The 1960s

The segue into the 1960s was seamless, and like the Green Bay Packers under Vince Lombardi in those years, Arizona Highways was second to none under the leadership of Editor Raymond Carlson. The photography was setting new standards, and the stories were exposing readers around the world to the remarkable people, places and things of the Grand Canyon State.

Nevertheless, Mr. Carlson wasn't convinced he was doing enough. In July 1963, he wrote: "I have been editor of Arizona Highways since 1938. In the spring of that year, after my third or fourth issue, I was confronted with the awful and terrifying realization that we were running out of material. Now, twenty-five years later, I am confronted with the still more awful and still more terrifying realization of how inadequate we have been in telling the Arizona Story."

After 90 years, that's still our reality there never seem to be enough pages to cover everything but Mr. Carlson and his team were doing remarkable work in those days. It was so good that it made international news. It happened in the mid-1960s, at the height of the Cold War. Looking back it seems ridiculous, but in 1965 the Soviet Union banned Arizona Highways, contending that it was "ideologically subversive" and "propagandized the American way of life."

That action prompted reaction from around the United States. Inez Robb, one of the nation's most respected syndi-cated columnists, wrote that "the Soviets shouldn't be blamedfor believing the photographs of Arizona were too good to be true, because half the people in the U.S. couldn't believe them either." For his part, Mr. Carlson was flattered by the attention of the Soviets. "It just shows that our little magazine gets around," he said.

for believing the photographs of Arizona were too good to be true, because half the people in the U.S. couldn't believe them either." For his part, Mr. Carlson was flattered by the attention of the Soviets. "It just shows that our little magazine gets around," he said.

Among the "subversive" photographers in the 1960s were newcomer Darwin Van Campen and longtime contributors Josef Muench, David Muench, Chuck Abbott and Carlos Elmer, who, as a boy, set up his first photography lab in the basement of his grandmother's hotel, the now-abandoned Hotel Beale in Kingman. Mr. Elmer started making landscape photographs in 1940. That same year, he began a 50-year relationship with Arizona Highways.

Despite the loss of sales in the Soviet Union, the magazine was growing, and so were expenses. "During the fiscal year 1961-62," Mr. Carlson wrote, "we spent for the printing of this magazine the sum of $923,295.13, of which $539,148.07 went to the W.A. Krueger Co. of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for our color pages, and $348,147.06 went to the Pacific Press of Los Ange-les, California, for the production of our black-and-white pages and the assembling of our magazine."

At the time, 96 percent of the magazine's subscribers were out of state, and the city of Los Angeles had four times more subscribers than the entire state of Arizona. Today, we have subscribers in all 50 states and more than 100 countries around the world, and our in-state subscribers outnumber all the rest.

1961

Willis Peterson, bottom, regularly contributed his wildlife photographs to the magazine in the 1960s, along with several columns about the challenges he faced in the field. His Monarch of the Forest, a portrait of an elk, appeared on our June 1961 cover, below.

Danish painter Olaf Wieghorst's sketch of a cowboy was part of a feature about Read Mullan's Gallery of Western Art in November 1962. Wieghorst immigrated to the United States in 1918 and spent much of his career painting the American West in the style of Frederic Remington and Charles Russell.

ARIZONA The Nation's Fastest Growing State

As one gazes into the colorful depths of Arizona's Grand Canyon, it begins to dawn on the viewer that fifty years is but a fleeting instant in the eternity of Time. Here is a creation that took not centuries, not milleniams of time, but millions upon millions of these units men call "years." To us mortals there are normally allotted but three score and ten of these units, ie less than a century but more than enough to encompass the period of Arizona's statehood. Thus many present day Arizonans were actually here and personally witnessed the celebration of Arizona's ad mission to the Union on February 14, 1912. This is not just a dull statistic or meaningless observation because it leads to the rather startling realization that soost of the young people who this year participate in Arizona's Semi Centennial Celebe lebeation may still be around to help code brate the state's Centennial in the Year 2012.

How many, precisely, is a figure for actuaries to consider. With Arizona's present population (about 600,000) and with largely increasing, it is probable then that several hundred thousand Arizons youngsters will sell be living fifty years from now. If these youngsters have the good seme not to leave Arizona and the good fortune not to be blown to Kingdom Come in a noclear war, they will no doubt see an Arizona containing ton to fifteen million people and ten times as many houmes as now doe the landscape. The economic implications in all this are probably be yond the grasp of anyone who studied mathematics prior to World War II. They are so breath-taking as to render plausible even the most outlandish clains of exuberant real estate salesmen. But more on this subject later. We have a little history to dust off first. History can be very

1963

REPORT TO THE PUBLISHERS

Photographs by Herb McLaughlin and Doug Brader Arizona Photographic Associates

THE STORY OF

By Raymond Carlson, Editor

This issue, as we have pointed out editorially, is important to all of us who are interested in Arizona Highways because they are now, at long last, a complete Arizona product. On this very special occasion we would like to digress briefly from our mission of telling the wonderful Arizona Story to make a report to our pub lishers, the people of the State of Arizona, on the opera tion of this magazine.

What we have to say should be of interest not only to our publishers, but to the thousands of our faithful readers elsewhere who have expressed interest in the general growth of this publication.

The place to begin is at the beginning.

The Arizona State Legislature in the Motor Vehicle Code of 1925 authorized the Arizona Highway Com mission to produce brochures, maps and other printed material to encourage travel to and through Arizona. Way back then our folks were tourist-minded!

The first issue of ARIZONA HIGHWAYS appeared in 1925. Volume 1 Number 1, under the proud slogan Civilization Follows the Improved Highway, carried this announcement boldly stating the magazine's aims and purpose in life:

TO THE PUBLIC

With this issue, Arizona Highways makes its bow to its public. In its decision to issue a magazine devoted to the interest of good roads, the Arizona Highway Department is following the example of 33 other state highway departments, the American Association of State Highway Officials and the United States Bureau of Pub lic Roads, in disseminating information in regard to its activities and those of the nation.

Although, during a previous administration, a pam phlet dealing with highways in Arizona was issued at intervals, the inauguration of ARIZONA HIGHWAYS is the first big step forward to tell the people of Arizona Editor Raymond Carlson authored a history of Arizona Highways for our July 1963 issue. The article included a look at what we refer to as Arizona Highways World Headquarters in Phoenix. The same doors you see on the building in the photograph remain today.

Arizona's ROADSIDE REST AREAS

1964

1965

"Never before available for private use," Arizona Highways advertised its first Sound Classic, The Grand Canyon, in the October 1965 issue. The album, available for $5, included music and narration. For an additional $17, fans could purchase 70 photo slides to create "a new dimension in audiovisual entertainment." Related products such as this became common in the 1980s.

Although artist Ross Santee died in June 1965, his work continued to appear in the magazine. This sketch was published in September 1965.

The Greatest Story Ever Told was filmed in the Glen Canyon area, and this photograph, a still titled Baptism of Jesus Christ, ran as part of a feature about the production of the film in January 1965.

1967

A conservation pledge appeared in the September 1967 issue of Arizona Highways and accompanied a story about the lives of fire watchers in Arizona's national forests. This kind of editorializing would eventually disappear from the magazine.

Conservation Pledge

I give my pledge as an American to save and faithfully to defend from waste the natural resources of my country its soil and minerals, its forests, waters and wildlife.

Earl Petroff's Saguaro Bouquet was one of many photos of cactus flowers that appeared in a portfolio in January 1967. Wildflowers have been featured prominently in the magazine over the years.

Leif Erickson starred in NBC's The High Chaparral. The show, which spotlighted Territorial Arizona, was featured in September 1967.

Arizona has long been noted for its five C's: climate, copper, cattle, cotton and citrus. Soon it'll be time to add a sixth chaparral. Or, more to the pointThe High Chapar ral, a television series that has as its locale the sprawling ranch lands west of Tucson in the 1870s.

Ordinarily, film making in Arizona is taken pretty much a matter of course. No figure has ever been agreed upon as to just how many "westerns" have been filmed within the state, although it's a safe wager the number is staggering.

The films have varied in quality, depending on budget, aim and time, but above all creative talent. However, no venture to date has even approached the potential and magni tude of The High Chaparral in terms of presenting the scenic wonder and historical lore of Arizona to the world.

The creative impetus behind The High Chaparral is ecutive producer David Dortort. Years ago he put Nevada's "Ponderosa" on the map and boosted the state's tourism with time TV champ, Bonanza. Each week the sags of Ben Cartwright and his is by over 150,000,000 people Dutonood The High Cho The years following the Civil War were a time when Chiricahuas lived in competition with the coyote, when blue clad cavalry troopers and infantrymen in brown canvas sweat for their $13 a month, when irregular soldiers of a distracted Mexico, lanceros, rode back and forth from the Santa Craz River Valley to Sonora hunting Indian scalps, when the Santa Ritu Mountains sheltered a burly community of sourdough miners, when Tucson was pictured as "a paradise for devils" and the hamlet of Tabac printed its own moncy and performed marriages that later proved null and void.

But this had all been told before, usually by employing cliches and stereotypes. For The High Chaparral, Dortort had something else in mind.

To begin with, the mystique of the land violent and cruel and strangely beautiful telling a story of discovery and denial, fortune and failure. Above all else promise. Consider how the cattle ranch that is the series chief setting acquires its name Against a big sky, raw figures: a man and a woman watch a small herd of cattle on the move. The never ending and adventurous parts of Southern Art

THE HIGH CHAPARRAL by TIM KELLY 1968

Photographer David Muench, below, went in pursuit of the sun for our April 1968 issue, capturing images like the one at left - a glowing landscape below Sitgreaves Pass. Muench is the longest-tenured photographer in the history of the magazine.

New, Nuclear Mining Miracle PROJECT SLOOP

A new nuclear mining project in Graham County was the subject of an article in our October 1968 issue. “In essence, it envisions the detonation of a low-yield nuclear device far below the surface of the ground. Force of the blast would shatter millions of tons of extremely low-grade copper ore,” Edward H. Peplow Jr. wrote.

We have plenty of quirkiness in our archives, like this fancy, creature-covered logo, which graced our December 1968 cover.

1969

EDITOR'S NOTE: We think you'll enjoy reading Reg Manning's CACTUS BOOK, "WHAT KINDA CACTUS IZZAT?" It's not cluttered with Latin botanical names, but it will give you a friendly introduction to the wonderful world of cactus and related flora. On this page are some random examples. If your favorite bookseller does not have it write:

Reganson Cartoon Books P. O. Box 5242 Phoenix, Arizona 85010 Paperback only - $1.95 The Boogum (BOO-jum) Tree is THE COCKEYEDEST creation of nature. It resembles something you dream about after a hearty midnight supper of cold lobster something a surrealist might figure out in one of his wilder moments. The only thing that could look remotely like it would be an enormous white radish planted upside down, straight up, and scrawny little branches sprouting If that isn't clear to you, don't

WHAT KINDA CACTUS IZZAT?

"CACTUSES" THAT ARE NOT CACTI Most people make the mistake of calling everything on the desert "cactuses". The "Monkey Tail Cactus" and the "Spanish Dagger Cac tuses". For instance, are not cacti at all. They are as different, botanically, from a cactus, as a scallion. A Spanish Dagger is, in fact, a lot more closely related to garlic than it is to the Cactus Family. So far, in this book, we have tried to give you a speaking acquaintance with the leaders of the Cactus Clan. Now we'll turn our attention to other thorny plants that, while they are NOT cacti, are just as odd. No cactus is more "typical" of the desert than the queer breeds you are about to meet.