Tag Archives: Southard

Arizona and Daylight Saving Time

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Daylight Saving Time, Arizona history, Arizona historian, AZHistorian, John Larsen Southard, John Southard, Southard, DST

An anti-Daylight Saving Time quote included in a March 11th, 1968 Tucson Daily Citizen article entitled “3-1 Margin: Poll Shows Most Favor DST Death”

Why Doesn’t Arizona Observe Daylight Saving Time?

While residents of 47 of the 48 contiguous states started this week by setting their clocks back one hour in observance of Daylight Saving Time (Indiana joined the party in 2006), Arizonans have not had to heed the advice “spring forward, fall back” for nearly half a century. How did this come to be the case?

Until the late nineteenth century, most Americans used the sun’s position in the sky to determine their local time, with noon being the point in the day when the sun was seen directly overhead. Although this practice meant that localities within the same state might observe slightly different times based upon their respective locations, the solar-based timekeeping system generally worked well for communities prior to the advent of relatively rapid intercity transportation.

America’s growing rail network necessitated a more uniform and precise system of measuring time. As there were then no federal laws regarding time standards, railroad companies joined forces to craft a uniform system, resulting in the railroads and many municipalities voluntary adopting a five-zone time system known as standard time. This privately-devised system was the precursor to the World War I-era Standard Time Act that formally introduced both standard time and daylight saving time in an effort to save electricity during the war effort.

Press reports indicate that daylight saving time, a system designed to permit more everyday activities to be conducted at times when electric lighting would not be needed, initially proved popular in Arizona. The October 11th, 1918 Coconino Sun reported that the law resulted in “a saving in bills for artificial lighting,” with many residents “[noticing] that their electric light bills at home were less than in former summer months.”

Though effective for reducing energy usage, Daylight Saving Time was widely unpopular, resulting in it being repealed shortly after Armistice Day, although Standard Time has remained the law of the land from 1918 onward. The Daylight Saving Time policy returned on a nationwide basis during World War II, but was a state-by-state decision following the war. Piecemeal retention of the Daylight Saving Time system prompted railroads and other transportation concerns to advocate for a federal solution to the growing problem of state-legislated time standards, resulting in the Uniform Time Act of 1966. This law mandated use of the Daylight Saving system, although it did permit states to opt out of the scheme. Arizona observed Daylight Saving Time in 1967, although the widespread usage of air conditioning units led to Arizonans being less enthused about the policy than their 1918 counterparts.

While the Daylight Saving standard helped Arizonans to reduce energy consumption during World War I and World War II, a new set of concerns emerged by the late 1960s. Parents complained that it was difficult to convince children to go to bed during daylight hours, moviegoers voiced displeasure at the idea of another summer of later than normal drive-in films, and nearly all objected to the idea of an extra hour of heat during their activity-filled days. Arizonans concerned about the aforementioned issues, as well as matters not listed, called upon their legislators to pass an exemption from the federal law, which state solons did in time to preclude their constituents from springing forward in early 1968. A March 10th, 1969 Arizona Republic editorial highlighted the value of this exemption by reminding readers that under the Daylight Saving system, summer sunsets would occur at approximately 9 p.m., at which point, “it’s still hot as blazes!”

Arizonans Should Celebrate Theodore Roosevelt’s Birthday

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Theodore Roosevelt's birthday, Roosevelt Dam, Reclamation Act, 1911, Arizona history, Arizona historian, AZHistorian, John Larsen Southard, John Southard, Southard

The recently dedicated Roosevelt Dam dominated the colorful cover of the August 12th, 1911 edition of Scientific American.

Renaissance man Theodore Roosevelt was born 155 years ago yesterday in New York City, a place very different from the far-off and not-then existent Arizona Territory that would later derive great benefit from his presidency.

Roosevelt is most closely associated with our state through his leadership of the courageous Rough Riders of Spanish-American War fame, many of whom hailed from Arizona. While not as widely known and arguably far less interesting than the battlefield heroics of the all-volunteer Rough Riders, Arizonans should also recognize Roosevelt for signing the 1902 Newlands Reclamation Act into law. This landmark legislation authorized several large-scale water reclamation projects in the arid lands west of the 100th meridian, including our Roosevelt Dam.

Completed in 1911, the $10 million Roosevelt Dam helped to ensure Valley residents a reliable water supply, thereby largely ending the decades-long struggle against unpredictable supplies of water that left Phoenix-area farm fields flooded in times of overabundant precipitation and parched in times of drought. The project’s significance was not lost on local residents or the press, as evidenced by the March 19, 1911 edition of the Arizona Republican that bore headlines proclaiming “Life Blood of Valley Turned Into its Arteries by Theodore Roosevelt,” thus signaling a “Triumphant Ending of the Great Project.”

Today just one among the string of several dams along the Salt River, the now-enlarged Roosevelt Dam has been vitally important to the vitality and prosperity of the Phoenix metropolitan area for more than a century. However, the dam’s importance – widely recognized during its construction and through the present day – and Roosevelt’s much-publicized 1911 visit still failed to deliver Arizona’s 1912 electoral college votes to third-party candidate Roosevelt, who fared better in the state than Republican Howard Taft, Socialist Eugene V. Debs, and Prohibition nominee Eugene W. Chafin, but couldn’t top the vote tally of Democrat Woodrow Wilson.

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.