ALONG THE WAY

Towns with Perfectly Good Names Find It Pays to Come Up with a Catchy Alias

Nestled in the Cerbat Mountains in the northwest part of the state, Chloride, Arizona, boasts a population of somewhere between 350 and 400 people. While admittedly no Big Apple, the town does not lack civic pride. There are a Chloride Chamber of Commerce, a visitors center, and a town slogan. "Gem of the Cerbats" is what they call their spot on the map. If you want to know why, just stop by whenever you're heading up or down U.S. Route 93, which is exactly the point: You stop instead of speeding on. As long as we've had towns in Arizona, we've had people coming up with phrases designed to capture the spirit of the place and the attention of those who might be convinced to visit. Tucson's chamber of commerce was founded in 1896. By 1906 it had proclaimed Tucson "Arizona's Playground." A few years later, the tag was "The Chief Commercial City of Arizona," proud but dull. Where was the flair, the panache that could make a city famous? In 1915 the local paper, The Arizona Daily Star, pointed out how Walla Walla, Washington, had risen to new heights with the unforgettable, if almost unpronounceable, "What Walla Walla Wants Is You." Certainly, Tucson could match that. There would be a contest, the editor announced, to find the perfect slogan. After all, he wrote, "Every forward movement in the history of the world has had a song or a slogan."

The results of this contest proved less than historic. "Drown Your Blues in the Santa Cruz" was the entry of one wag, possibly a suggestion to the editor who had come up with the idea. Another thought the appropriate city banner should demand "Tucson: Pay Your Debts." A few had an almost Zenlike message. Judges were expected to meditate on "Tucson: Chief among Equals." The one preferred was the staid "Tucson Suits Me: It Will Blood Saloon, and a sheriff whose invitations to a hanging were rebuked by a President of the U.S. And, if there were still any question of what this destination had to offer, consider this: Since the late 1800s, Holbrook had been known as "The Town Too Tough for Women and Churches." Now there are plenty of both in Holbrook but no slogan. Prescott has two slogans. In December it is the "Christmas City," with merchants' choice of 1929: "Arizona's Smelter City." Kingman also was a gateway, "Gateway to the Hoover Dam." Now it is at the "Heart of Historic Route 66." Old Williams has insisted on staying put as the longtime "Gateway to the Grand Canyon." Some towns are an adman's delight, like Ajo, "Where the Summer Spends the Winter." Some towns can't get any better than Tombstone, "The Town Too Tough to Die." But coming up with a good slogan and a new one is no easy task. Winslow, "A Bit of Southern Hospitality in the Old West," was once positioned as "The Meteor City, in the Heart of a Land of Enchantment." Today that would place it somewhere in that other "Land of Enchantment," the state of New Mexico. As Tucson once did, Marana turned to a contest in 1996 for its slogan. The more than 700 submissions included lines about climate and opportunity, sunshine and sunsets. One contestant went for the human element, proposing Marana be known as a place "Where the Men Are Strong, The Women Are Good Looking, and the Kids Are Above Average." But the choice for the town north of Tucson was the friendly invitation to "Come Grow with Us." Perhaps someone missed the true jewel of the Marana entries: "If the Mayor Ain't Happy, Ain't Nobody Happy." Now that's a slogan.

Suit You," which was thankfully followed by other slogans across the years. Today Tucson is "The Old Pueblo," a reference to the city as one of the early European settlements of the Southwest. Historical, yes, but without that brain-twisting quality of the 1915 entry: "Tucson - Climate if You Want It." And, if you didn't... you could always go to Holbrook. Holbrook, in northeastern Arizona, did offer a certain amount of excitement for travelers in the early years of the 20th century. There was a recent history of gunfights, the appropriately named Bucket of