Sylvester Mowry’s life was short but eventful. Some called him an egotist, a braggart and a liar. But when the news of his death, at age 38, reached Arizona in 1871, one newspaper noted: “In the death of Mr. Mowry, this Territory has lost the most faithful friend it has ever had. … We can ill afford to lose the advocacy of a man so influential and so earnest.” Mowry’s influence included the mining town that bore his name — and was one of Arizona’s oldest mining camps.
Long before an artificial lake became a gleam in the eyes of civic leaders, one of Arizona’s first Olympic-size pools was the pride of Tempe. Wanting a wholesome attraction for young people, members of the Tempe Civic Club selected a swath of land at the corner of First Street (now Rio Salado Parkway) and Mill Avenue for the public pool; the parcel’s owner offered a rebate on the sale price in exchange for naming the new park Tempe Beach.
Tempe is sophisticated and cool. But it looked very different in the 1870s. Instead of the suburban college town it is today, it was a rural community where people came from all over to work in agriculture. Among those who took advantage of Tempe’s fertile farmland was Danish immigrant Niels Petersen, who became a U.S. citizen in 1878 and homesteaded 160 acres of land in town. Today, the house on that property, known as the Petersen House, is one of the last visible reminders of what Tempe used to be.
With some 25 percent of returning soldiers facing “shell shock” after World War I, the U.S. embraced a new model of care, greatly expanding convalescent facilities for the sick and wounded — and the American Red Cross played a key role. “Back of all the physical problems still stands the mental one,” wrote Henry P. Davison, the organization’s War Council chairman. “Depression, discouragement, relaxation of hope … is the malady that requires most skillful medicine, and that if uncured may make all the drugs and surgery of no avail.”
These days, a cross-country flight doesn’t usually make news, but in the early 1920s, America was still getting acquainted with air travel, and the idea of mailing a letter in New York and having it arrive in San Francisco in an airplane was hard for many Americans to comprehend. On December 31, 1920, John Goldstrom, a reporter for what then was called The Arizona Republican, set out to demystify the process by mailing a valuable parcel — himself — from coast to coast.
When you hear “Prescott,” you might think of Whiskey Row, Thumb Butte or the “World’s Oldest Rodeo.” Fashion probably doesn’t spring to mind. But there was a time when fashion was big business in the mile-high city. By the time it closed, Thunderbird Fashions was one of Prescott’s largest employers, and its Southwest-inspired clothing carried the city’s name from coast to coast.
Photography has come a long way since 1952, when the first Pioneer Camera Shop opened at Fifth Street and Mill Avenue in downtown Tempe. Located in the historic Laird and Dines Building, just north of what now is the Harkins Valley Art theater, the shop was the dream of two East Coast natives who turned a hobby into a thriving business.
In 1926, Carl Mayhew was newly in love. No doubt, he still loved his wife of 14 years, and Ethel had no cause for jealousy. Because Carl was not infatuated with another woman. He was smitten with the lodge he had recently purchased in Oak Creek Canyon. “This wonderful place,” he wrote, “like a great sunken garden of orchards, roses and vine-covered buildings, is located at the bottom of the canyon … a canyon of mystery, with its great buff walls of sandstone eroded into fantastic shapes, silhouetted against the glorious Arizona sky.”
Marla Gaines Lawrence remembers walking Gilbert’s dirt roads as a child to head to Good Eats Dairy Bar for cheap burgers and root beer sold by the gallon. Gaines Lawrence, born in Gilbert in 1955, lived there when the town that now boasts more than 275,000 residents was still a rural farming community, with a single streetlight, nestled on the outskirts of Phoenix.
What would you do if you found Eden? If you’re like the succession of people who bought land around the hot springs near Eden, Arizona, you’d build a spa resort — or perhaps a commune of sorts. The vision for Indian Hot Springs, this particular paradise northwest of Safford, seems to have changed with the times. So did the visitors, who are said to have included Territorial-era soldiers, well-to-do health seekers and a legendary rock band.
