Tag Archives: Maricopa County

The Arizona State Fair – A Longstanding Tradition

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The Arizona State Fair, which opened on October 11th and will run through November 3rd, has been held at its present location since December of 1905, when the celebration was known as the Arizona Territorial Fair in recognition of the soon-to-be state’s legal status within the Union. Initially staged in 1884 on land adjacent to the Salt River, the fair was forced into hiatus following the then undammed river’s catastrophic 1891 flood. By mid-1905, a group Arizona civic leaders hoping to resume fair activities organized the Arizona Territorial Fair Association. This entity paid $9,200 for eighty acres of land at what the Los Angeles Times reported to be “an especially good” location with the intent of providing a new home for the displaced fair.

The relocation and return of the multi-day gathering of Arizonans and out-of-state visitors proved tremendously successful, with the Arizona Republican newspaper proclaiming the undertaking to have “opened most auspiciously” and closed in “a brilliant finish.” The illustrations below bookended the Republican’s coverage of the 1905 affair. The top drawing shows Miss Phoenix welcoming a large and eager crowd to the Arizona Territorial Fair, while the bottom image depicts Miss Phoenix preparing for bed upon the event’s closing, with a caption declaring, “Now I’m content and can take a much needed rest.” The letter shown on the table in the bottom piece is addressed to Miss Phoenix and reads, “Miss Phoenix: We, the people of Arizona and the Southwest, congratulate you upon the success of the fair.”

Mercury Mining in Dreamy Draw

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Dreamy Draw, mercury, mercury mining, cinnabar, SR51 Squaw Peak Parkway, State Route 51, Piestewa Parkway, Arizona history, Arizona historian, AZHistorian, John Larsen Southard, John Southard, Southard, Phoenix, Phoenix Mountain Preserve

A Depression-era photo taken from Arizona Department of Mines and Mineral Resources Bulletin 103, “A Review of Mercury Mining in the Phoenix Mountains, Maricopa County.” The caption shown accompanies the image in the bulletin.
Image credit: Arizona Department of Mines and Mineral Resources

Television weather forecasters often use the word mercury as a synonym for temperature, particularly when reporting on the summer heat. As such, it is appropriate that mercury, an element sometimes known as quicksilver, was once mined in the Valley of the Sun. Though the mercury-laden cinnabar found in the Phoenix Mountains yielded a relatively insignificant amount of the deleterious material used in the manufacture of explosives, thermometers, and a number of scientific instruments, its presence in the hills surrounding State Route 51 near Northern Avenue is reflected in nearby place names to this very day. Dreamy Draw, the area now enjoyed by many hikers and other outdoor enthusiasts, gained its moniker from the dazed, or ‘dreamy,’ effect witnessed in miners who worked with the neurotoxin, while Paradise Valley Unified School District’s Mercury Mine Elementary School takes its name from the filled-in mineshaft atop which the school’s ball field now sits.

I recently had the pleasure of discussing the history of Phoenix-area mercury mining with Nadine Arroyo Rodriguez, a reporter for KJZZ’s The Show, a weekly program that airs from 2 to 3 on Friday afternoons. To listen to Nadine’s segment and learn more about this interesting, albeit relatively unknown aspect of Valley history, please visit the following link:http://www.kjzz.org/content/1310/did-you-know-how-dreamy-draw-got-its-name.

Carl Hayden – An Arizona Legend

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Carl Hayden, Tempe, Tempean, Tempeans, Charles Hayden, Charles Trumbull Hayden, Monti's, Monti's La Casa Vieja, La Casa Vieja, Arizona history, Arizona historian, AZHistorian, John Larsen Southard, John Southard, Southard, Hayden, Arizona, Arizona politics

This Miles Stafford Rolph III-crafted memorial to Arizona’s longest-serving member of Congress is located in the Russell Senate Office Building.
Image credit: senate.gov

“They’d probably vote landlocked Arizona a navy if he asked for it.”

The above quote from a 1971 Los Angeles Times article refers to the level of respect with which his fellow members of Congress viewed Arizona’s Carl Hayden, who was born in Tempe on this date in 1877. Hayden, son of Hayden’s Ferry (now Tempe) founder Charles Trumbull Hayden, represented Arizonans in Washington for 56 years and 319 days, a longstanding record now bested only by the many years of service logged by the late Robert Byrd of West Virginia and John Dingell, a still-serving Michigan Democrat who first took office in December of 1955.

Hayden’s birthplace, the National Register-listed adobe home that is now Monti’s La Casa Vieja, stands directly across the street from the Hayden-owned flour mill for which Tempe’s Mill Avenue is named. Indeed, Hayden’s impressive political career began in the then-small town of Tempe, where he served on the town council. Hayden went on to win terms as treasurer and sheriff of Maricopa County prior to being sent to the nation’s capital as Arizona’s first member of the House of Representatives. After fifteen years in the lower chamber, Hayden won election to the United States Senate, where he served for forty-two years. Hayden tirelessly advocated for his home state during his nearly fifty-seven years in D.C., garnering admiration even from those on the other side of the aisle, as evidenced by Republican Barry Goldwater quietly raising funds for Hayden’s final campaign for re-election. In a time now thought of as being relatively free of the partisan rancor plaguing Washington today, Goldwater discreetly supported Hayden because he knew the Tempean passionately and effectively served their shared constituents.

Central among Hayden’s many legislative accomplishments is the 1968 passage of the Colorado River Basin Project Act that authorized the Central Arizona Project. A longtime goal of the then-nonagenarian, this costly and complex endeavor transports Colorado River water to quench the thirst of Phoenicians and Tucsonans, thus facilitating ongoing population growth and economic expansion not possible without the benefit of this far-off water source. Hayden’s greatest legislative victory served as the capstone to his legendary Congressional career. Just months after the bill’s passage, he retired from the Senate, thereby allowing Barry Goldwater to return to the august body as his duly elected successor. Hayden spent much of his final three years of life working at his office in ASU’s Hayden Library, a repository named not for the much-admired public servant, but instead christened in honor of Hayden’s father, Charles Trumbull Hayden. The former Senate president pro tempore passed away on January 25, 1972. His well-attended funeral service was held in ASU’s Grady Gammage Memorial Auditorium, which later served as the venue for the 1998 funeral of Hayden colleague and friend Barry Goldwater.