Phoenix 101: History

(Photo by Jacob Roddy)

All my young life, Wickenburg was the most enchanting desert town closest to Phoenix. Even into the 2000s, it retained its main street charm.

Prospector Henry Wickenburg, an Austrian native, was the namesake of the town along the Hassayampa River. He discovered gold nearby in 1863. It became the famous Vulture Mine, based on claims Wickenburg sold to Behtchuel Phelps of New York. "The Comstock of Arizona" and "largest and richest gold mine" in the territory yielded about $2.5 million before it played out. Wickenburg himself scraped a living farming before committing suicide in 1905.

The young town was also contested by the Yavapai, who didn't appreciate the Anglo and Mexican settlers taking their land. In the Civil War, federal troops were withdrawn and the Yavapai attacked. Confederate cavalry responded but soon withdrew. Hundreds were killed on both sides before an uneasy peace settled.

Wickenburg the town played a major role in the rise of Phoenix. Jack Swilling, who also made some inportant gold finds there, saw an even richer possibility in the prehistoric Hohokam canals of the Salt River Valley. In the late 1860s, Swilling dragooned a crew of workers from Wickenburg to help excavate one, which became today's Grand Canal, and build Swilling's Ditch.

Later, Wickenburg became a stop on the Santa Fe Railway between the northern Arizona mainline and Phoenix; another line was built west to connect more directly with California. Until 1968, Wickenburg had daily passenger train service (and the depot still stands). The town was also an important stop on U.S. Highway 60 between Phoenix — on Grand Avenue — and Los Angeles.

Even as Phoenix grew into a soulless blob and once-magical places such as Prescott were subsumed by sprawl, Wickenburg retained its uniqueness with local businesses, an intact and walkable central business district and even a working movie theater. Celerity rehab centers had replaced the dude ranches of the 1930s but Wickenburg circa 2005 seemed remarkably authentic. So close to plastic suburbia of "the Valley" and yet wonderfully apart. Now it is in the fight for its life, at least as the town we knew and loved.

When Carl Hayden stood for his last U.S. Senate term in 1962, he faced a state that had been radically changed by population growth in the late 1950s and early '60s. He was also confronted by a radical Republican challenger in car dealer Evan Mecham who found purchase with many of these newcomers.

Hayden's crafty aide Roy Elson came up with a "re-introduce Carl Hayden" campaign — even though Hayden had served Arizona in Congress since statehood and was the indispensable man on water, especially the Central Arizona Project. For the showpiece, he angled a Carl Hayden Day featuring President John F. Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon Johnson.

The location was never in question: the Hotel Westward Ho at Central and Fillmore, the premier hostelry of Phoenix since it opened in 1928. The event was a huge success and Hayden won the election.

Within little more than 13 years, with downtown dying, the Westward Ho was a target for demolition. The iconic Luhrs Hotel and others had already met the wrecking ball. The beautiful Hotel Adams had been torn down, replaced by a box containing all the charm of 1970s brutalism. The Ho was saved by making the building into subsidized housing for seniors and the disabled. After falling out of family ownership, the property was repeatedly flipped and eventually sold at a sheriff's auction. Now the owner is using $44 million in a "multifaceted refinancing project" to upgrade the building. And it will continue as elderly housing.

Is this really the best Phoenix can do?

They still meet at the scene of the crime. The breakfasts at the Hotel Clarendon are informal reunions of the lead investigators of the murder of Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles. The hotel itself, redone in the 2000s, has created a shrine of sorts to Bolles, photographs of the event along a hallway. No longer young men, they still have sharp, vivid memories. If one is fortunate enough to snag an invitation, bringing a reporter's notebook is impossible. It would shut down the conversation.

As difficult as it is for some of us to believe, next June will mark 40 years since the bombing. It remains the most enduring mystery and troubling crime in modern Phoenix history.

I have two minor personal connections. I was on duty that day on the ambulance and, as it turned out, one call rotation away from being there. My partner and I caught an auto accident with injuries, or 962 by the radio codes, at 16th Street and Southern. Next up was an explosion in Midtown. One of my friends took that call and was holding the mortally injured Bolles when he said, "They finally got me… Mafia, Emprise, Adamson… Find Adamson…" That's what she told me later in the squad room. (The excellent Paul Rubin of New Times has slightly different wording in this recollection of the event).

Also, in those days I was living in an apartment at 36th Street and Campbell, one of those classic Phoenix buildings surrounded by citrus trees with a grassy, shady courtyard. My neighbor was a young man named John. I noticed that whenever he came home at night, he would repeatedly circle the block. Over time, he told my mother that he and his mother had been relocated to Phoenix by the FBI after his father had died in a mob bombing in Chicago. The Bolles killing unnerved him. "He had been warned," he said. "They always warn you." Followed by, "I've said too much." He was even more reluctant to come home at night.

Someone passed along an article on the demise of Metrocenter. It was from 2011 but is still relevant. The comments are especially interesting.

When Metrocenter opened in 1973, it was the first "super-regional" mall in the Southwest. Unlike the typical mall of the era with two anchor stores, Metrocenter had five: Goldwater's, Rhodes, The Broadway, Sears and Diamond's. With two levels, its sleek interior looked like a starship. The showpiece was an ice-skating rink with a bar-restaurant on the second level overlooking it.

As the photo above shows, it was initially built on the metropolitan fringes, along Black Canyon Freeway between Dunlap and Peoria avenues. Westcor, the developer of this and so many other Phoenix malls, assumed the growth of single-family subdivisions and office parks would follow. And so they did.

It gave the lie to "retail follows rooftops." Rather, Metrocenter was built on spec, and one underlying reality was that it would badly wound or kill older malls, especially Chris-Town and Park Central. And so it did.

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