyer and Convent, three blocks south of Congress. City ordinances in 1906 banned women and children from “wine rooms” in saloons and in 1907 forbid loitering of female singers in bars as a means of discouraging prostitution. In 1905, Tucson used regulation to shut down most gambling in town. A 1908 City ordinance closed all taverns at midnight, further discouraging gambling, which had already gone underground, where it survived for another forty years or more. The Territorial Legislature outlawed gambling in 1908 and then adopted prohibition of all alcohol in 1914, five years before the rest of the country.

Tucson had always been a multicultural community, with a majority of Spanish speakers until late in the 19th century. And while Hispanics at least enjoyed more opportunity and self-determination in Tucson than in just about any other Arizona town, darker-skin minorities were never allowed a level playing field when it came to getting an education, making a living or perpetuating traditional culture. Chinese first came to the Old Pueblo in the 1860s, joined by Asian railroad construction workers in the late 1870s. They managed to irrigate truck gardens on the west side of the Santa Cruz River, despite attempts to shut of their water supply. Fresh vegetables brought customers to their grocery stores in Hispanic neighborhoods. African-Americans came to Arizona in the 1880s as cowboys or with the military and many settled in Tucson neighborhoods on both the north and south sides.

Anglo community leaders would achieve some segregation of Hispanic students by building schools in Hispanic neighborhoods and through English language proficiency rules adopted midway through the twentieth century. Legislation in 1909 allowed communities to remove African-American pupils from classrooms. A state law passed in 1912 made African-American segregation mandatory. Tucson established a “colored school” in 1913, completing a building named Dunbar School in 1918. A segregated Junior High was added in 1948, but segregation ended in 1951 and the school was renamed John A. Spring Junior High School. In contrast, Jewish residents owned successful businesses and gained leadership positions in the community, though their achievement required assimilation. The first Jewish Mayor of Tucson, Charles Strauss (1840-1892), served 1883-1884. It was 1910 before the first synagogue in the southwest opened in Tucson, but it was called The Jewish Church and held services on Sunday.

Harry Herz of Phoenix published this view of Stone Ave looking south toward the intersection with Pennington about 1930. Tucson’s first two skyscrapers are prominent on Stone, both built in 1929 during a booming economy that would soon crash. At left (northeast corner of Stone & Pennington) is the façade of the 11-story Pioneer Hotel, while down the street at the intersection with Congress is 10-story Consolidated National Bank. The new bank replaced a building dating to 1900 shown in the view of Congress in “Tucson-Part One” posted on this blog. The Pioneer Hotel suffered a disastrous fire in 1970, described in the October 30, 2009 post on this blog called “Arizona Apocalypto.” On the southeast corner of Stone & Pennington is the Roy Place designed Montgomery Ward (later Walgreens) building, constructed in 1928 and recently restored to its former appearance as shown here. Steinfeld’s department store is on the southwest corner, with Steinfeld’s grocery on the northwest corner. Tucson Gas, Electric Light & Power Company (now TEP) occupied the Henry O. Jaastad designed building at right until 1967. Mule-drawn streetcars, in operation since 1897, were replaced by electric models in 1906. Buses replaced streetcars in 1930, then, antique streetcars returned to Fourth Ave. in 1993.

Lacking a large agricultural or industrial base, Tucson made the most of its government offices, University and scientific institutions. The University of Arizona, created in 1885, grew slowly. Classes didn’t begin until October 1891, and then for only 23 students. But its School of Mines and School of Agriculture would contribute greatly over the years. A number of important scientific institutions made their homes around Tucson. The Carnegie Institution’s Desert Botanical Laboratory located behind Sentinel Peak on Tumamoc Hill in 1903. The same year, the US Forest Service opened the Santa Rita Experimental Range in partnership with the U. of A. on four sections of land in the desert southeast of town. The US Coast and Geodetic Survey established a Magnetic Observatory (at Udall Park) in 1909. Steward Observatory for astronomers was dedicated at U. of A. 23 April 1923 through the efforts of Dr. A. E. Douglass (1867-1962), who also established a groundbreaking tree-ring laboratory in 1936. The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum opened in 1952 in the saguaro forest west of Tucson.

Here again is the same block on West Congress Street depicted in 1905 and 1906 in Part One of the Tucson history on this blog, only this time looking east. The artificially colored photo is cropped from a postcard published in 1942 by Curt Teich company. The intersection in the foreground is with Church Street. Martin Drug (at right) shares the building with the White House Dept. Store. Fox Theatre was added to the block in 1929-1930, closed in 1974, but restored 2000-2005. The old Ivancovich building farther east on Congress still has its onion dome, but the grocery has closed. Consolidated National Bank is the tall building on the SE corner of Stone. Way down the street, to the east in the sunrise glow (or artist’s imagination), is the neon sign on top of Hotel Congress (1919).

Tucson’s desert climate cured many tuberculosis patients who could choose from a number of local sanitariums, including St. Mary’s, Whitwell Hospital (1906, now Castle Apts.) and Desert Sanitarium (1907,now Tucson Medical Center). The SP railroad offered employees a tuberculosis hospital in Tucson from 1931-1974. By 1935 there were at least twenty hospitals, clinics and sanitariums in Tucson. Business leaders also promoted the climate and cowboy culture to vacationers. The Tucson Sunshine Climate Club was established in 1922 to promote tourism. The Arizona Polo Association sponsored its first annual Fiesta de los Vaqueros parade and rodeo February 21, 1925. During the next decade the area around Tucson could offer more guest ranches than anywhere else in the state.

Tucson was a welcome stop for many transcontinental travelers. A railroad line from Tucson to Nogales was added in 1909 and the El Paso & Southwestern Railway provided competition for the Southern Pacific “Sunset Route” by connecting Tucson with Texas in 1912. A cross country highway routed through Tucson went by a number of names: The Old Spanish Trail, Bankhead Highway, Dixie Overland Highway and Lee Highway, until it was finally designated US Highway 80 in 1926. The first airplane arrived in Tucson by rail 17 February 1910, to be assembled and thrill crowds at the Elysian Grove Amusement Park. City government opened the first municipal airport in the nation 20 November 1919. A larger facility was soon needed and Davis-Monthan Field was dedicated November 1, 1925, and then dedicated again 23 September 1927 when Charles Lindberg flew in for the day. Standard Airlines began scheduled service in 1928 and its successor, American Airlines, would follow the “The Sunshine Airway” in 1930. Early on, Davis-Monthan became a combination civil and military airport and by 1941 civil aviation had to go looking for a new location. In 1940, Gilpin Air Lines built an airport on the northwest side, which lasted until 1978 as Freeway Airport. With excellent flying weather in winter, Tucson became an important World War Two aviation training area when Ryan Field was added in 1942 along with a number of auxiliary fields. The nonprofit Tucson Airport Authority, created in 1948, opened a new commercial facility where it remains today.

Emilio Carillo (1841-1908) operated the large Rancho Buena Vista from 1868-1908 near Tanque Verde, a “green pool” fed by an artesian spring near the base of the Rincon Mountains. Carillo later renamed the ranch La Cebadilla after the wild barley along Tanque Verde Creek. Jim Converse acquired the property, changing the name to Tanque Verde Ranch, and continued cattle operations while also providing a dude ranch experience for guests from 1928 until 1955. In 1957 Brownie Cote (1900-1991) from Minnesota bought the ranch at auction and expanded the recreational opportunities as shown on this postcard from around 1959. Cote had already opened Desert Willow Ranch in 1944 but he let it go in 1968. The 23 acres became a substance abuse facility 1983-1995 and then burned in 2005. Tanque Verde Ranch is still operated as a resort by the Cote family.

US Highway 80 was advertised as “The Broadway of America,” where the motorist could cruise “All-year-high-gear” without the snow, steep grades and tight curves found on Route 66. Long distance automobile vacations grew steadily in popularity beginning in the 1920s when tourists pitched a tent in an Auto Camp. Auto Courts and Motor Hotels became a cheaper alternative to downtown multi-story hotels in the 1930s and they seemed to be everywhere in Arizona. Travel trailers became popular at the same time and were essential during the post-World War Two housing shortage. B & B Trailer Court, pictured here about 1947, was located at the south entrance to Tucson, near Ajo Way. The view is toward the northeast, with the El Conquistador Hotel (1928) on Broadway, visible about three miles away in the distance. Western Ways of Tucson issued the postcard.

Bokes Downtown, shown here about 1948, was located a few blocks northeast of the railroad depot. Bokes larger Northside Drive-In served their famous root beer and Bokes Twinburger at 2408 N. Stone, just north of Grant Road. The billboard is crowing about the “marvelous motorless” Servel gas refrigerator, very handy on remote ranches beyond electric lines. Bokes was one of a number of locally owned fast food joints that flourished before the national franchises took over in the 1960s and 70s.

Speedway Boulevard on the north side of town about 1954 illustrates the kind of strip development that led Jack Kerouac in 1957 to describe Tucson as “very Californian.” The strait and wide thoroughfare, probably named after the East River Speedway in Manhattan, hosted the city’s first auto race in 1911. Motorists used to enter Tucson from the north on the Casa Grande Highway (State 84) or Oracle Road (US 80/89), both of which converged at a traffic circle at Blacklidge Drive. Oracle became lined with more than a hundred motels by the 1950s. At Drachman Street, and another traffic circle, thru traffic went east four blocks to Stone, which sent cars and trucks through the downtown. Oracle Road between the two traffic circles had become Arizona’s first divided highway in 1937. By the time this color slide was made, Speedway, four blocks south of Drachman, had become an alternate business district, lined with strip malls, gasoline stations (Blakely’s discount gas at left) and cafes. But plans for a freeway to bypass all the business districts were underway by 1948. Clearing land for freeway construction to follow the Santa Cruz River began as early as 1951 and four lanes of controlled access highway were in use by 1957. As a marketing move, in 1962 Casa Grande Highway and the divided portion of Oracle were renamed Miracle Mile, probably after the street in west Los Angeles. But rezoning to allow commercial development along the freeway went ahead despite the opposition of business owners on Miracle Mile and Speedway and in the old downtown.

Dobson Motel, built for Elmer and Angeline Dobson in 1942 at 2425 North Oracle Road, was sold in 1947 and renamed the DeAnza in 1951. Sold again in 1957, it became Tucson Holiday Motel. This view of the motel and pool appears to date to 1957 or 1958. Eldridge and Claire Rigg bought an interest in the Holiday in 1961, but business would soon decline due to the freeway bypass. By 1974 the motel had been sold three more times, becoming the No-Tel in 1975. Motel chains and hotel resorts have pretty much replaced mom and pop motor courts. And Miracle Mile is now named North Oracle Road once again.

The US economy in the fifties was great! Tucson experienced a building boom from 1955 to 1958, and then a short recession followed by another building boom 1962-1969. Catalina High School (1955-1956) and Rincon High (1957) were built, along with a number of modern style storefronts and high-rise buildings along Stone Ave. In 1956 and 1957 Jacome’s and J. C. Penney got new stores adjoining each other, in the shadow of new buildings for Pima Savings, Southern Arizona Bank & Trust and Arizona Land Title. Steinfeld’s façade was remodeled in 1957 while Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph completed a million dollar addition in 1958.

Tucson International Airport opened at its present location in 1948. This view from the 1960s, looks southeast with Los Reales Road heading across the desert to meet Highway 80. Tucson Boulevard, at left, is the airport entrance. The terminal is at right with the Tucson Airport Authority RONtel, “remain over night” motel, to the left of the control tower. The 119-foot control tower opened in October 1958 and the new terminal building in 1963. American Airlines was the original carrier. Arizona Airways was flying to Tucson by 1947. Frontier Airlines added service from Tucson in 1950 and TWA came in 1956, Continental in 1961. When Aeronaves de Mexico inaugurated service in 1961, the airport became Tucson International.

El Con Shopping Center opened in 1960, next to the El Conquistador Hotel (at left), which was demolished in 1967. The profit motive, land values, zoning and changes in employment have driven American cities to evolve. Tucson subdivisions sprawled east over the plain and stores followed. Levy’s department store, formerly on Stone just north of Congress, was the original anchor at El Con. Steinfeld’s, which used to be next to Levy’s on Stone, moved to El Con in 1967. J. C. Penney left the downtown for El Con in 1971. Following the nationwide trend, it became an enclosed mall shortly after. But shopping environments changed again as “big box” discount chains replaced anchor department stores in malls and the older enclosed part of El Con is now largely vacant. The divided street at lower right is East Broadway.

This is the site of the Spanish presidio almost two hundred years later. In 1929, a new court house with an orange tile roof and greenish dome replaced the 1883 Victorian structure built where the southeast corner of the presidio wall once kept out Apache raiders. La Plaza de las Armas has become a small park on the west side of the building. West of the park is City Hall (1917). Across the street from the courthouse to the north, where the Territorial government met in 1874 in an adobe called Governor’s Corner, an 11-story office tower for Phoenix Title & Trust rose in 1962 (now the Transamerica Building). The intersection at bottom is Church and Alameda, with Pennington running across the postcard from middle left to the curve at upper right and Congress in upper left under the title. The southeast corner of the presidio wall was located at the corner of the courthouse addition (1955) on Pennington Street. The block with the parking garage (lower left) was cleared to build Joel D. Valdez Main Library (1990). Petley Studios of Phoenix issued this postcard about 1964.

Naurice Koonce helped Ray Manley take this aerial photo in 1958, looking toward the Santa Catalina Mountains with the red tile roofs of the University of Arizona at upper right. Green grass of Tucson High School’s campus is below the university. The first new high-rise building since the twin towers of 1929 is at left, above the courthouse. The Arizona Land Title Building (now County/City Public Works Center), completed at nine floors in 1957, was the tallest of several mid-century modern structures built downtown beginning in the economic boom year of 1955. The bottom third of the photo is filled with the Barrio Historico (aka Barrio Libre) neighborhood, from left to right, the intersection of Main and Broadway (above lower left corner), then Meyer Street, a half circle of grass that is left of La Placita, Greyhound depot where San Agustín Church used to be, and Marist College (1915) at right.

Urban renewal began sweeping the nation in the 1960s, promising a better life through wholesale destruction of historic downtowns. Minimalist mid-century modern cityscapes designed to appeal to upwardly mobile corporate professionals would “abate” slums and revitalize urban economies. Stores downtown were struggling to compete with new shopping centers and malls in outlying subdivisions. Hotels couldn’t outdraw chain motels along the freeway. And nowhere in Arizona did this urban design movement have such impact as it did in Tucson. March 1, 1966, local voters approved the first major urban renewal scheme in Arizona, Pueblo Center Redevelopment Project. Bulldozers attacked the old barrio in 1967, demolishing 319 homes, from which more than a thousand lower-income, mostly Hispanic residents had been forcibly evicted. Destruction of historic properties, which had really begun in the 1950s in the commercial district, would continue Protests against abatement of Barrio Libre were ineffective until a freeway extension through the area proposed in 1971 was stopped.

Fred Wehrman took this photo of downtown looking northeast late in 1970 or early 1971. Compare it with the 1958 view above. The north half of the barrio has been cleared, along with west Congress Street. Tucson Community Center (foreground) will open soon. The intersection of Simpson and Main is in lower right corner. Main Street has morphed into Granada Avenue running north in curves to meet Alameda at far left edge of photo. Following Alameda east toward the railroad (which runs across top), the high-rise buildings are Tucson City Hall (1966) on south side of street, followed on the north side of the street by Phoenix Title (1962), Arizona Land Title (1957) and Mountain States Telephone (now Alameda Plaza City Courts building). In front of Alameda Plaza, on Stone, (left to right) are the 1929 Pioneer Hotel, Tucson Federal Savings Tower (1965), the tallest building in Tucson at the time, and 1929 Valley Bank (Congress & Stone). The Community Center buildings completed by 1971 are (left to right) the Music Hall, Leo Rich Theater and Tucson Convention Center Arena. Left of Community Center is the Southern Pacific railroad hospital (1930). On the north side of Congress, where it begins joining Broadway, are the first two buildings of the county government complex, the Health and Welfare Building (1968) at left and Administration Building at right. The Superior Court building would be added in 1974. In the upper right corner is the Martin Luther King, Jr. Apartments (1969, rebuilt 2008 as One North Fifth), SP depot (1907), Hotel Congress (1919) and Rialto Theatre (1919).

Many Tucson residents liked the modern face of downtown created by urban renewal. Spectacular government buildings replaced worn-out, unsightly commercial storefronts and adobe cubicles devoid of character. Shining glass, tile and metal towers shouted out that Tucson is growing up and the sky is the limit. But streets became eerily calm and sidewalks almost empty as crowds went shopping and playing to the north and east. While more urban renewal remains on its wish list, in recent years, Tucson has also tried to interest tourists in its heritage by restoring and reconfiguring historic structures. “There is a sense of pride that only a knowledge of the past can bestow. This knowledge, of place and people, is an important part of both our individual and community identity. An appreciation of the contributions of those who came before gives us a sense of belonging and ownership.” (“Mexican Tucson: Remembering Barrio Libre” by Lydia Otero, pp. 4-5, The Arizona Report, Univ. of Ariz., Mexican American Studies & Research Center, Spring 2000)

See:
Demion Clinco, et al., Historic Miracle Mile. . ., (2009)
Roy P. Drachman, Just Memories, (1979)
Juan Gomez-Novy & Stefanes Polyzoides, “A tale of two cities: the failed urban renewal of downtown Tucson in the twentieth century,” Journal of the Southwest, Spring-Summer 2003
Michelle B. Graye, Greetings from Tucson. A Postcard History of the Old Pueblo., (2004)
Michael F. Logan, Desert Cities: the environmental history of Phoenix and Tucson, (2006)
James H. McClintock, Arizona. . . Vol. 2, (1916)
Lydia R. Otero, La Calle: Spatial Conflicts and Urban Renewal in a Southwestern City, (2010)
C. L. Sonnichsen, Tucson, The Life and Times of an American City, (1982)
Tucson Chamber of Commerce, Rodeo, souvenir program 1961
Tucson Sunshine Climate Club, Tucson, [1958]

PART ONE
Tucson: Remote Outpost
of Western Civilization

To police Piman speakers after their rebellion and protect their villages in the northern Santa Cruz valley from Apache raids, in 1775 the Spanish government established a presidio near the village of Tucson, a few miles north of the village of Bac, and moved its garrison there from Tubac. Construction began on adobe walls 750 feet square enclosing 10 acres of military buildings and civilian homes, essentially a walled town on the east side of the river. An ancient indigenous village inhabited for perhaps 5,000 years was located on the west side of the Santa Cruz River at the foot of a hill. Padre Kino had visited it, probably by 1692, and named the place San Cosme del Tucson. His associate, Padre Agustín de Campos named another village on the east side of the river after himself, San Agustín del Oiaur, substituting the Piman word for fields, oidac. For more than 2,000 years the inhabitants along the Santa Cruz had diverted the clear, perennial stream to irrigate fields. The Spanish would name their walled community after the Piman name of the village across the river, commonly spelled “Tucson” in Spanish and meaning something like “at the base of a dark hill.” St. Augustine would be patron. Still later, Americans would call the hill Sentinel Peak, because it had been used as a lookout for approaching Apaches.

The presidio walls were finished by 1782 and a large adobe “convento” was completed around 1810 next to a mission chapel in the middle of productive fields on the west side of the river. The mission was called San Cosme del Tucson, the mission chapel Nuestro Senor de Esquipulo and the presidio was named San Agustín del Tucson. Most of the Europeans lived within the walls where there was another chapel dedicated to St. Augustine. The Santa Cruz provided harvests while the garrison provided protection. After fighting off fierce Apache attacks a period of peacefulness ensued from 1787 until the late 1820s. The population immediately around Tucson was about 1,000 during Spanish governance, more than half being Pima, Papago, Sobaipuris and Apache mansos (peaceful Apaches). With peace, the community could finally spread outside the presidio walls. Some called it San Agustín and the mission Tucson, but the latter name soon came to designate the whole community.

Tucson was the northern-most outpost of European civilization and the only permanent town between El Paso and San Diego. When Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1821, the population of the remote pueblo had shrunk to around 400. But the new government could afford little funding for its isolated outpost. As a result, Tucson failed to grow, while the American union was expanding westward at a rapid rate. Texas declared itself independent of Mexico in 1836 and war broke out between Mexico and the US in 1846. That year the Mormon Battalion, US Army volunteers, marched into Tucson and raised the stars and stripes. US Dragoons stopped by in 1848, the year a peace treaty was signed. Following the war, the US gained the northern Mexican territories down to the Gila River, while Tucson remained in Mexico. But in 1853, the US paid $10 million for the Gadsden Purchase, adding Tucson and the surrounding silver mining region to the Territory of New Mexico.

When John Ross Browne (1821-1875) visited Tucson in 1864, he ridiculed the “city of mud-boxes, dingy and dilapidated, cracked and baked into a composite of dust and filth; littered about with broken corrals, sheds, bake-ovens, carcasses of dead animals, and broken pottery; barren of verdure, parched, naked, and grimly desolate in the glare of a southern sun.” (A Tour Through Arizona, p.131) Browne was an artist and travel writer. His sketches were copied by wood engravers to illustrate articles in Harper’s Monthly and then a book issued in 1869. His bird’s-eye-view of the city of mud, shown here, includes the verdant fields on the west side of the river. The presidio walls are already mostly gone and the US flag dominates Plaza de las Armas. The arch to the right of the plaza may represent the beginnings of San Agustín Church. Construction of the church had begun just before Browne’s visit.

Following Congressional ratification of the Gadsden Treaty, US troops took possession of Tucson in 1856. A few American entrepreneurs were already resident there, but that year Solomon Warner (1811-1899) opened the first store supplied from California instead of Mexico. Mail coaches connected Tucson with California and the county seat in Mesilla, New Mexico in 1857. But mining and commerce were still hindered by Apache raids and the great distances to supply points. The 400 odd residents of Tucson, virtually the only town in the western half of New Mexico Territory, were unhappy with their representation at the territorial capital so far away in Santa Fe.

A campaign to split the Territory began in earnest but encountered roadblocks in Washington. When southern states seceded from the union, precipitating the Civil War, federal troops abandoned western New Mexico leaving it for the Apaches. Powers in Tucson had already declared in April 1860 the southern half of New Mexico Territory the provisional Territory of Arizona. August 1, 1861, Confederate troops took possession of the Territory of Arizona and President Jefferson Davis issued a proclamation 14 February 1862 admitting Arizona into the Confederacy. But Confederate troops had to leave Tucson as federal troops returned in the spring. Congress finally acted 24 February 1863 to create the Territory of Arizona, but the line dividing New Mexico would run north and south, with the new territorial capital at Prescott, firmly in control of northerners. Tucson would be stigmatized as a hotbed of southern sympathizers. When Tucson gained the capital of the territory in 1867, it would lose it again in ten years and Phoenix would become a compromise location. Tucson was given the Territorial land grant university instead of the capital, much to its chagrin.

When California photographer Carleton Watkins lugged a bulky view camera up Sentinel Peak in 1880 Tucson had grown since J. Ross Browne’s visit, but still presented a modest appearance from a distance. The Santa Cruz River is running at the lowest point, across the middle of the photo, with the tree lined acequia (irrigation ditch) closer to town. The flow downstream is right to left, though the camera tilt suggests otherwise. The Convento ruin is in the middle of the fields in the foreground, just off Mission Road. A mission chapel and convent had been constructed 1800-1810. The mission was abandoned in the 1840s. The chapel collapsed sometime after 1862 but the ruins of the two-story convent survived into the twentieth century. What little remained of the eroded adobe walls were ground up to make bricks and then the foundations were bulldozed in the 1950s to become a landfill. A recent effort to develop the site failed to pinpoint the exact location of the convent, but plans still call for a reconstruction.

This photo published in 1903 shows the Santa Cruz River in flood. It used to run year-round before most of the flow was diverted long ago and the water table sank rather recently. But periodically it would become a raging torrent. Destructive floods came in 1891, 1905, 1915, 1945, 1965, 1976, 1983 and every year 1990-1994. Fortunately, the city core was built on high enough ground to avoid major inundation. However, despite the optimistic 1903 caption, there was never enough water at Tucson for agriculture on a scale comparable with the Salt River Valley. Since 1940, groundwater withdrawal has exceeded recharge. The Central Arizona Project canal brought Colorado River water to Tucson in 1992 but hasn’t been able to keep up with urban demand. (Photo from Sunset magazine, April 1903)

After the war, J. Ross Browne not only criticized Tucson urban design, but also its social structure. He saw lawlessness as an impediment to the progress of capital. In truth, the smuggling of goods into and out of Sonora without paying customs duties provided many jobs in Arizona. And the established of a Barrio Libre neighborhood as a sort of free-trade zone beyond strict law enforcement stimulated local commerce. Tucson experienced a boom beginning in 1866 as several new Anglo mercantile businesses opened. Anglo transplants quickly gained control of the business community, which had been dominated by small Hispanic businesses.

Community leaders began building American social structures. The first public school for boys opened in January 1868, with college-educated saloon owner Augustus Brichta (1821-1910) as teacher. It closed after six months due to lack of funding then reopened 4 March 1872 with Swiss immigrant John Spring (1845-1924) as teacher. The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet trekked across the desert from San Diego in 1870 and opened Sisters Convent and Academy for Females. Josephine Brawley Hughes (1839-1926) opened a public school for girls February 8, 1873.

Tucson was always a city of three plazas. The cramped confines of the presidio nevertheless allowed a Plaza Militar and Plaza del las Armas for military drills, while San Agustín chapel faced La Plaza de Iglesia. After the village expanded and the walls began coming down, La Plaza Militar and La Plaza de las Armas were retained, while San Augustín Church faced La Plaza de la Mesilla. Anglos built the first protestant church and then a courthouse in La Plaza de las Armas and it soon became Court Square (now Presidio Park). La Plaza Militar became filled with homes but the US Army created another Military Plaza on the east side of town. La Plaza de la Mesilla, also known as Placita de San Augustine, survived as Church Plaza until the church was torn down in 1936 and the space became a parking lot, except for a small La Placita patch of grass that has survived.

This photo of Congress Street in 1887 by Campbell Studio, looking west toward the tree-lined acequia, shows a narrow but busy business artery with a group of O’odham women carrying their distinctive burden baskets. Anglo businessmen chose Congress and Stone as principle commercial streets and adopted a policy of widening Congress that encouraged demolition of adobes and replacement with brick buildings set further back. W. E. Rowland, watchmaker and jeweler is at lower left corner of the photo, followed westward by a barbershop, the US Bakery, and Palace Cigar Store advertised above the Congress Hall Saloon. The Saloon gave its name to the street, which had been called in Spanish Calle de la India Alegria (Happy Indian Street). This is the short block between Meyer and Church Plaza, with the intersection of Congress and Meyer in the middle of the scene. Pima County Sheriff Eugene Shaw resigned in 1887 due to ill health and died the same year. His brother was appointed to the office and then elected sheriff in 1888. Douglas Snyder, despite his banner across Congress, was apparently an unsuccessful candidate. (Arizona Historical Society photo 2911)

Meyer Street is pictured about 1905, lined by the type of Sonoran architecture that Anglos found unappealing. There are no setbacks between building facades and sidewalks and between sidewalks and narrow streets. Canales drain each flat dirt roof onto the sidewalk. There are cool, inner-court living spaces instead of showy front yards. Porches are out of sight, surrounding the inner court instead of facing the street. Design is defensive, instead of demonstrative. Anglos went to work to change the appearance of Tucson, at first adopting Victorian architectural styles popular in eastern states. Mission revival and California bungalow styles then became fashionable for a time. Tourism seemed to demand old west buildings by the 1920s, then mid-century modern styles were adopted to show how Tucson had progressed beyond its past. The Sonoran style has recently regained respect. This view of South Meyer Street appears to be looking north toward the intersection with Cushing Street (where the red roofs are). At that time Cushing did not extend across Meyer to meet Main Street. In addition, there was a slight bend to the east in Meyer one block north of Cushing. R. Rasmessen issued the postcard about 1907 or 1908. Many early Tucson scenes like this one were published by Rudolph Rasmessen (1875-1941) of Bauman & Rasmessen curio store on Congress Street.

This view of Hotel Hall at 33 W. Broadway was issued by Detroit Publishing Company in 1906. By then, 20 years of city water supply had allowed planting of trees and some adobe buildings had been fitted with pitched roofs and porches. Anna B. Hall purchased and renovated the building for Hotel Hall in 1894. Mrs. C. C. Hawley acquired the hotel some time before 1912. The view is to the west and Stone Avenue crosses in the foreground. Grace Episcopal Church (1893) is just out of view at left (you can see its shadow). The church moved in 1914 and the building was torn down in 1955. The white adobe building down the street with a purple “X” marking it is Sisters Convent and Academy, opened in 1870 by Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, with the trees of Church Plaza beyond. The street ends at the Palace Hotel on Meyer, demolished in1923. The only building on this block to survive is the Charles O. Brown house, across the street from Hotel Hall and believed to have been built in the 1840s. Brown (1829-1908) was owner of the Congress Hall Saloon.

Despite a nation-wide recession, Tucson formed a village government and held its first municipal election in 1873. As the largest town in Arizona it was the supply center for all of southern and eastern Arizona, noted Richard J. Hinton in 1877, with eight or nine merchants pulling in $1.2 million in business on average each year. (Handbook to Arizona, p.271) In 1877, Tucson incorporated as a city. The first two banks opened in 1879. Banking had previously been offered by mercantile establishments. March 10, 1880, Southern Pacific Railroad tracks were built into Tucson from the west coast, continuing to El Paso the following year.

The coming of the railroad changed Tucson dramatically. Shipping costs fell, travelers came in large numbers and Anglos increased their control over government and the economy. They wanted the Old Pueblo to appear a modern city of prosperity and rule of law. “The future building material for Tucson will be brick and stone. The adobe must go, likewise the mud roof. They belong in the past and with the past they must remain.” (Arizona Daily Star, 20 Aug. 1892, quoted in p. 2, Archaeology In Tucson newsletter of Center for Desert Archaeology, Summer, 1996) Land sales boomed, part of the motivation for changing the appearance of the town, but then collapsed. Still, the makeover of the “ancient and honorable pueblo” would continue for another hundred years.

Under Spanish domination, Tucson had developed along the royal road, El Camino Real, running north and south through the Santa Cruz valley. It was really the only regular “street” in town until after 1866. Even when Anglo businessmen first came, their commercial buildings were along this road, renamed Main Street. After the railroad arrived Anglo businessmen developed Congress, and Stone, probably the widest street in town, and set about widening west Congress. It’s surprising to consider how much Tucson changed during a slow economy, even as the population dropped by almost one-third between 1880 and 1890.

Tucson Bishop Salpointe established St. Mary’s Hospital, dedicated 24 April 1880, and asked the Sisters of St. Joseph to staff it. Two years later he sold the hospital to the sisters for $20,000. The seven Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, members of a society extended from France to Carondelet, Missouri in 1836, journeyed from St. Louis to San Francisco to San Diego and then across the deserts in a wagon to a grand welcome in Tucson May 26, 1870. A two-story convent and chapel building (at left) was added to the hospital (in center) in 1893. The circular tuberculosis Sanitorium (right) was added in 1900. This view of the grounds probably dates to 1908, after electricity and a central heating plant had been installed. The location is on the west side of the river, with Tumamoc Hill behind at left. For decades the Southern Pacific Railroad contracted with St. Mary’s until it built its own hospital in 1930. The sisters added St. Joseph’s Hospital on the east side of town in 1961 and the round Sanitorium shown here was demolished in 1965.

The Sisters of St. Joseph cared for orphans at their old convent across the street from St. Mary’s Hospital. Then, their La Comisaria School, a parochial school for girls housed in a former military commissary, became an orphan asylum, probably in 1905 when St. Joseph’s Orphans Home was established. The California mission style building shown on this postcard was likely constructed in 1922. It was demolished January 31, 1958. In addition to the first girl’s school next to San Agustín Church (in the Hotel Hall picture above), the sisters also established an Indian school at San Xavier in 1873 and a secondary school, St. Joseph’s Academy, in 1885.

Tucson merchant Albert Steinfeld (1854-1935) purchased this building on the corner of Main and Franklin for use as his home in 1908 (the same year this postcard was mailed). The Henry Trost (1860-1933) design had been built in 1899 for the Owls Club, where Steinfeld was a member. The building is still there. The California mission style surpassed Victorian designs in popularity during the opening decades of the twentieth century, especially for public buildings, and many fine examples have survived across Tucson.

By 1902, the appearance of Tucson had been transformed by renaming and realigning streets and adding a European business district and Victorian style neighborhoods surrounding the old Mexican pueblo on the north and east. Connell’s 1901 city directory explained the contrast. “Many of the streets are narrow and tortuous, being walled in by square adobe houses, while others are wide and beautiful, and bordered on both sides by costly dwellings.
“For many years Tucson was a dull, dead Mexican town, but today it is growing and advancing with wonderful strides.”

Congress Street is shown here about 1905, looking east toward the intersection with Stone Avenue. On the southeast corner of the intersection is Consolidated National Bank (1900) with Corinthian columns framing the corner entrance. The building on the other side of the street, in the middle of the block, with a Moorish onion dome on top, is J. Ivancovich & Co, grocery. John Ivancovich (1865-1944) ran the business until 1929. The building on the right with the “Photo Studio” sign is the Jacobs Block.  The photo studio was owned by Henry Buehman (1851-1912). The red brick building at far right houses George Martin Drug Store.

This detail from a postcard based on a 1906 photo shows the center of the Anglo business district, looking southeast, viewed from the Court House (1883) cupola. The street shown above is in the middle of this birds-eye-view. Windsor Hotel & bar (bottom right corner) is on the northwest corner of Congress & Church Streets. On the southeast corner is the red brick Martin Drug Store, with the blue, sloped roof of Grace Episcopal Church on Stone Avenue and the blue flat roof of Hotel Hall just visible behind. In the distance at top left is the white Santa Rita Hotel (1904), followed left to right by red Safford School (1884) and Carnegie Library (1901), with St. Joseph’s Academy (1886) in upper right corner. Martin Drug is now the site of Norwest Tower (1986), renamed in 2000 UniSource Energy Tower. Safford School is still there, but in a mission style building built in 1918. St. Joseph’s Academy building, a former Catholic secondary school, was purchased in 2004 by an investment firm and remodeled to become Academy Lofts apartments (460 S. 6th Ave.).

Forced to reoccupy Tucson after abandoning it, Union troops set up camp in the desert just southeast of downtown 20 May 1862, calling the place Camp Tucson. They went into town on Camp Street, later renamed Broadway. The camp was abandoned 15 September 1864 and then reoccupied as Camp Lowell 29 August 1866. The occupied area expanded to 367 acres. When Camp Lowell moved seven miles northeast of town on Rillito Creek 31 March 1873, the old campsite was abandoned but came to be called Military Plaza. In December 1899 city government seized the area to sell it to developers. The City won a long court battle with businessmen led by druggist George Martin, Sr. (1832-1907) and grocer Gustav A. Hoff (1852-1930) who wanted the Plaza to remain public, a city park. But only two of the six blocks, as shown in this postcard from about 1910, were retained by the City. When Carnegie Library (red dome behind flagpole) was completed in 1901 the Plaza was renamed Washington Park, then Armory Park after a National Guard Armory was built there in 1914 (located on the grassy area at lower right). This view is from the top of old Safford School, looking northwest. In the distance behind the library (left to right) can be seen St. Augustine Cathedral (1896), the white Old Pueblo Club (1907), the Court House cupola and the white Santa Rita Hotel. A 1941 fire destroyed the library rotunda in back but the rest of the building survived and is now the Tucson Children’s Museum. The brown building with black roof on the north side of the square (at right) is the Willard Hotel, a 1902-1904 remodel of the Casey Hotel. After serving as the Pueblo Hotel 1944-1984 and then sitting vacant for many years it was restored 1991-1993 and now houses law offices. The armory was demolished in 1960, replaced by the present Armory Park Center.

See:

G. W. Barter, Directory of the City of Tucson. . ., (1881)
Charles T. Connell, City of Tucson General and Business Directory 1901
Bernice Cosulich, Tucson, (1953)
Jane Eppinga, Tucson, (2000)
Rochester Ford, Tucson, Arizona, [1902]
A. M. Gustafson, John Spring’s Arizona, (1966)
Allan B. Jaynes, Tucson, Arizona’s Metropolis, [1906]
Alex Jay Kimmelman, “Strictly White and Always Sober. Tucson’s Pioneer Hotels: A Photo Essay.” Journal of Arizona History, Spring 1994, pp. 63-80
T. R. Sorin, Handbook of Tucson and Surroundings, (1880)
Southwestern Mission Research Center, Tucson. A Short History., (1986)
Ike Speelman, Historic Photos of Tucson, (2007)
University of Arizona, Barrio Historico Tucson, [1972]
Anne I Woosley & Arizona Historical Society, Early Tucson, (2008)