Scottsdale

Late one soft summer night in 1948, collegian Wally Bender in a decrepit Dodge sedan was racing along Indian School Road far out into the country east of sleepy Phoenix. Lulled by utter solitude and a couple of beers, Wally very nearly collided with another car speeding north on Scottsdale Road. Both drivers missed their turns. They each screeched to a halt, thanked God for their lives, threw their cars into reverse, and mashed together -backwards-in the middle of the intersection. They tangled bumpers, bent fenders, ruptured fuel tanks, and sprang trunks.

This story is true. I know, because Wally was a fraternity brother, and I was there. So far into the boondocks lay that crossroads, no light could be seen through the citrus groves crowding the pavement. But maybe a farmer heard the crash because presently Highway Patrolman John Perica appeared. Back then, a goodly amount of Arizona law was settled on the spot. John listened to our testimony, shook his head, and thundered: "Get these vehicles off the road, and you boys go home and get to bed. No, I ain't gonna write an accident report. I don't know how to write one like this, and nobody would believe it, anyhow!"

There is a point to all of this. In just 35 years, around that once remote intersection, has sprung up as if overnight a desert metropolis as legendary as Baghdad and as lush as Cairo and as lively as Tel Aviv.

Unincorporated, that 1948 village claimed fewer than 2000 residents within one square mile. Vacant land was offered, but not necessarily sold, for $20 an acre. Cavalier's blacksmith shop, Scotty's garage, and Porter's western wear led the commercial enterprises. The sole art center was just two years old. A band of Yaqui Indians squatted west of town. Indian wagons parked in front of Los Olivos restaurant, and working cowboys tied up at the Pink Pony hitching rail. The first fire company organized, and 32 seniors graduated from the one high school. That was the hamlet we irreverently nicknamed Stopsdale, in honor of the most prominent traffic control, a stop sign Wally had missed. Today the town is better known as Scottsdale. It isn't Stopsdale anymore....

SCOTTSDALE! SCOTTSDALE!

Scottsdale sparkles with wealth and wellbeing today, a dazzling, dynamic city encompassing 120 square miles - much of it, the most costly real estate in the West. Here are: oases of rolling green parks and open spaces, garden-courtyard office complexes, high-tech manufacturing plants, chic shops, art galleries, famed resorts, and restaurants.

Take your pick. The social pace in Scottsdale varies from frenetic to peripatetic, from blue jeans to black ties. Marketing researchers say the 100,000 people now living in Scottsdale rank high on the national curve in education, income, and cultural pursuits. During the next 15 years, according to the city's long-range planners, 50,000 more will become residents. Then, as now, substantial numbers will also maintain homes elsewhere.

SCOTTSDALE!

Numerous land development projects - in the works or on the drawing boards -support the long-range projections and forecast the 1980s for Scottsdale's largest-yet period of growth.

SCOTTSDALE!

Thirty years ago Scottsdale was a wide spot in the intersection of Main Street and Scottsdale Road, east of Phoenix. Its 2000 residents lived in an area of one square mile. Deliberately conceived to look like a

SCOTTSDALE! SCOTTSDALE!

frontier movie set, the village boasted rows of false front shops overhung with roughsawn porticos. Older adobe and frame homes nestled here and there among the businesses. At night the few streets glowed with gaslights.

"The West's Most Western Town" it called itself. It boasted a water pump, horse trough, and hitching post in front of the Pink Pony bar, as reinforcement of the title. Winter guests at Camelback Inn, the Arizona Biltmore Hotel, and small dude ranches north of town rode horseback through the desert and hitched their mounts to rails while they ambled through spe-cialty shops owned and operated by artisans and craftsmen. Charles Loloma, in a tiny house at the end of a country lane, greeted the admirers of his Hopi pottery. For the locals, getting dressed up meant jeans and bola ties for the men, squaw dresses and moccasins for the women. Central casting couldn't have found more appropriately clad actors and dress extras for the little movie set town.

Iced champagne and idyllic weather of the Southwest set the stage for midwinter tennis at one of Scottsdale, Arizona's elegant resorts. Someone once wrote that at least half of the travelers deplaning at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport journey to Scottsdale to partake of the good life, at least for part of their vacation.

A spry 30 years old this February, Scottsdale's Parada del Sol rodeo and parade draws thousands of visitors and local residents to the resort city. (Clockwise, from top) Governor Bruce Babbitt leads the Parada down Scottsdale Road, the city's major thoroughfare. A bull rider makes a fast exit at the Parada del Sol professional rodeo. Darl Allred, Hooper, Utah, is a star comedy bull rider at the rodeo. Parade participants get all atwitter watching the crowd from atop their float.

A $10 million Renaissance village market celebrates its first birthday in Scottsdale. The Borgata, top, right, replica of a 14th century Italian town, is Scottsdale's newest five-star retail complex. Planned specifically for this city, it has three courtyards linked by two pedestrian streets lined with shops to promote fashion shows, antique markets, and art sales. Scottsdale Mayor Herb Drinkwater, right, cuts the birthday cake.

Once a year the town turned out to watch the annual cattle drive down Scottsdale Road. Never mind that the animals really were rodeo stock for the Parada del Sol (Parade of the Sun). Never mind, either, that the cowboys were young businessmen-boosters of Scottsdale. It was a real live cattle drive! And visitors sopped it up.

When Scottsdale incorporated in 1952 the city seal became - what else? - a cowboy on a bucking bronc. Four years later, in response to fears that Brahma bulls would charge spectators or wild horses stampede through Lute Wasbotten's drug store, the yearly cattle drive stopped.

Thirty years ago Parada del Sol was the only spectacular on the town's calendar of events. It's still on the calendar, and still a February drawing card. Nowadays, so are all-Arabian horse shows and auctions, major league baseball spring training, classic car auctions, visual and performing arts events, the Fiesta Bowl marathon, golf tournaments, trail rides with the Charros and the Verde Vaqueros, a culinary festival, antique shows, a psychic fair, Thursday night art walks, lecture series at Scottsdale Center for the Arts, Scottsdale Community College, and the Louise Lincoln Kerr Cultural Center....

But to those who remember, the 1950s marked Scottsdale's era of togetherness. Everybody knew everybody else. They saw one another often. Garage mechanics hobnobbed with the late Frank Lloyd Wright whose architectural center, Taliesin West, remains a part of the Scottsdale scene and a tourist mecca. Shopkeepers traded gossip with the crowned heads of Europe and the maharanees of India. (The Maharanee of Indore was a particular favorite.) Guests from Elizabeth Arden's Maine Chance beauty resort traded the regimentation of the spa for an afternoon on the town. (Ava Gardner's outings became legends.) When he wasn't tending his 4000 chickens, exiled Prince John Lichtenstein dined on chicken fried steak at Lulu Belle's. And Kenneth Begay, Navajo silversmith, fashioned belt buckles by hand.

Area residents included such people as Raymond Rubicam, one of the great names in advertising; Clarence Budington Kelland, the celebrated Saturday Evening Post author, and Fowler McCormick, a household name in farm implements.

It was during that era, old-timers say, that Eleanor Roosevelt became Scottsdale's fairy godmother. The President's widow frequently visited Phoenix where her daughter, Anna Roosevelt Boettiger, had launched an ill-fated attempt to publish a daily newspaper. Each of Mrs. Roosevelt's trips were marked by jaunts through Scottsdale shops of one-of-a-kind wares - designer clothing, ceramics, art objects, jewelry, customized perfumes, leather goods, silk-screened fabrics, handpainted skirts, and all-over sequined flyswatters, the junkets became subject matter for her syndicated column, "My Day." After that Scottsdale was no longer confused with Scottsbluff, Nebraska.

Lloyd Kiva New carved a half-block-long street of shops through an orange grove by 1955 and called it Fifth Avenue. His Kiva handbags, priced at $90, were sought-after symbols of status.

And local wags began calling the town Shopsdale.

Today, the false front shops along East Main Street, Brown Avenue, First Street, and Scottsdale Road comprise Old Town. Once little, Fifth Avenue now stretches to 68th Street, and its shop-lined offshoots include Craftsman Court, Stetson Drive, Sixth Avenue, Marshall Way, and 70th Street.

The new Scottsdale shopping spot, an architectural takeoff on Renaissance Italian marketplaces, is The Borgata. With shop rentals at $60 per square foot, it calls itself "the Rodeo Drive of Scottsdale."

But just as The Borgata out-classed Old Town and Fifth Avenue, it may, in turn, be out-classed by another mercantile marvel still in the development stages at Gainey Ranch.

"But it's ironic," says Scottsdale old-timer Fred Eldean, "that all of this began with Mrs. FDR. After all, Scottsdale always has been a town full of dyed-in-the-wool Republicans and the hometown of (U.S. Senator) Barry Goldwater."

An example, not untypical, of real estate appreciation is the 10-acre homesite Fred Eldean bought in the 1940s. It was north of town on a dirt track that became Scottsdale Road. "If it hadn't been for the big old mesquite tree my wife fell in love with," he says, "I'd have balked at paying $5000 for it." Realtors say the 10 acres, now surrounded by resorts, are worth "in excess of $5 million."

Farther north, in the Desert Highlands development, homesite lots command upwards of $450,000. If the persistent rumor is true that former President Gerald Ford plans a home there, Betty Ford can join the ranks of First Ladies who've shopped Scottsdale - including Mamie Eisenhower and Nancy Reagan. "In the old days," says Bill Weirich, "nobody knew a stranger and every deal was sealed with a handshake. If a fellow wanted to build a building he went over to city hall, discussed it, then shook on it."

shopped Scottsdale - including Mamie Eisenhower and Nancy Reagan. "In the old days," says Bill Weirich, "nobody knew a stranger and every deal was sealed with a handshake. If a fellow wanted to build a building he went over to city hall, discussed it, then shook on it."

Weirich's own handshake deal in 1954 brought major league baseball teams to Scottsdale for spring training. "We didn't have a fund-raising organization, a ball park, or a place to house a team," he recalls. "All we had was the city's okay to build a stadium on some city-owned land at the outskirts of town." Undaunted, Weirich and a small group of business-men soon were wining and dining the president of the Baltimore Orioles, Clarence Miles, at the then-new Paradise Valley Country Club.

"Miles liked our style," he remembers, "and when he made the deal to bring his team to Scottsdale the following spring everybody cheered. It was a night of elation and jubilation." But oops! the next morning Miles insisted on seeing the stadium site before returning East. "I nearly died," Weirich admits. "The only way into the place was down Second Street, a dirt road with bonejarring potholes along an open irrigation ditch. The site itself was a tacky cotton field gone to seed." Miles's reaction: "You've got to be joking. A stadium? Here? By next February? Or else!"

In February, 1955, a rustic-looking $200,000 stadium opened there as "the winter nest of the Baltimore Orioles."

After the Orioles came the Boston Red Sox, the Chicago Cubs, the Oakland Athletics and, currently, the San Francisco Giants, Weirich says, ticking off names of players who have returned to Scottsdale to build homes and businesses: Steve Stone, pitcher for Baltimore, former Chicago Cub Rick Monday, Hall of Famer Carl Hubbel of the Giants, and of course, Joe Garagiola. It is part of local lore that Weirich and another longtime realtor, E. V. Graham, "sold every important corner in Scottsdale; some corners five times."

For two decades the map of Scottsdale was long and skinny, with Scottsdale Road as its center. The town was hemmed in on the east by the Salt River Indian Reservation; on the south, by Tempe; on the west, by Phoenix and the town of Paradise Valley. North was the only direction it could grow. By 1970 the map changed. The north end blossomed. The northward march has continued in seven-league boots during recent years.

Beginning with the Safari, the Valley Ho, and the Sunburst hotels, built in the 1950s, the town burgeoned with resorts, and Scottsdale Road, north of Camelback Road, became Resort Row. Doubletree Inn; Granada Royale Hometel; Cottonwoods, a Stouffer Resort; the Scottsdale Hilton; Carl Hubbel of the Giants, and of course, Joe Garagiola. It is part of local lore that Weirich and another longtime realtor, E. V. Graham, "sold every important corner in Scottsdale; some corners five times."

For two decades the map of Scottsdale was long and skinny, with Scottsdale Road as its center. The town was hemmed in on the east by the Salt River Indian Reservation; on the south, by Tempe; on the west, by Phoenix and the town of Paradise Valley. North was the only direction it could grow. By 1970 the map changed. The north end blossomed. The northward march has continued in seven-league boots during recent years.

Beginning with the Safari, the Valley Ho, and the Sunburst hotels, built in the 1950s, the town burgeoned with resorts, and Scottsdale Road, north of Camelback Road, became Resort Row. Doubletree Inn; Granada Royale Hometel; Cottonwoods, a Stouffer Resort; the Scottsdale Hilton; Sheraton Scottsdale Inn; The Registry Resort; The Inn at McCormick Ranch; Radisson Scottsdale Resort and Racquet Club; and Scottsdale Conference Resort will be joined this fall by the new Loews Paradise Valley Resort. Soon there will be two more along Shea Boulevard, one each at Gainey Ranch, and Pinnacle Peak Village East developments. The Hilton and Registry plan expansions. Little America Hotels and Resorts holds the lease on property at Scottsdale and Indian Bend roads. And in the downtown area L'Hermitage proposes to add a Scottsdale link to its exclusive chain.

Other building and development projects continue apace. They include: • Gainey Ranch: Markland Properties is creating "an exclusive country club environment with strong recreational overtones oriented around a town center of shops, office space, luxury destination resort; the mixed-use luxury community includes homes and a 27-hole golf course." • Desert Highlands Development: the centerpiece is a golf course designed by Jack Nicklaus to challenge duffers and pros. The course has limited areas of grass; desert provides bunkers along the fairways. More than 800 luxury homesites have desert vistas. • Pinnacle Peak Village East: developed as a sister to Pinnacle Peak Village by Jerry Nelson, has similarities to Desert Highlands, among them exciting desert terrain and pricey homes. There will be 1400 housing units and a 570-unit resort, including casitas. • Scottsdale Ranch: another project of the Canadian-owned Markland Properties but less expensive than their Gainey Ranch. Here are 4000 housing units of all types, a shopping center, a park. One developer, Nelson, has said corporation executives usually can live "anywhere they want to, as long as there are telephones and plane connections at hand." And Scottsdale, increasingly, is where they want to live. Prototype for massive communitywithin-a-community developments is the 4000-acre McCormick Ranch, once home of the late Fowler McCormick. Purchased by Kaiser-Aetna Corporation in the late 1960s, it was conceived as a multi-use, live-where-you-work project. Today, it encompasses an attractive mix of luxury and patio homes, apartments, condominiums, offices, national and regional corporate headquarters buildings, shops, park sites, golf courses, and a resort overlooking a small lake. Earlier, Mrs. Anne McCormick, a patron of American Indian artists and artisans, built Navajo hogans and pueblo homes on a portion of the property to house reservation craftsmen and give them greater visibility. Her own home was lavish with Navajo rugs and paintings; Hopi Kachina carvings, pottery, and silver-work; Pima and Apache basketry. As cars of her visitors rolled off the white graveled drive and onto Scottsdale (Opposite page, top) Maine Chance, on Camelback Mountain's south face, pampers its grounds as well as its guests who arrive from September through May from all parts of the globe for total beauty care and super-deluxe service. (Opposite page, bottom) Sweat isn't an improper word at John Gardiner's Tennis Ranch. Here the daily schedule calls for heated workouts for guests between hours of professional instruction: how to demolish your opponent's tennis. The resort also comes fully equipped for luxury living.

(Below) Mariott's Southwestern-styled Camelback Inn has been in the luxury resort spotlight since it opened in 1936. Graced by 120 dramatically green acres, the year-round, five-star spa is totally devoted to the pursuit of relaxed pleasures - all day and after the sun goes down.

Note: for more information about these and other Scottsdale area resorts, see Arizona Highways, January, 1982.

Road a Hopi boy - in white pants, velvet tunic, and headband - swept the drive with a tree branch to erase the tire tracks.

But, true to the saddles she used as barstools in her recreation room, Mrs. McCormick is best remembered as an originator of Scottsdale's all-Arabian horse shows.

"The original Paradise Park arena was on her property," remembers Mrs. Dorothy (Dee Dee) Chauncey, "and the Arabian shows began there in about 1957."

In the past decade sales and auctions were added to the show. In public auctions last February $34 million changed hands. In private sales-uncounted millions more.

Among the handful of Scottsdale Arabian breeders, the late Bob Aste was the first to import breeding stock from Poland; Mrs. McCormick, the first to import from Russia. They were followed by the Tom Chaunceys and Eugene LaCroix of Lasma Farms (now the largest breeder of Arabians in the world). The neighborly shows sponsored by Mrs. McCormick for Arabians grew to 1500 horses from throughout the country during this year's 28th annual show.

Says Mrs. Chauncey, "At the first sales in 1974, the top-selling mare went for about $25,000; this year, Gardenia, the top-selling mare, went for $1.5 million." Lasma Farms sold her; Chauncey, a broadcasting magnate, bought her. "We sold the foal Gardenia was carrying for $375,000 before it was born," Mrs. Chauncey said, "and figure we'll have our investment back after three or four more foals.

"But over and above the investment possibilities Gardenia has great physical beauty and Bask and Naborr bloodlines [the asterisk denotes the horse was imported]. Those are the two superior stallions, as proven in showrings again and again by their get." Naborr was acquired by the Chaunceys in 1963 from the McCormick estate. At $150,000, it was the biggest money paid to that time for a stallion-a 19-year-old, at that.

"But the price was peanuts compared to what that horse earned standing at stud," Mrs. Chauncey says. "Every year people say the sales bubble of Scottsdale Week is bound to burst. I've said it myself, but our farm and several others plan sales in December this year. There simply isn't time enough to show, sell, and buy during one week in February."

Of the private sales, those of Lasma Farms are as showy as Broadway productions. Two years ago the Beach Boys pro-vided the show tunes. At last year's auc-tion (filmed by NBC-TV as a segment on Real People) spotlighted horses pranced through red sawdust sprinkled with rhine-stone glitter as colored lights played over the twinkling red-curtained backdrop. Four thousand people sought seats and were extended more than $120 million in lines of credit.

This year Bob Hope opened with "This is something new-Americans selling Arabs." It was also something new for Hope to be warm-up comedian on a showbill with horses as featured performers.

Just as horses of various kinds have been a fascinating aspect of the Scottsdale scene from its earliest days, so have artists, also of various kinds. Working and living in the movie set town of 30 years ago were painters Philip Curtis, Lew Davis, Jay Datus, Olaf Wieghorst, Maynard Dixon, Lon Megargee; illustrators Al Parker, Robert Harris, Charlie LaSalle; watercolorist Bill Schimmel; Indian artists Pop Chalee, Ed Lee Natay, Andy Tsijinna-jinnie; and sculptor Philip Sanderson.

Buck Saunders, a retired civil engineer who yearned to "do a bit of painting myself," opened an art supply store and called it The Trading Post. The artists took the title literally, trading paintings for canvases and pigments. So The Trading Post became an art gallery and Saunders, ready or not, became a dealer.

"When the snows piled up in the New

Tales of extraordinary endurance are told about Arabian horses: one, an 18-day desert ride of the 19th century during which an Arabian ran 90 miles each day. But endurance alone isn't what makes the Arabian horse such a worldwide attraction not to mention Scottsdale's multi-million-dollar phenomenon. Muhammed sanctified the relationship between man and horse. Undoubtedly, he had a beautiful Arabian in mind when he did. Their character makes them unique among Equidae, particularly their "controlled impetuosity," a readiness to gallop off at the slightest touch. Add to this lightning responsiveness, sureness of step, and a disposition that is gentle and nuzzlingly friendly.

(Clockwise, from right) Misdee Chauncey at the 1983 Lasma V Arabian horse auction in Scottsdale. Her horse is Gardenia, the most expensive ($1.5 million) Arabian mare ever sold at public auction. Exhibit hall at the formal Lasma V Sale, the largest in the United States in dollar amount. This year's sale of 26 mares grossed $9 million. In a stall decorated with quiet elegance, a show horse awaits its moment on stage at the prestigious All Arabian Horse Show and sale held annually in Scottsdale the second week of February. Singer Wayne Newton, an Arabian horse fancier for many years, shows his private stock at this year's All Arabian Show. Man and horse in full dress compete at the show, which attracts up to 1000 entries from all over the world.

(Top) A classic Scottsdale development and resort, McCormick Ranch blends desert beauty with quiet lakeside residences.

(Left and above) The big attractions at Scottsdale's Railroad Park are the quality of the 5/12ths scale rolling stock a millionaire's gift to the city and the stage setting: two old Santa Fe Railroad stations from Arizona's Golden Age of Steam.

text continued from page 10 Mexican pueblos and the potters couldn't build bonfires on the ground to fire their bowls they'd come down here to sell me what they had on hand. Black-on-black bowls by Maria of San Ildefonso, now collectors' pieces worth thousands, sat around for a couple years before I could sell them for $10 or $15," he says. "Tourists called them curios and shunned them.

But Saunders remembers the day success came his way.

"It was February 5, 1950-the day I presented an artist in a one-man show, the first one-man show in Scottsdale. Ted De Grazia's show. We both had a nothingventured-nothing-gained attitude about the whole thing. We painted each wall of the shop a different color, hung the oils and framed watercolors, put the unframed stuff on bare sawhorse tables, and brought tequila up from Mexico to spike the punch. In case anybody came," he says.

By afternoon's end 1500 people had come. They consumed gallons of punch, ground flashbulbs and paper cups into the concrete floor, and bought $1500 worth of art $40 for watercolors; $350 for the largest oil.

The "unlucky 13th" gallery was opened by Steve Martin in the mid-1960s. Opening another art store, Martin was told, "is like playing Russian roulette with five bullets in the cylinder." Though it has changed ownership, the gallery continues to thrive. So do 80 more.

And some high stakes dealers have no galleries at all. One is "Big Jim" Clark, whose annual Biltmore Celebrity Show in Los Angeles is characterized in a national art publication as "the most prestigious art show in the nation." An artists' representative as well as a dealer, Clark mounts four or five shows a year in various museums across the country and will stage a cruising art show next year aboard the sister ship of the Love Boat.

This year, for the Society of American Impressionists, he sponsored his first hometown show. In February, the society's second outing will be in Scottsdale Center for the Arts.

"I buy and sell art all year long," he says. "When I buy a painting, I'll probably show it only once to the collector who wants it. Collectors don't want the world to know they are disposing or acquiring works. I keep a very low profile."

He also keeps computerized files on a clientele list of several thousand collectors.

The Scottsdale art mart, like Arabian horse sales, is a sophisticated big money business, complete with investment sales to syndicates of buyers who, in turn, sell shares in their holdings.

Once limited to Western, Indian, or landscape subject matter, artists' work sold in Scottsdale today is eclectic, photographlike realism to avant garde.

"I'm handling more Oriental pieces than anything else," says Lee Broom, a framer.

But the art scene isn't all sophistication and syndication: The C. G. Rein Galleries sold a standing bronze nude to an out-oftowner, who measured the figure first to make sure the outstretched arms would hold a tray of champagne glasses. They did. He now has a life-sized silent butler, of sorts, in the entry hall of his Connecticut home. Joe Baker's whimsical painting of a plastic horse in a shop window went to a ranch woman who sold her livestock and moved into town. She wanted, she said, a horse that didn't require her "to pitch hay or shovel manure." O.K. Harris West Gallery almost lost the sale of a mural-sized $50 bill; John Pillsbury bought it for the wall of his Camel Bank, but he really wanted a painting of a $10,000 bill.

The City of Scottsdale owns a municipal art collection appraised at $2.5 million, but involves no tax monies. The artworks-or the funds to buy them - are gifts of art patrons.

Along West Main Street and Marshall Way, where galleries nudge each other side-by-side, Thursday night art walks are a tradition of the winter season. Galleries are open until 10 p.m. Directors serve wine and snacks to strollers and browsers. Though some dealers characterize the crowds as "wine sippers and brochure snatchers," the pleasant custom persists.

As the art colony grew so did Scottsdale. Fast and frisky. Vociferous civic arguments erupted about two decades ago. Scottsdale was "more mink than manure, more Cadillac than cowboy," and therefore, some said, it shouldn't call itself the West's Most Western Town anymore. New slogans were presented: The Golf Course Capital of the Sunbelt West, Arabian Horse Capital of the World, Convention City, The West's Most Friendly Town, Baseball's Baghdad of Spring Training, Resort... to Scottsdale. None stuck; the great debate continues,

Arizona Highways Magazine/15

Unabated. But the Chamber of Commerce letterheads no longer carry a slogan emblazoned in large type across the top of the page; it's been relegated to tiny print at the bottom.

(Perversely, the chamber's promotional poster this year features a cowboy hat - a red plush cowboy hat banded in feathers and turquoise.) "Scottsdale," says the 48-year-old mayor, Herb Drinkwater, "isn't the name of a city; it's a way of life. The citizens have made this town just exactly what they wanted it to be. That's its secret. Citizens literally run this city and give it foresight."

Most recent example of citizen involvement and foresight: an inch-thick, spiral-bound book, Scottsdale 2000-Directions for Tomorrow, a series of recommendations for everything from cultural affairs to transportation between now and the turn of the century. The proposals culminated a year's work by 250 zealous volunteer citizens on 12 separate Scotts-dale Town Enrichment Program (STEP) committees, plus input from 23 standing boards and commissions, also composed of citizen volunteers.

Something for every taste is a Scottsdale hallmark. In the heart of the city, along fashionable Fifth Avenue, are blocks of quality shops and galleries plus restaurants like renowned Trader Vic's, opposite page, top. For non-window shoppers like Pam Stevens, Morris Carriages adds a touch of yesteryear class to a tour of the town. A few blocks south of Fifth Avenue, another treat awaits the Scottsdale visitor: a landmark ice cream parlor, below, called the Sugar Bowl.

In essence, the recommendations comprise a road map to "just exactly what the citizens want the town to be" 16 years hence. Already, the recommendation of the long-range financing committee for a $69 million bond issue was approved by voters this summer.

Councilwoman Billie Gentry, along with the mayor and the five other Scottsdale City Council members, began her political career as a member of a STEP committee. Gentry, known as "the mother of the Greenbelt," served on the STEP parks and open spaces committee in 1964. "I was the delegate from the League of Women Voters; the committee addressed itself to flood control. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed a ditch, 170feet wide, seven and a half-miles long to channel the sheets of water that rolled off the desert into Indian Bend Wash.

"We didn't want an ugly ditch severing our town; voters rejected the ditch, and we began exploring alternatives." The result: Indian Bend Wash Project, a greenbelt parks system of fishing lakes, golf courses, tennis courts, biking and jogging trails, picnic areas, swimming pools, an exhibit plaza, softball diamonds, wildlife areas, and the nation's first urban campground.

It was built by the City of Scottsdale with the cooperation of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Outdoor Recreation/Land and Water Conservation Fund, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Flood Control District of Maricopa County, and with the participation of private developers.

As it developed Gentry moved on to the Parks Commission, then to the City Council. "I just followed it along, aided and abetted by an innovative city staff."

Some staff suggestions: lakes, their still waters slow down floodwaters; tennis courts on elevated risers so floodwaters pass beneath them; restrooms on mounds so water goes around, not through, them; split bridges over the wash supported by sculptured columns so sunlight penetrates areas that can be used for exhibits - and discourages vagrants.

"I've taken the greenbelt slide show on the road in this country and abroad," says Gentry. "It's one of the engineering marvels of the decade and serves as a prototype of flood control for countless cities, including Phoenix and San Diego."

It's also an example of Scottsdale's penchant for turning lemons into lemonade.

Scottsdale is also noted for strong enforcement of ordinances: no billboards, small signs; no buildings taller than three stories or 36 feet; anti-litter; water conservation (developers must install water-saving shower heads and toilets, use treated and recycled water on golf courses); hillsides and mountains cannot be built on; desert vegetation, moved during construction phases, must be tagged, relocated, and then transplanted to the original site.

Maggie Wilson, for many years a columnist for the Arizona Republic in Phoenix, has been a contributor to Highways since 1972.

(Clockwise, from top) Once planned as a concrete-lined ditch to drain occasionally heavy rains, Scottsdale's Greenbelt is now providing other cities around the world with ideas for people-pleasing recreational alternatives for their community developments. Arizona's million-dollar climate is one of the main attractions at the popular Duck and Decanter, restaurantdeli at Camelview Plaza. Misdee Chauncey atop her Arabian mare, C. Baskira, winning honors at an amateur horse show in Scottsdale. In an oasis of green, two desert dwellers share a quiet lunch at Scottsdale Plaza.

"We get letters every day from other cities wanting to know specifics of our various building codes and ordinances," says David Matthew, city information officer. "We must be doing something right."

Says the mayor, "When you come to this town you know it's a different kind of town. There are clean streets, nice landscaping, and people with smiling faces who take pride in living here, people who exhibit real concern for their fellow citi-zens and have the habit of getting involved in Scottsdale. Because of such citizens today I'll have a desirable place to retire to 20 years on down the road."

Drinkwater, robust and ruddy, came to Scottsdale in 1943 with a year to live.

"I had asthma and rheumatic fever so bad I couldn't walk 20 feet without my lips and fingernails turning blue. That's what this climate has done for me. I'm mayor on loan, but I'm a resident for life."

Scottsdale's beginning as a utopian community of cultured people who participated in the prideful institution of citizen involvement, says a historian, dates back to 1894 when the first homesteaders settled.

Dick Lynch, a member of the Scottsdale Historical Society and author of Winfield Scott, A Biography of Scottsdale's Founder, tells the story of this town's genesis: Chaplain Scott had been a New York farmboy and a student at the University of Rochester and Theological Seminary before he became a distinguished captain in the Grand Army of the Republic during the Civil War. Later, he became a chaplain. Scottsdale's Scott, says Lynch, is not to be confused with "Old Fuss and Feathers," General Winfield Scott of Mexican War fame, though indications are that the two were related.

"In 1888, after Morris Goldwater - definitely a relative of Senator Goldwater's - Scott purchased a section of land. As he continued his chaplaincy throughout the West, his brother cleared a section of native greasewood bushes and planted barley, grapes, fruit trees, vegetables, and the Salt River Valley's first citrus groves.

During his travels, Scott became a oneman promoter of the area, characterizing it as "unequalled in greater fertility or richer promise." (But the rest of the Territory of Arizona was to him "the porch of perdition... the paradise of rattlesnakes, Gila monsters, and Apaches.") When acreage next to Scott's farm and home was subdivided into a townsite the developer toyed with naming it Utleyville, after himself; Murphyville, after the builder of the Arizona Canal; Orangedale, because of the citrus groves. Instead he named it Scottsdale.

The first settlement, at Brown and Main Streets, consisted of a few tents, a post office, and a general store. By the turn of the century, Lynch continues, 75 people were living in the little farm community.

Like Scott, who had attracted them, they were people of culture who appreciated the village atmosphere.

One settler, Helen Smith, studied in Europe under Franz Liszt; another, an artist, studied in Paris under James McNeil Whistler. Others came first as guests at a little winter re-sort, Ingleside Inn. "It was a close-knit community," Lynch says, "heavy on community involvement, and the citizens modeled their little settlement, utopian-style, to suit themselves."

A microcosm, one might say, of what Scottsdale is today. And as it will be in A.D. 2000.