The Road to Statehood

ARIZONA HIGHWAYS ALBUM THE ROAD TO STATEHOOD

On February 14, 1912, Arizona was admitted to the Union as the forty-eighth state. This seventy-fifth anniversary year, Arizona Highways' Related Products Section has produced a special volume titled Arizona Highways Album: The Road to Statehood. The book is replete with historical photographs gleaned from a search through every known repository by the editor, Dean Smith, and contains essays by well-known Arizona historians and journalists with a linking narrative by Smith. On these pages, we are pleased to present two of the essays and a sampling of the book's illustrations.

Good Old Days? Bah, Humbug!

During the last several decades of her eighty-six years, my mother said a gleeful "Hallelujah!" every time she tossed clothes into a washing machine. As a housewife whose lifetime in Arizona spanned from horse-and-buggy territory at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix, she had, she said, "witnessed the invention of more marvelous machines than I can say grace over." But the washing machine epitomized her own liberation from the good old days of yesteryear. In her younger years in Globe, "Washdays were like moving hell, taking two loads at a time," she'd say, "and bending over that washboard was enough to put a permanent warp in a body's backbone." Truth to tell, washdays in Arizona Territory didn't begin on washdays. They began with making the soap-a glutinous boiled mess of lye, tallow, and ashes concocted, because of the strong odor, over an outdoor fire. Then there was the making of the starch, which had to be strained for lumps and scum. And the melting of the bluing balls-marble-hard little numbers used in the final rinse tub on the theory they made white clothes whiter. It must have been a little bit of washday heaven when Fels Naptha bar soap and Mrs. Stewart's Liquid Bluing became available. Washday itself began about sunup with the chopping of wood for yet another fire and the carrying of water, bucket by bucket, to fill the tubs atop the flames. (As the water heated, the housewife was free to prepare a killer-sized breakfast-usually fried eggs, steak, bacon, beans, gravy, biscuits, jams, honey, and coffee. Folks didn't fret about cholesterol in those days.) Soap and clothes were placed into the first tub to be boiled and stirred with a broom handle bleached white with use. Fished out of that brew and put into the next tub, the clothes were scrubbed on a corrugated washboard that had a tendency to take skin off knuckles as well as dirt out of clothes. After they had been hung out to dry, freshly laundered clothes were sprinkled with water, rolled into tight little balls, and stashed in laundry baskets overnight.

(FAR LEFT) Ah, washday! Arizona pioneer women were amazingly resourceful. They took whatever fate gave them, which usually wasn't much, and made do. What a difference a modern washerdryer would have meant in this scene! HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHY COLLECTION, HERB AND DOROTHY MCLAUGHLIN (ABOVE) While their long-suffering wives were slaving under primitive conditions at home, what were the men of lateterritorial days doing? Why, they were toasting the ladies at the nearest saloon, safe in the knowledge that it was a sacred all-male refuge. ARIZONA HISTORICAL SOCIETY, TUCSON

They were pressed with heavy flatirons heated atop the wood-burning stove. Heat control (a dampened finger flicked against the iron's sole) was especially crucial for pressing starched garments. Too hot, the starch scorched; not hot enough, the fabric stuck to the iron and wrinkled.

Bathing was the Saturday Night Special of the territory. More water to haul and heat on the kitchen stove. Young'uns were bathed in metal tubs in the kitchen; adults carried hot water to the bathroom's tub, using a kerosene stove to take the chill off the room in winter. (Presuming, of course, there was an indoor bathroom. In towns, there usually was; in the coun-

try, there usually wasn't.)

Okay, easier. Cots were hauled outdoors for cooler sleeping. Cot legs were placed in empty jars, the better to discourage scorpions and other creepy crawlers.

"Most folks didn't wear enough night clothes to flag a handcar," Mother recalled, "and when the fire whistle blew on summer nights, they didn't stop to get presentable. One volunteer fireman always showed up in his long johns, but never his false teeth."

Cooking was of the from-scratch variety, including bread baking. Frijoles (beans) were the backbone of territorial diets, served at all three meals. Staples such as flour, lard, baking powder, coffee, and sugar were "store-bought" items. Ice and milk were delivered by horse-drawn wagons in town; a dampened-burlap cooler box and one's own cow were de rigueur in the country.

Canning, preserving, or sun-drying everything from tomatoes and berry jams to herbs were annual add-on chores during spring and summer months. But "feckless" was the word for a housewife who didn't keep a vegetable patch, some fruit trees and berry bushes, and a flock of chickens in the backyard.

As Mom recalled those days, every woman had her own area of expertise. Dress-making, maybe, or quilting, corn growing, ham smoking, or music making.

She considered her own talent to be healing the sick. Sick humans or sick horses, she meant, and often the treat-ment was the same for man or beast. Her home remedies consisted of such things as turpentine, cascara, Epsom salts, calomel, castor oil, pennyroyal, glycerine, oil of cloves, cod-liver oil, mint leaves, honey, whiskey, and Arizona sunshine.

ment was the same for man or beast. Her home remedies consisted of such things as turpentine, cascara, Epsom salts, calomel, castor oil, pennyroyal, glycerine, oil of cloves, cod-liver oil, mint leaves, honey, whiskey, and Arizona sunshine.

"I stopped the bleeding on many an open wound with a poultice of cobwebs, saved many a horse with my watermelon seed tea," she'd proudly relate, "and cured many a miner's and cowboy's diarrhea with hefty slugs of blackberry brandy."

Though she could look back in fondness at those pre-statehood years, it seemed always to be fondness sans regret.

"I think we had a better sense of our own creatureliness in the scheme of things," she'd say. "We lived and worked outdoors as much as indoors. We knew the orbits of moon and stars and found solace and inspiration in glorious Arizona sunrises and sunsets. Didn't have to peek around a high rise to see them, either."

Those were some of the positive parts of territorial life.

These were some of the negatives: "Looking back, all we women seemed to do was work, work, work. Even in slowdown times there were socks to be darned, collars to be turned, lamps to fill, wicks to trim, wood to chop, meals to prepare, dishes to wash, the garden to hoe.... It really wasn't the menfolks' fault that they didn't give us a hand around the house. Men simply didn't in those days.

"I think a lot of us suffered guilty pangs of resentment that men did their chores, or worked their shifts, and then they were done. They were free to read the paper, play some cards, go to town, and socialize in the saloons and lodge halls. Those were the days when that little poem was all too true: Man may work from sun to sun, but woman's work is never done."

Then she'd laugh, shrug, and say, "Compared to that, give me conditioned air and fabrics that wash and wear. Good old days? Bah, humbug."

And the Bells RANG OUT BY DON DEDERA

In the darkness of territorial obscurity, Arizona had been sprinting flat out for five decades. But when statehood finally came, it entered with a slow, sun-splashed, somewhat comic sashay. For many a pioneer, it had been a long, bitter struggle. Two unexpected and unnecessary delays were added to the tension when President William Howard Taft out of petulance refused to admit Arizona on Lincoln's Birthday; then out of superstition, withheld his signature on the thirteenth day of the month. Now the day of fulfillment: Wednesday, February 14, 1912: St. Valentine's Day. Awaiting the flash from Washington were a people made snappishly independent by federal abuse and neglect. They had not only endured Geronimo, confiscatory freight rates, and libelous jour nalism, but a Congress that had seriously proposed naming the territory "Gadsonia" after the Gadsden Purchase. Rallying around the poetry of Sharlot Hall, they had noisily defeated joint statehood with New Mexico. And they had gambled the whole game by adopting the nation's most progressive constitution. This was the moment of a thousand victories. At 10:23 A.M. Washington time on St. Valentine's Day, motion picture camerasrolled for the first time at an official Presidential ceremony. Abruptly, in Phoenix, a telegraph key clattered out the official message from the President: "I have this morning signed the proclamation declaring Arizona to be a state...." A stack of forty-eight sticks of dynamite echoed the people's approval in Bisbee. In Globe a cannon spoke forty-eight times. Engineers yanked whistle cords on boilers of locomotives, laundries, fac tories, mines, creameries, and mills. In Tucson the siren at the waterworks wailed, while University of Arizona R.O.T.C. cadets crisply executed closeorder drill. In Prescott, Whiskey Row. raised a toast of firewater and pistol shots, and Arizona-born boys and girls tossed handfuls of earth to nurture a native white oak transplanted to the plaza. A parade marched around the Yavapai County Courthouse. In Flagstaff, a newsman wrote, "Now, b'gosh, even the grub tastes better." Governor-elect George W. P. Hunt received the word in his quarters at the Ford Hotel in downtown Phoenix. Hunt was a picture politician of his day. Portly, bulletheaded, owlish behind circular lenses, magnificently mustachioed, he had almost mystic magnetism for the masses. Now he turned to his speech writer and executive secretary, Mulford Winsor, and said, "Well, it is time to go." Hunt had pleaded for modesty and restraint for his inaugural. But on Second Avenue, despite the governor's wishes, an impressive motorcade was forming for the journey to the state capitol on the western edge of the little town. "I shall walk," he had announced, spurning half a dozen invitations to ride.

Thus he projected his message to the pressing crowds that would elect him again and again: "My walk, may it be symbolic of the economies of my administration." The entourage matched Hunt's snailish pace. Bands from the militia, from Phoenix Indian School, and from the Tempe Normal School marked time while Hunt skipped around muddy chuckholes beyond the paving and heaved his bulk across irrigation ditches. In forty-three minutes, the governor-elect covered the fifteen blocks. He climbed the steps to the second floor of the somber pile of granite, tufa, malapai, steel, and zinc-often called the nation's ugliest building-and took the oath of office. At Hunt's request, no special decorations were evidenced. No honor guard. Just a few flags. Hunt pledged anew his support of the new state's model constitution, calling it "a beacon light to those states and lands and peoples where the seed of popular government had been sown but not brought forth fruit. "My administration," he informed his audience of fifteen thousand, "insofar as my conduct can ensure it, will be progressive." As if to set an example, he went to his office after the inaugural address and put in a respectable part of a day's work. A reception was followed downtown by street dancing, star pinning, and public displays. Some sort of festival enlivened nearly every Arizona community. The Phoenix procession began at 1:30, with virtually every patriotic and fraternal organization involved. Band units, fire companies, and school groups passed in review. Sixteen veterans of the SpanishAmerican War filed by. There followed forty-eight maidens gowned in white and crowned in gold. A much-publicized cannonade, to consist of forty-eight howitzer salutes on the city hall plaza, so shook windowpanes and unsettled horses that the booms were halted at thirty-eight. William Jennings Bryan, perennial presidential candidate, more than filled the gap by delivering a two-hour oration. At the Woman's Club of Phoenix, Miss Hazel Goldberg and Joseph T. Melczer, two of the city's more popular young people, were joined in wedlock. A society reporter observed: "Master Cupid was indeed present and gallantly guided the bridal party toward the altar, this office being performed by a tiny white-clad figure bearing the name of Master Barry Goldwater...who carried in his arms a bow and quiver of arrows." That night dancers at the Inaugural Ball reveled shoulder to shoulder in front of the Adams Hotel. As the hour grew late, a Hush swept the crowd as a hundred voices of the Phoenix Choral Society sang a cappella "The Star-Spangled Banner." A photographer had set up his equipment, and, (FAR LEFT) All over Arizona, during the last interminable months of territorial bondage, people waited for the good news of statehood. Fun-loving Prescott folks decorated their cars for a parade.

(LEFT) The Capitol balcony in Phoenix on the morning of February 14, 1912: the words were mostly Mulford Winsor's, but the emotion was Governor George W.P. Hunt's as he promised "a progressive administration" in his inaugural address. ARIZONA STATE LIBRARY As the music ended, he waved his hand as a signal to extinguish the streetlights.

"Then there was a blinding light and a big boom as the flash powder ignited,"

wrote a reporter. "Windows rattled and a shower of fire fell, some landing on the arm of the photographer's assistant and burning his arm. Suddenly the governor appeared and a great cheer arose." Even while the brand-new governor addressed the freshly minted citizens, a reporter for The Arizona Republican captured a poignant vignette: "And, as a short little fellow drew the cinch tight under the belly of his pony, preparing for a long ride back home through the night, he asked of a tall fellow who had already mounted, 'S'pose they have this kinda doin's back in the States?'" Arizona's big day was done.

Colorful Events Celebrate Statehood Day

Set the bells to ringing and ignite the skies with fireworks, bring on the food for an old-fashioned family picnic, strike up the band, and put on your dancing shoes. Arizona is throwing a giant Diamond Anniversary party on Statehood Day, Saturday, February 14, 1987. The festivities begin at 11:00 A.M. in downtown Phoenix at the newly renovated Carnegie Library which will be celebrating its grand reopening as the Carnegie Museum and Arizona Hall of Fame. At noon in towns and cities across the state, hundreds of bells will ring out as they did in 1912. The afternoon includes a leadership luncheon at Phoenix's Heritage Square and a parade from First Avenue and Washington to the Capitol, commemorating the parade led by George W. P. Hunt, the first state governor, along the same route he chose for his inaugural march seventy-five years ago. Once the parade reaches the Capitol, Governor Evan Mecham will reenact the signing of statehood documents. The celebration in Phoenix contin-ues at Wesley Bolin Plaza with an oldfashioned family picnic complete with top-name entertainment. The daytime celebrations climax at dusk with a fireworks extravaganza at the Capitol. That evening, festivities continue at the Arizona Biltmore Hotel with the elegant Diamond Jubilee Ball honoring Senator Barry Goldwater. Proceeds of the black-tie affair benefit the Arizona Historical Society and the Arizona Chapter of the Leukemia Society. In addition to Statehood Day observances in the capital city, many other communities throughout the state plan to commemorate the jubilee in their own special ways. Celebrations will continue throughout the year in observance of the seventy-fifth anniversary. For more information on statehood celebrations, contact the Diamond Jubilee Commission, Governor's Office, 1700 W. Washington, Phoenix, AZ 85007; telephone 252-2565. -R.J.F.

"Central and WashingtonPhoenix" by Jo Proferes; oil, 36 by 54 inches. In this early twentieth-century view, the National Bank of Arizona is on the left. Behind it is the Lubrs Hotel. On the right, in front, is the Porter building.