The 1940s

Early in their alliance, Editor Raymond Carlson and Art Director George Avey took a look at the legislative record that established Arizona Highways. It included a mandate to "encourage travel to and through the state of Arizona." With that as a litmus test, Mr. Carlson closed the book on bridge-construction reports and set out to make the magazine a consumer publication, as well as a user's guide to the state. He wanted to make Arizona Highways more readable.

While he was doing that, Mr. Avey was focused on making it more visual. He began working with artists and illustrators such as Maynard Dixon, Bill Mauldin, Ross Santee and Ted DeGrazia. "The young man from Bisbee," Mr. Carlson wrote about DeGrazia, is "a very sincere person, and one from whom you may hear a great deal about!" Turns out, he was right.

In addition to the fine artists of the West, Mr. Avey reached out to photographers such as Ansel Adams, Esther Henderson, Wayne Davis and Ray Manley. Because there weren't a lot of professional photographers in the Southwest at the time, stories without photos were illustrated with Mr. Avey's artwork vivid watercolors, line drawings and playful "cartoon" maps.

His first map was published in December 1939. About a year later, in our August 1940 issue, we featured Mr. Avey's now-famous four-panel fold-out map (18 by 24 inches) of the state. "Modern explorers in our land could have no better map than our new Pleasure Map to guide them ontheir way," Mr. Carlson wrote. "George Avey, our artist, has piled on a lot of color, listed many points of scenic interest, to get the desired effect." The map is now a collector's item.

In every way, the magazine was coming of age in the 1940s. Unfortunately, it was happening simultaneously with World War II, and by 1943, both Mr. Carlson and Mr. Avey had stepped away from the magazine to join the war effort Mr. Carlson enlisted in the Marines, and Mr. Avey went to work for the Navy.

"We hope to drop you a card from Tokyo," Mr. Carlson wrote in the September/October 1943 issue (the months were combined because of the national paper shortage). "With this issue of Arizona Highways, your editor of the past six years closes his long and happy contact with you. The next issue that will call at your home will be edited by other and more competent hands." The hands were those of Bert Campbell, who first served as editor in the 1920s. In his interim role, he nurtured what Mr. Carlson was creating.

When the two volunteers came home from the war in 1946, they picked up where they'd left off, and in December 1946, Arizona Highways published the world's first all-color issue of a nationally circulated consumer magazine we beat out National Geographic, Life, The Saturday Evening Post ... all of them. Although the all-color format didn't become standard until January 1986, the popularity of the magazine took off after World War II, and Arizona Highways began what many consider to be its golden era.

Good Dame Nature, never more volatile and flighty than in the eerie beauty that clothes the Arizona desert, plays her most cunning and her strangest tricks in the figure and person of the Saguaro.

To unaccustomed eyes, the Saguaro at best is a figure from another world and another age, a mute, stately creation with massive arms outstretched, holding high court in the desert silence. When eve ning comes to the desert, the Saguaro, wrapped in a cloak of twilight and moonglow, becomes an ap parition of mystery, spice for the dullest imagination. Perhaps at midnight the Saguaros come to life and have high old times when the desert is theirs, and theirs alone. Or so it has often seemed to the passer-by hurrying home for a late supper.

Deep in the desert, to be easily found by the passing traveler, are Saguaros, misshapen and grotesque when compared to their tall and straight fellows, whose very presence tells of Good Dame Nature's more whimsical and fantastical goings-on under the Arizona skies.

Characters in CACTUS

Are there anywhere else stranger beings than these?

You might find one which, starting to grow straight and tall, suddenly developed a crown of twisted knots and bows, a sort of cactus Beau Brummel or dresser who seemed to get mixed up with the in structions.

Some break into top-shaped formations, for no reason at all, recalling a dancer of old Spain in the castanets. Others, more entwined, bold fellows shamelessly embracing and clinging to life, poor chap, whose life lies spines stand out in all directions and badly in need of combing.

One will catch your eye, reminding you of a venerable grandfather, bent with the load of philosophy and learn ing that comes with the heavy years.

If you take yourself to the desert and look around you will be surprised with what you find there.

Truly a meeting with such Fancy Dans as these is something to seek else... R. C.

A Fantasy of the DESERT

Characters in Cactus, a spread in the February 1941 issue, afforded Editor Raymond Carlson the opportunity to wax poetic about saguaros: “Good Dame Nature, never more volatile and flighty than in the eerie beauty that clothes the Arizona desert, plays her most cunning and her strangest tricks in the figure and person of the Saguaro.” The piece included photographs by noted photographers Josef Muench and Chuck Abbott.

Ross Santee's illustrations first appeared in the magazine in the early 1940s and extensively in 1941. The illustration above, titled Riding High, was part of a feature about Arizona's rodeo history in the February 1941 issue. The sketch at left illustrated a story about Navajo County in the August 1941 issue of Arizona Highways.

ARIZONA HIGHWAYS

These Days of War

In our days of war, such names as Phoenix and Tucson, Mesa and Kingman, Wickenburg and Nogales, Miami and Douglas, Tombstone and Springerville do not sound so important as Pearl Harbor and Manila, and the East Indies and Wake Island and the other distant places where oppressors have raised their ugly mailed fists. Our sunny desert may sound at first rather drab when you listen to tales of the Burma Road and the bullet strewn jungle trails that lead to Singapore. And at first glance this humble and modest journal may have a lack-lustre appeal when read the same evening with the communiques from the war office.

Yet there is a worthy mission for all this. In these days of war, more than ever before in history the cruelties of war are brought home to the civilian population. We, each and everyone of us must participate in the war effort to attain the peace that will come by dint of and by virtue of the inexorable courage and sacrifice and might that is the American people. But this is all our war. This war doesn't just concern a few million men in the armed forces or harassed statesmen guiding this Nation in these days of war. This war concerns us all. However much we can do, that must be done cheerfully and readily and with good heart. We owe this to America.

But what is America? America is a way of life and a design in living. America is the Bible and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and the Sunday funnies. America is great highways and dusty roads and great rivers and little dry creeks up in the hills that only run water after the rains. America is a land of little homes and skyscrapers, of great cities and sleepy villages. America is Joe Louis and Joe DiMaggio and Homer Pettigrew, the champ bronc buster riding whirlwinds in horseflesh. America is where Einstein and escape the terrors that have beset all free men in the Although it had little to do with promoting travel, the January 1942 issue of Arizona Highways was dedicated to the "Arizona boys who are scattered to the four winds today, following Old Glory and the proud banners of the Army, Navy and the Marine Corps" by fighting in World War II. This piece, which was authored by Editor Raymond Carlson, pays tribute to the enlisted at the U.S. Army fields around Phoenix, including Luke, Williams, Thunderbird and Falcon.

Our June 1942 issue featured Falcon Field. This photograph appeared with the caption: "From all parts of the British Empire, young men come to Falcon Field near Mesa to receive primary and advanced training to prepare them to take their place in the RAF."

1943 Arizona HIGHWAYS

zona Daily Arizona HIGHWAYS

Several spot illustrations by famed artist Maynard Dixon appeared in the June 1943 issue of Arizona Highways, which paid tribute to the "Picture-book People," the Navajos. This sketch accompanied a story about Navajo traders by Editor Raymond Carlson.

In an effort to meet our paper quota, Arizona Highways published a dual issue in September and October 1943. With the world at war, the issue, according to Editor Raymond Carlson, featured "what we think is one attractive cover," a B-24 Liberator at Davis-Monthan Army Air Field in Tucson.

J. S. FLIERS BLAST RUMANIAN OIL FIELA U.S. YANKS SEIZE NINE MORE SICH TO T CAPTURE KEY ES STARTED NAVINDERS RU MILE FLIG FIERY HAMBURG BLASTED AGAIN BY AIR FLEETS JAPANESE BAS ON KURIL RAIDED & HOTO Damon, Py Dap Destroyer at Bombers NAZI FLANK Vestroy Left Burning bv bers Strike KURILE ISLAM ALLIES HAM German Oil Fie ON TOKYO ROR GERMANEUROPE IN FORCE AGAIN Drop 12,460 Of Bombs Ford Ploesti Fields Left Shattered And In Flame Rumania Gets Demonstrati U, S. Air Might; Ma War's Course Notably Abseni In France Allied Planes Batter Enem Supply L ALLIED ARMADA OF 500 PLANES BLASTS NAPLE TighinaM DROP BLOCKBUSTERS DAVIS-MONTHAN FIELD Great B07 TUCSON Refineries Left Afire in Messerschmi Official Communiques Deep Target Dolate City BERS Hit raidED & Salamana Airhaw Is in Ruins After Heary Allied Bombing B-24 LIBERATOR weep B Bomber cepen Twenty Bombers Lost By U.S.

1944

Although the magazine's cover in June 1944 spotlighted Canyon de Chelly, the issue's stories focused on Arizona water recreation, including boating on Lake Mead, as shown in this uncredited photograph.

In December 1944, Arizona's governor, Sidney P. Osborn, authored a letter to friends of Arizona the world over. In part, it read about World War II: “We in Arizona are sharing our resources in order that victory shall be secured. From our good earth come metals for the tools of triumph, foods and fruits to nourish ourselves and our fighting men.” Proclamations such as these were typical in the magazine during the 1940s.

Dr. Emil W. Haury's Kodachrome image of Betatakin, at Navajo National Monument, appeared on the cover of Arizona Highways in February 1944, when a new logo also made its debut. Cover lines were mostly nonexistent in those days.

Maynard Dixon paintings such as this one, which appeared in the September 1945 issue, were commonplace in Arizona Highways during the 1940s. This piece, titled Desert Ranges, was featured in a 10-page portfolio of the artist's work.

Phoenix native Bill Mauldin's illustrations first appeared in Arizona Highways in 1940, but the September 1945 issue included an eight-page feature about Mauldin and his work. The then-23-year-old had already acquired a Pulitzer Prize for his work as a cartoonist on the front lines of World War II.

1946

More interesting type treatments began appearing in the magazine in the late 1940s, including this flowery script, which accompanied an editor's note about Sonoran Desert blooms in the April 1946 issue.

One of Ansel Adams' most notable photographs of Monument Valley appeared in the March 1946 issue of the magazine, in a story about spring in the desert. Adams' work was prevalent in Arizona Highways from the 1940s to shortly before his death in 1984.

Barry Goldwater's photograph of Navajo girls and their sheep graced the December 1946 cover of Arizona Highways, the very first all-color issue of any nationally circulated consumer magazine. Although Mr. Goldwater was best known as a U.S. senator and one-time presidential candidate, he was also a prolific photographer.

1947

You might consider 1947 Arizona Highways' year of beautiful cover models. Clockwise from top left: A Girl of the Golden West, photographed by Ray Manley, September 1947; Fiesta Dress, photographed by Ray Manley, November 1947; and Navajo Party Dress, photographed by J.H. McGibbeny, July 1947. Below, a series of unattributed line drawings, including this one, appeared throughout the September 1947 issue of the magazine.

1948

Jack Breed, one of hundreds of photographers to appear in the magazine, made this photograph of Havasu Canyon for the July 1948 issue. It helped illustrate a story titled Ride a Horse to Havasupai, which Breed also authored.

1949

It took iconic photographer Ray Manley, who had a long history with Arizona Highways, more than a month to prepare for this shot, which he titled Cattle Drive. The photograph, made at the Three-V Ranch north of Seligman, captured 1,700 cows and steers and 450 calves. It appeared in the May 1949 issue.

This photograph from the May 1949 issue featured Burt Lancaster and Lizabeth Scott as they appeared in the film Desert Fury, which featured locations around Cottonwood and Sedona. Stories about moviemaking in Arizona have appeared regularly in Arizona Highways.