KING OF THE ROADS

Norman Wallace

worked on railroads, bridges and highways, including Route 66 and the Black Canyon Highway. That was his day job. Por the heck off it, he took photographs. Shousands and thousands of PHO photographs. Porests, canyons, missions, caves, ancient ruinshe shot just about everything. And along the way, he built an amazing legacy off art and history.

GOOD ROAD CAN BE A THING OF BEAUTY WHEN YOU'VE GOT SOMEPLACE TO GO. AND WHO WOULD DISCOUNT THE VALUE OF A BRIDGE WHEN YOU'VE GOT SOMETHING TO CROSS? BUT TO SEE THE WORLD THE WAY NORMAN WALLACE SAW IT TO TRAVEL FROM PRE-REVOLUTION MEXICO TO ARIZONA ... WELL, THAT'S A TRIP.

In 1999, the Arizona History Museum in Tucson began the process required to make the Wallace collection available to researchers. What they found in the 41 boxes of 5,000 images, albums, prints and negatives was a treasure. Black and white might predominate, but the glow given off by this collection is pure gold.

"It's a major collection," says Riva Dean, archives director of the museum. What's more, the majority of these photos have never been seen before.

"He had a really good eye," Dean says. "So, aesthetically, they're really amazing photographs."

Wallace, who was born in Ohio, arrived in Tucson in 1906, 20 years old and handsome as a movie-star cowboy. He'd come west to work for the Southern Pacific, building railroads in Mexico. And he brought a friend along for the ride.

"I had a little bit of a camera," he recalled almost 70 years later. "I think they call it 4-A, a Kodak box camera." One camera or another would be by his side for the next 40 years.

► Wallace photographed Hoover Dam's progress in June 1933 (left), shortly after the first bucket of concrete was placed into the lowest of the dam forms.

RIGHT: In 1927, standing on “A” Mountain, Wallace made an image of the city of Tucson, which then boasted a population of approximately 25,000 people.

► While traveling around the state, Wallace took time to photograph many iconic Arizona structures, such as the interior and exterior (left and above) of Mission San Xavier del Bac.

RIGHT: Wallace recorded the Cameron Suspension Bridge, which is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

"I walked from the Arizona Canal to Flagstaff twice," he recalled. "Somebody had to find out where that road was going."

He moved from railroading to bridge-building to mining, from Mexico to Arizona. In 1932, he joined the Arizona Highway Department and spent the next 23 years surveying and plotting the routes of new highways. If you've ever driven in Arizona, you know his work; he was the engineer who carved the way. His first assignment was on a little strip of road across Northern Arizona, which would later roll into the legendary Route 66. He also did the location work for the Black Canyon Highway, which runs from Phoenix to Flagstaff. He later described it as "some of my hardest work." The job began in 1945. He was 60 years old. "I walked from the Arizona Canal [in North Phoenix] ... to Flagstaff twice," he recalled in a 1975 interview. "Somebody had to find out where that road was going." He also was well acquainted with the early years of State Route 84, which then ran from Tucson to Gila Bend, former U.S. Route 70 from Globe to the New Mexico line, U.S. Route 89 up Mingus Mountain, and old U.S. Route 80 (now State Route 80) running north of Bisbee. He knew a time when mule teams were still being used to build those roads, and he took the pictures. He photographed the pastoral scenes of early 1900s Mexico, then the horrors of revolution that followed. He captured the towns and land of Arizona before statehood. Forests, canyons, Spanish missions, caves, ancient ruins... all were fodder for his camera. As were the bridges, the dams and the roads, always the roads. In 1968, Wallace turned over an estimated 2,000 of his images to the Arizona Highway Department. Following his death in 1983 at the age of 98, his wife, Henrietta, gave an additional 3,000 images to the Arizona History Museum in Tucson. The collection remained split until 1999, when the Arizona Highway Department donated its portion to the museum. Now, along with the historians, the general public can access the complete collection simply by walking through the doors of the museum's reference library. Just like that, they can travel with Wallace to the Tucson of 1910, the mission of San Xavier, the lush Sabino Canyon. They can visit the cowboys of 1913 Mexico. That same year, followers of Pancho Villa lined up in Nogales for their own photographic experience with Wallace. In the heady spirit of revolution, they'd just finished looting a store. Wallace's study of the building of Route 66 might cause some researchers to break out in song. In his rendition, the kicks come from going west to east - from Topock to Kingman to the Junction of U.S. 89. The roads have yet to be built in other photographs, but Wallace had marked their future routes on the images. "I think it is an important collection, because it shows the growth of Arizona - 20th century Arizona," Dean says. But beyond the growth, the roads and the bridges, Wallace saw something else. Most days he would turn his camera toward the land, the beauty of nature that reduced those paved roads of modern life to insignificance. And with the heart of a true photographer, Norman G. Wallace admired the view.

The Arizona History Museum is located at 949 E. Second Street in Tucson. For more information, call 520-628-5774 or visit arizonahistoricalsociety.org.