Postcard Traveller: Arizona

Viser innlegg med etiketten Arizona. Vis alle innlegg

torsdag 18. april 2024

USA - Native Americans of Arizona

Sender: US-Peter (MrMopar) 10242126

tirsdag 25. januar 2022

Usa - Scottsdale, Arizona

The West's Most Western Town.

Scottsdale is a city in the eastern part of Maricopa County, Arizona, United States, and is part of the Greater Phoenix Area.

USA - Frontier Town, Cave creek, Arizona

Cave Creek was first inhabited by the ancient Native-American tribe known as the Hohokam. The area, which in the 1800s belonged to Mexico, was ceded to the United States in what is known as the Mexican Cession of 1848. Cave Creek is located within the area which became known as the United States Territory of Arizona. In 1986, The Town of Cave Creek was incorporated. Some of the structures are listed in the National Register of Historic Properties.

Cave Creek and the surrounding area was inhabited by the members of the Hohokam Indians. Hohokam is a Pima (O'odham) word used by archaeologists to identify a group of people who lived in the Sonoran Desert of North America. The Hohokam may have been the ancestors of the historic Akimel O'odham (Pima) and Tohono O'odham peoples in Southern Arizona. The reason for which the Hohokam abandoned the area is unknown. The Tonto Apaches claimed the land.

Usa - Lake Havasu City, Arizona

London bridge, Lake Havasu City, Arizona

The bridge, one of 7 which spanned the historic Thames River.

Lake Havasu City is a city in Mohave County, Arizona, United States. According to 2010 census, the population of the city was 52,527 people.

Usa - Desert Plants of the Southwest

Desert botanical garden in Phoenix

USA - The sundial at town centre Carefree, Arizona state

Carefree is a town in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the population of the town is 3,363.

History

Characterized as an upscale residential area, Carefree was conceived in the mid-1950s by business partners K.T. Palmer and Tom Darlington as a master-planned community. Land sales commenced in 1955 and homebuilding started in 1958. Carefree was incorporated in 1984 to avoid annexation by neighboring Scottsdale.

Features

The Carefree sundial, designed by architect Joe Wong and solar engineer John I. Yellott, was erected in the Sundial Circle plaza in 1959 and claims to be the "third largest sundial in the Western Hemisphere". The sundial, which points to the North Star, is made from a steel frame and covered in anodized copper. It measures 90 feet (27 m) in diameter. The metal gnomon, the shadow-casting portion of the dial, stands 35 feet (11 m) above the plaza and extends 72 feet (22 m).

Carefree was the long-time home of Southwestern Studios, originally built in 1968 as Fred Graham Studios by actor, stunt man, and Arizona Film Commissioner Fred Graham. The sprawling 160-acre (0.65 km²) desert property adjacent to North Scottsdale featured three state-of-the-art soundstages, edit bays, 35mm screening room, make-up, production facilities, western street and back lot. In the early 1970s, Stage 1 of the studio was used for The New Dick Van Dyke Show starring Dick Van Dyke, Hope Lange, Fannie Flagg, and Marty Brill. Stage 1 also was used for the filming of one of Orson Welles' last films, The Other Side of the Wind, with John Huston, Oja Kodar, Susan Strasberg, Bob Random and Peter Bogdanovich.

The studio was used for the filming of Bob Hope's last feature film, Cancel My Reservation, with Eva Marie Saint, Ralph Bellamy, and Forrest Tucker. Scenes were also shot in Carefree and at the studio for Michaelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point, on the back lot, where a mock-up of the Carefree mansion was built and then exploded. The studio was also used for Paul Newman's scenes in Pocket Money, for Bill Cosby's feature debut, Man and Boy, for which the western street was built, and for Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, again the western street. The short, silent feature Time River was shot on Stages 2 and 3 and extensively on the back lot and western street sets.

Southwestern Studios was also used in television productions. In 1973–74, local resident Hugh Downs produced and hosted two pilot episodes for a unique show, Foursome, that was both a game show and talk show, where four celebrities came together to play various games and interact with each other. In one episode, actors Janet Leigh and Robert Culp and comedians Jo Anne Worley and Alan Sues played a game of tennis. In the other episode, shot on Stage 3, dancer-singer-actor Ann Miller, Robert Culp, Jo Anne Worley, and Alan Sues played a popular board game. In 1974, Southwestern Studios was the location on Stage 2 and the back lot for the filming of the TV movie, McMasters of Sweetwater, starring Jack Cassidy and Loretta Ball and directed by Robert Butler.

Later renamed Carefree Studios, the studio was razed in 1999. The Studio, western street, and pristine desert back lot property was developed into retail space and residential development.

Carefree is 17 miles (27 km) west of Bartlett Lake, in the Tonto National Forest.

Gordon Lightfoot wrote and sang a song named "Carefree Highway." He took the name from a section of Arizona State Route 74 in north Phoenix, to explain his mood at that time.

USA - Phoenix, capital city of Arizona state

Phoenix (Hoozdo in Navajo) is the capital city of Arizona state. Phoenix is also called "Valley of the Sun". Phoenix was settled in 1867 as an agricultural community. It became the capital of Arizona Territory in 1889. It is in the northeastern reaches of the Sonoran Desert and has a hot desert climate. Despite this, its canal system led to a thriving farming community with the original settlers' crops remaining important parts of the Phoenix economy for decades, such as alfalfa, cotton, citrus, and hay. Cotton, cattle, citrus, climate, and copper were known locally as the "Five C's" anchoring Phoenix's economy. These remained the driving forces of the city until after World War II, when high-tech companies began to move into the valley and air conditioning made Phoenix's hot summers more bearable.

Early history

Map portraying ancestral Hohokam lands circa 1350

Map of Hohokam lands ca. 1350

The Hohokam people occupied the Phoenix area for 2,000 years. They created roughly 135 miles (217 kilometers) of irrigation canals, making the desert land arable, and paths of these canals were used for the Arizona Canal, Central Arizona Project Canal, and the Hayden-Rhodes Aqueduct. They also carried out extensive trade with the nearby Ancient Puebloans, Mogollon, and Sinagua, as well as with the more distant Mesoamerican civilizations. It is believed periods of drought and severe floods between 1300 and 1450 led to the Hohokam civilization's abandonment of the area.

After the departure of the Hohokam, groups of Akimel O'odham (commonly known as Pima), Tohono O'odham, and Maricopa tribes began to use the area, as well as segments of the Yavapai and Apache.^[The O'odham were offshoots of the Sobaipuri tribe, who in turn were thought to be the descendants of the Hohokam.

The Akimel O'odham were the major group in the area. They lived in small villages with well-defined irrigation systems that spread over the Gila River Valley, from Florence in the east to the Estrellas in the west. Their crops included corn, beans, and squash for food as well as cotton and tobacco. They banded with the Maricopa for protection against incursions by the Yuma and Apache tribes. The Maricopa are part of the larger Yuma people; however, they migrated east from the lower Colorado and Gila Rivers in the early 1800s, when they began to be enemies with other Yuma tribes, settling among the existing communities of the Akimel O'odham.

The Tohono O'odham also lived in the region, but largely to the south and all the way to the Mexican border. The O'odham lived in small settlements as seasonal farmers who took advantage of the rains, rather than the large-scale irrigation of the Akimel. They grew crops such as sweet corn, tapery beans, squash, lentils, sugar cane, and melons, as well as taking advantage of native plants such as saguaro fruits, cholla buds, mesquite tree beans, and mesquite candy (sap from the mesquite tree). They also hunted local game such as deer, rabbit, and javelina for meat.

The Mexican–American War ended in 1848, Mexico ceded its northern zone to the United States, and the region's residents became U.S. citizens. The Phoenix area became part of the New Mexico Territory. In 1863, the mining town of Wickenburg was the first to be established in Maricopa County, to the northwest of Phoenix. Maricopa County had not been incorporated; the land was within Yavapai County, which included the major town of Prescott to the north of Wickenburg.

The Army created Fort McDowell on the Verde River in 1865 to forestall Indian uprisings. The fort established a camp on the south side of the Salt River by 1866, which was the first settlement in the valley after the decline of the Hohokam. Other nearby settlements later merged to become the city of Tempe.