“The West’s Most Western Town” characterizes the city different than those around it. Embedded around this ideal, the Museum Western Spirit resides, selling the western ideal to visitors and residents. However, why was this name created? What purpose did it serve? Scottsdale, Arizona hosts many different events, has many different tourists’ locations but why was Western Spirit Museum built? The answer lies within the city’s history. However, it also has many half-truths behind it as well in terms of what it represents. Was Scottsdale truly a “wild” town in the west that later on turned into the vibrant city we know of today? There are many factors that play into this museums’ past and unfortunately it is broad. Therefore, to understand it, time periods will have to be jumped to fully understand where the slogan “West’s Most Western Town” comes from, why was the museum made or was it even supposed to be made?

The slogan “West’s Most Western Town” dates all the way back to 1947. The population in Scottsdale was rising faster than ever before. A good reason for this was the end of World War Two. Thunderbird airfield hosted more than five-thousand cadets and German prisoners of war were held in Scottsdale. After the war, many remained and thus, the city established The Scottsdale Chamber of Commerce in 1947. It is here where our famous slogan comes from. The commerce established the slogan “The West’s Most Western Town” in order to give the city an identity. Fast forward to modern day and we have the city that people desire to visit today. However, for Western Spirit one of the main eras for its creation begins in the 1990’s.

One of the first aspects for the creation of Western Spirit would have to be the surge of population in Scottsdale. In 1960, the city was ten-thousand strong within 5 square miles, yet, in 1984 it was what it is today at 185 square miles with a population of 88,364. This surge in population created opportunity for Scottsdale and in particular for tourism. In the late 1990’s the City of Scottsdale was in talks with gaining a museum with the Smithsonian. However, Western Spirit was not the first choice for gaining that achievement. The first bid was the Scottsdale Museum of Natural History and Cultural Center, non-profit, to bring a museum of National Caliber to Scottsdale. Unfortunately, the bid kept failing due to the lack of funds. In addition, the galleria building, which would be host to the museum, kept getting flooded with calls to be used as an office building. The lack of a building caused many problems for the city of Scottsdale trying to push for a Smithsonian Museum. With no idea or solution in sight, Scottsdale took note of another museum gaining success with Smithsonian. Almost entirely, basing its ideal of this museum, Scottsdale began to set itself on the right path.

All the way out in Wyoming, in the city of Cody, a museum of the “west” after Buffalo Bill was gaining much success. So much so that 225,000 visited the museum every year. Scottsdale saw this as an opportunity to open its own Museum of the same stature. Due to the Cody Museum being deemed “Smithsonian of the West” Scottsdale drew interest and considered building a $7.5 Western Museum in Downtown Scottsdale agreeing to share collections with the museum in Wyoming. Just two years later, the idea of “Museum of the West” was born. It will feature a rich palette of exhibit practices drawn from theatre, entertainment, new technologies, storytelling and media. After years of trying to obtain the Smithsonian title Scottsdale was on track with the Western Museum revolving Buffalo Bill. Gauging how much the museum would costs, Scottsdale came up with the estimate of $25 million for construction and $5 million for endowment funds but that’s the “Western Spirit”. Henceforth, came the name for the Museum. Aiming to be a museum like no other in Arizona, its main goal is to be a meeting place for the Old West and the New West, while also advocating for the future.

Western Spirit tells the story of old western tales and lore while also displaying exhibits of modern-day events. It was created for tourism and surely no doubt because Scottsdale needed more ways to entertain the ideal of being the most western town in the west. In addition, to gain the Smithsonian title in the city. By 2000, the population of Scottsdale rose to over two-hundred and two thousand people. With this increase Scottsdale began to create an area for the arts. Opening a contemporary art museum and Western Spirit. In January of 2015, Western Spirit officially opened its doors to the public to learn about Scottsdale and the wild west. However, the history of Scottsdale does simply not revolve around the wild west ideals. In truth, the “West’s most Western Town” was simply given the name in order to create an idea of the city and reigns from the museum from Wyoming. Although it may not be true to how the wild west may have operated. Its purpose was served fully, creating one of the most desirable locations in the Phoenix Metropolitan area.

One exhibit that Western Spirit holds deals with film and art. The movie posters exhibit at Western Spirit is arguably one of the biggest. In 2017 Western Spirit created an exhibition of old Western and Indian movie posters and graphic arts. With the help of Arizona State University, Western Spirit acquired five-thousand posters and lobby cards, estimated at five million dollars, dating from the early 1900’s to modern times. Becoming one of the biggest attractions at the museum, the movie posters exhibit is a real sight to see. One can go and look at how film and art has changed over the past one-hundred years. By entrusting all these collections with the museum, the hope is that visitors will be able to understand and value the collection for the future.

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In 2004, a defining piece of Frank Lloyd Wright's 1957 state capitol design rose in the Promenade shopping center in Scottsdale, Arizona. The shopping center desperately needed a focal point, and Frank Lloyd Wright's protégé, Arnold Roy, was happy to oblige. Wright's original design never graced the Capitol but Roy, who was Wright's apprentice during the controversial Oasis project, suggested it for the Promenade.

The 125-foot turquoise spire boasts 1,700 pieces of steel and weighs over 75,000 pounds. Its glowing, electric blue point can be seen in the distance across the North Valley. The corner of Scottsdale Road and Frank Lloyd Wright was the perfect spot for the piece to debut. The spire's hue is true to Wright's consistent use of natural colors that relate to the surrounding landscape and is unmistakenly an ode to Arizona's ubiquitous and world-renowned turquoise.

The Frank Lloyd Wright Spire is a tribute to the renowned architect's influence on the Valley of the Sun and the Capitol that never was.

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Many of the oldest remaining buildings constructed in the City of Scottsdale reside within the downtown area known to locals as “Old Town.” With a population of just over 2,000 residents, the city itself was incorporated in 1951. While several of the oldest structures remain and are represented within the 5 square miles which constituted this city at its inception, much of the development is far newer. Many of the newer constructions appear much older than they are, as they were designed with an Old Western aesthetic to match the city’s slogan: “[The] West’s Most Western Town”. The development within the area known as the Civic Center Mall is a prime example of this.

Adopting the slogan “West’s Most Western Town” reflected its roots and efforts to attract tourism, though the self-designated moniker has some historical basis. The earliest residents, arriving in 1888, were cattle ranchers. The community gradually grew and developed around a market constructed to aid with local agriculture and cattle drives. As with much of the American West, Scottsdale had a diverse population that included Mexican American migrants and settlers (some of whose presence may have predated the city's origins) and Native Americans (Yaqui Indians). Indeed, Mexican-American laborers performed much of that agricultural labor in Scottsdale and nearby towns, and Yaqui Indians served as water masters along the canals. The neighborhood stretched from Brown Avenue to the West to 75th Street to the East, and from Indian School to the North and 2nd Street to the South. The barrio was among the city's oldest neighborhoods.

As late as the 1960s, the city's Mexican-American barrio stood where the Civic Center Mall was constructed; it boasted a rich commercial and cultural life. All that remains to indicate those origins are the Little Red Schoolhouse (Scottsdale Historical Society), Our Lady of Guadalupe, and Los Olivos restaurant. However, the city razed the neighborhood using eminent domain federal urban renewal funds. The rationale was, of course, to create a city center and to replace a blighted neighborhood. However, the city also was engaged in relocating Mexican-American residents from the center of the town in much the same way that urban renewal efforts across Maricopa County, Arizona, and the United States used urban renewal to remake downtowns and disperse non-whites from those areas.

While some of this area remains untouched, much more changed. Major changes and construction began here in 1973. As part of a $5.2 million Neighborhood Redevelopment Program, the city acquired 18 acres of land, including the barrio, for the new construction. The new developments of the 1970’s were primarily commercial and oriented around building a public space at the heart of Scottsdale.

The City of Scottsdale originally budgeted only $400,000 for the construction, but a $7 million hotel, a $3 million performing arts center, 3 restaurants, and 55,000 square feet of retail shopping space known colloquially as a “mercado” replaced existing structures and homes. One of the architects spoke to the “critical need for [a] cultural meeting place” designed to represent the Old West but with a contemporary flair. Additionally, national Housing and Urban Development (HUD) funds were used to develop modern residences in the immediately adjacent communities, now a white majority, in what would become one of the wealthiest cities in the state.

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Los Olivos Mexican Patio located in the heart of Old Town Scottsdale not only offers excellent and authentic Mexican food, it is also a classic American success story. Since its establishment the restaurant has always been family owned and operated. Los Olivos is a remnant of a mostly forgotten, but nonetheless significant, period of Scottsdale’s history. The restaurant is the only surviving business during the 1970’s redevelopment of the Scottsdale “barrio”. The Aztec figure atop the structure serves as a reminder of the local cultural roots. Some argue that the traditional home-style Mexican fare is not in keeping with the contemporary and trendy local competition, but the restaurants popularity and staying power suggests otherwise.

Los Olivos has existed in its current form since 1953, but its history predates the 1950’s. The Corral family, who owns and operates the establishment, moved to Scottsdale from Sonora, Mexico in 1919 to work as farm hands. After nearly a decade of hard work and savings the family was able to purchase two plots of land where the restaurant now resides. In 1928 they constructed something of a communal center for other nearby immigrant families. By 1946 it had evolved into a facility for dancing, meetings, and sharing a meal. Around this time, the three-room restaurant now known as Los Olivos Mexican Patio was added.

The family’s success with this first location led to additional locations throughout the valley. Over the years locations were added in Tempe, Phoenix, and North Scottsdale. These additions did not experience the same success as the original, and none lasted for any significant period of time. This might speak to a somewhat intangible quality possessed only by the original location that cannot be recreated. The original Los Olivos Mexican Patio is filled with a rich history built with the sweat and tears of a hardworking immigrant family. This is not something that can be merely reconstructed.

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After World War II, the area surrounding Indian Bend Wash experienced an explosion of growth. New technology firms moved to the area to manufacture electronics and thousands of people, eager to work the relatively high-paying jobs, followed. The invention of air conditioning also helped fuel the migration of people moving to Scottsdale. By the 1950s, high tech manufacturing giants Motorola, Siemens, and Smith-Kline Beecham built plants in the area and new suburbs sprouted in the farmland along the Indian Bend Wash.

Indian Bend Wash proved both a headache and a valuable resource for industry and residents. Seasonal rains often flooded city streets, damaged homes and businesses, and divided the City of Scottsdale. In 1961 the US Army Corps of Engineers proposed that the city should address the problem by replacing the wash with a 7-mile, 23-foot deep, 170-foot wide concrete-lined channel that ran from the wash's headlands north of Indian Bend Road into the Salt River in the South. Although such channels were the standard method for flood control in desert areas at that time, Scottsdale residents called the proposal an eyesore. Ensuing debate resulted in the "Greenbelt" concept through which floods would be controlled through a series of grassy parks and recreation areas. Completed in the 1970s, the Greenbelt transformed how desert cities controlled water.

Ironically, though, the construction of the Greenbelt did not mitigate a pollution problem that was lurking deeper beneath the surface of the wash. As water that ran down Indian Bend Wash, it soaked through the sand and soil recharging the shallow aquifer beneath it. The city pumped groundwater from the aquifer for residents. However, from the 1950s, before modern environmental regulations, Motorola, Siemens, and Smith-Kline Beecham disposed of their toxic chemical wastes which included Trichloroethylene (TCE), a volatile organic chemical and carcinogen, into dry wells and waste ponds near Indian Bend Wash. This negligent dumping practice continued until the mid-1970s. The waste percolated down into the aquifer and during big rains, the waste would overflow and run into the Wash and eventually soak down into the groundwater. In 1981, TCE was discovered in south Scottsdale water wells.

As a result, the Indian Bend Wash was declared a Superfund site in 1983 when industrial solvents were discovered to have contaminated the groundwater in an approximately 13-square-mile area, affecting both Scottsdale and neighboring Tempe. It became one the largest EPA sites in terms of volume of groundwater treated, estimated at 61.3 billion gallons. Multinational corporations that were partly responsible--Motorola, Siemens, GlaxoSmithKline, and other firms--paid for the approximately $100 million in cleanup costs.

Today, the Indian Bend Wash Superfund site is divided into north and south sections, referred to as NIBW and SIBW respectively. The two sites have different sources of contamination and are on separate cleanup schedules. Over 145 billions of gallons of water have been treated, and the EPA continues to oversee the cleanup and monitoring of the Indian Bend Wash Superfund site.

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Built in 1956, the Hotel Valley Ho never had time for its original grand opening. The rooms filled up far too quickly to bother. The hotel thrived as tourists were drawn to Scottsdale's burgeoning arts and culture district; the industrial giant, Motorola, arranged to temporarily house its relocated employees in the hotel's graceful poolside rooms. Not only was the Valley Ho fully air conditioned, but it was open year round--an early innovator in this respect among Valley's hotels and resorts.

The hotel bridged competing trends that emerged in post-war Scottsdale between the Chamber of Commerce's "West's Most Western Town" branding and an emerging emphasis on high-end art and design.

Renowned architect Edward Varney joined these traditions through his design, melding organic southwestern architecture with the sleek, angular lines of mid-century modernism. Likewise, hotel operators, Bob and Evelyn Foehl, selected a name for the modernist design that resulted from a contest that asked the community to find a moniker that conveyed the appropriate "westward flavor." In bridging the nostalgic and the modern, the Valley Ho became an important symbol of 1950s Scottsdale's development. The postwar economic boom bred a host of luxury accommodations and tourist amenities in Scottsdale, and because travel and recreation, if only for a few weeks a year, were now within reach for many more Americans, Scottsdale quickly lured flocks of vacationers and seasonal residents. Scottsdale was forging its identity and aimed at glamor and glitz but differentiated itself by celebrating local southwestern aesthetics and traditions.

In 1973, the Ramada Inn Hotel chain, which owned an adjacent motel, acquired the hotel as part of a larger conference center. The new conference center and hotel took the name Ramada Valley Ho, although the new owners covered much of the mid-century architectural features that many viewed as outdated. The hotel continued to serve conference goers and tourists alike, but an aging infrastructure and increasingly competitive hotel market eroded its economic viability. In 2001, as Ramada Inn closed the hotel, local preservationists worried that the hotel might be bulldozed. Indeed, preservation reports noted that "with the Safari Hotel's demolition in the late 1990s, the Hotel Valley Ho is the only remaining postwar resort or hotel in the Valley, and conceivably, in Arizona, that has not had substantial changes to design, materials or architectural features. Of the major examples of motor hotels published in the architectural journals of the 1950s, none with the prototypical nature of the Hotel Valley Ho remain today."

Westroc Hotels & Resorts purchased the property--which had been placed on the Scottsdale Historic Register--in 2002, and invested more than $80 million in its rehabilitation. Reopened in 2005, the renovated hotel retained its original character. Westroc salvaged existing wings and the courtyard., as well as original brick walls, concrete railings, and fascia. It also preserved the custom steel open stairs of triangular patterns. New additions included a conference center and recreating Trader Vic's Restaurant, and additional levels were provided using the original 1956 drawings as inspiration. Allen & Phillip Architects led the renovation project.

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Western names and stylized architecture are Old Town's lasting memorials to early Scottsdale's efforts to craft a unique identity for the town—one that would bring tourists in and set Scottsdale apart from other westward destinations. This foundation has resulted in a thriving Scottsdale tourism industry today. The tourism industry employs 39 percent of the city's workforce, and over 8 million visitors arrive every year to populate the 15,000 hotel and resort rooms. This kind of major cash flow was precisely what Scottsdale leaders envisioned when they formed the Chamber of Commerce in 1947, which gleefully promoted Scottsdale (incorporated in 1951) with the slogan "The West's Most Western Town,"

Scottsdale was an ideal location for the establishment of health camps and other resorts in the 1920s and 1930s. Here guests could convalesce or simply enjoy the outdoor pursuits afforded by the area's unusual climate, which boasted over 300 sunny days a year. WWII disrupted this early tourism as traveling for health and relaxation gave way to more urgent priorities. As the nation regained economic confidence after the war, Scottsdale's citizenry realized that tourism could become a potent source of growth and prosperity for the town. The chamber of commerce was established to guide Scottsdale as it attempted to capitalize on its potential and establish some sort of infrastructure for the yet-to-be incorporated town. But it also had to find a pitch for Scottsdale. It had to name, develop, and promote those things that would make Scottsdale special. A high-octane Western ambiance provided the answer. The chamber encouraged local businesses to adhere to a new Western architectural repertoire voluntarily. Undoubtedly, the still unpaved streets enhanced the movie set-like impression of the Wild West. A kind of cowboy glamour combined with a dash of resort high-life and virtuously sunny weather became the hallmark of the chamber's promotional rhetoric.

During the 1950s, the now-incorporated town found new ways to lure visitors. It featured cookouts in the desert, held the annual Parada del Sol and Arabian Horse Show, staged fashion shows on Fifth Avenue, and brought baseball spring training to the newly built stadium. These attractions helped Scottsdale script its identity as a vacationland of Western-themed fun. And this Hollywood version of Western chic is an identity that remains central to Scottsdale's success today.

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Scottsdale, Arizona—and much of the American Southwest—would not be the same without its Mexican-Spanish heritage and culture. From its earliest days, Scottsdale enveloped a mélange of peoples and cultures, with Anglos coexisting alongside Pima and Apache peoples, Mexicans, and other adventurers who stumbled into the growing town. The cultural contours of Scottsdale owe a great debt to its Mexican settlers who added to the distinctive Southwestern flavor of the region. Indicative of their lasting imprint is Scottsdale’s first Catholic mission church, Our Lady of Perpetual Help.

Built in 1933 on the corner of First Street and Brown Avenue, this old adobe mission was the culmination of years of Mexican community-building in the Scottsdale area. Years of political and social unrest in Mexico, particularly the years surrounding the Mexican Revolution of 1910, brought thousands of Mexicans across the border, seeking new opportunities and a better life. Halfway across the globe, the advent of World War I and the high demand for Arizona’s fine but strong, long-staple Pima cotton created a steady stream of cotton work. After 1916, newspapers like the Arizona Republican reported that Scottsdale’s cotton fields were attracting wagonloads of Mexican workers each day. Many workers eventually sent for their families and set down roots, bringing their language, culture, and customs along with them.

Mexicans were builders, and within a short time, a barrio of bright, colorful pink- and blue-hued homes shot up in the area between Main and Second Streets, east of Brown Avenue. Following the church-building impulse already started by congregants of a Baptist Church in 1918 and a Methodist Church in 1929, Scottsdale’s Catholic parishioners sought a permanent home in the late 1920s. Hispanic leaders wanted a church to bind their community together through shared Catholic beliefs and traditions. Key church organizers included the Corral family who followed the trail of cotton work from Sonora to Scottsdale over a decade earlier. Emilio Corral, with his English-speaking brother Jesus, supervised the construction of the adobe-brick edifice.

Today, this adobe church is a lasting symbol of Scottsdale’s early Mexican-American’s sense of cultural pride and identity. Our Lady of Perpetual Help embraced with open arms Scottsdale’s Mexican families, children, elders, workers, leaders, and friends to the Catholic faith. Its builders and early congregants may have left their homeland, but they held on to their culture and traditions, crafting their own niche in the American frontier town of Scottsdale.

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If you visit Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church on Miller Road, seek out the small chapel in the northwestern corner of the parish property. Within its walls rests Our Lady of Guadalupe, a statue of the Virgin Mary with deep connections to the church’s past, present, and future. Given to the church in 1945, the statue remained with the parish through its many growth spurts, travelling from the Old Adobe Mission to various places of honor on the Miller Road grounds, eventually settling in the small chapel.

The statue of Our Lady symbolizes many aspects of the Catholic faith: hope, devotion, and thanksgiving. Donated by local Scottsdale resident Guadalupe Dominguez at the end of World War II, the statue of the Virgin was born out of a mother’s hope for her son-in-law’s during the war and her gratitude when he returned home safely. Years later in 1953, church parishioners began a 13-year tradition of honoring Our Lady of Guadalupe with processions and an annual December pageant at Scottsdale High School. Behind the scenes, women worked on banners, costumes, props, and stage sets with Catholic pride and duty; young women performed in the pageant, one with the ultimate honor of representing Our Lady.

The gift of a mother, the statue also underlines the faith and work of women parishioners in Scottsdale’s Catholic community. Inspired by the values extolled by the Virgin Mary, women hold prominent places in Catholic culture as nuns, caregivers, teachers, and volunteers. The ladies of Our Lady of Perpetual Help are no exception: they played important roles in the leadership and fellowship activities of the parish since it began in 1933. After moving to Miller Road in the 1950s, the church operated a convent, established a women’s mission group, the Sodality of Our Lady, and founded a school with the help of the Sisters of Charity from Seton Hill, Pennsylvania.

Since February 1987, the statue in Our Lady’s chapel continues to be honored around the clock, each day of the year. From a mother’s prayer to pageants to perpetual adoration in her chapel, the statue of Our Lady is a constant reminder of women’s dedication and achievements within their Catholic faith community.

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During the 1950s Craftsman Court and Fifth Avenue were the heart of Scottsdale’s robust and vibrant arts scene. This vibrancy was both cause and symptom of Scottsdale’s newly inaugurated status as a glamorous, tourist destination. National publications like Life Magazine and People and Places giddily enthused about the marvels fashioned by Scottsdale’s artists and craftspeople, and in 1957 Westways magazine boldly proclamation that Scottsdale had more artists per square block than any other American community.

For decades Scottsdale had attracted artists with its unique desert landscape and health-inducing dry heat (sure to burn away any lingering tubercular maladies), but immediately after World War II artists took on a new prominence within the community. These years witnessed the expansion of Scottsdale’s downtown, the installation of a host of new services and amenities, and the efforts of the chamber of commerce and a core group of local movers and shakers to craft a new, stylized image for Scottsdale as the “West’s most Western town.” While specialty retail shops proliferated in this environment of growth, so too did workspaces where the public could both watch artists and craftspeople at work and purchase their finely-wrought wares—which included mosaics, cut and polished gems, pottery, leatherwork, and hand-screened textiles.

The Arizona Craftsmen was one of the first of these establishments and its resident artists included leatherworker Lloyd Kiva New, wood-carver Phillips Sanderson, sculptor Mathilde Schaefer, painter Lew Davis, and silversmith Wesley Segner. The concept of a combined studio and shop was enormously popular with tourists and even former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt paid a visit to the Arizona Craftsmen. When the building burned down in 1950, the displaced artists purchased a parcel of land east of Scottsdale Road and just south of the Arizona Canal. They cut a road through the newly acquired land and named it Fifth Avenue after New York’s swanky shopping boulevard, but by 1955 they had outgrown their new workspace and moved just east to a new complex now known as Craftsman Court. Though this was far from being the only studio/shop open to the public, the complex’s modern design best reflected the artists’ philosophical approach to their work as they integrated the idioms of traditional Southwestern arts and crafts with modern fashion and design mediums.

Along Fifth Avenue, the establishment of unique boutiques stocked with luxurious handmade items solidified the town’s reputation as a shopping and tourist haven. The well-heeled ladies staying at Elizabeth Arden’s Maine Chance Spa would practically empty the arts and crafts shops of their inventory during the spa’s weekly outing. Fashion shows and special events brought new cache to the town and soon even the most exclusive stores in Beverly Hills and New York were only too happy to feature the Western-inflected designs of Scottsdale artists. By the close of the 1950s, the national prominence of Scottsdale’s artists and craftspeople and the popularity of Craftsman Court and Fifth Avenue helped create a new identity for the town—a glittering, fashionable, artistic, and distinctly Western identity.

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After World War II, Lloyd Kiva New was a leading artist and designer in Scottsdale's burgeoning arts and crafts community before emerging as a national leader in arts education.

Born in Oklahoma in 1916 to Cherokee and Scot-Irish parents, Lloyd New graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago. "New came to Phoenix in 1938 to teach art at the Phoenix Indian School, where he also supervised student illustrators who contributed art to bi-lingual textbooks for Hopi and Navajos," according to historian of Scottsdale Joan Fudala.

After serving in World War II, he returned to Phoenix and re-branded himself as Lloyd Kiva. He opened a boutique in Scottsdale as part of a larger group of artists who had begun working at the Arizona Craftsmen Center. He fostered native and non-native artists by building a collaborative community for their work and other artists.

New moved with Phillips Sanderson and Lew Davis into E.O. Brown's then-abandoned general store on the corner of Brown Avenue and Main Street, next to present-day Rusty Spur Saloon. After a fire destroyed the building in 1950, New and Wes Segner moved to an unoccupied piece of land on the south side of the Arizona Canal, east of present-day Goldwater Boulevard. They called their new building Fifth Avenue - a nod to New York City's most exclusive shopping district.

New's reputation as a distinguished fabric and leatherwork designer attracted multiple native artists to Fifth Avenue, including Charles Loloma (Hopi), Andrew Van Tsinhajinnie (Navajo), and Manfred Susunkewa (Hopi). The artists often worked together on a single piece; for example, New would design a pattern, Susunkewa would silkscreen the fabric, and Loloma would craft the silver buttons.

Introducing American Indian patterns, colors, and styles brought recognition to native fashion designers in a predominantly white industry. It also contributed significantly to Scottsdale's reputation as a marketplace for haute couture. For example, Lloyd Kiva New sold his Cherokee-derived designs to Neiman Marcus and other high-end retailers. Thus, the Fifth Avenue artists brought unique native motifs into popular and trendsetting fashion.

Lloyd Kiva New's influence extended beyond his art; it grew as he mentored and reimagined arts training for Native Americans. He fostered the artistic development of a generation of Native American students through his work as founding president of the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe in 1962. The New York Times reported that "Mr. New fostered at the institute an "intertribal experience" in which students from tribes around the country rediscovered their own heritage and shared it with others. The school attracted worldwide attention and was broadly influential in its approach."

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When the Hotel Valley Ho opened in 1956, it quickly became a playground for Hollywood refugees. James Cagney, Rudy Vallee, Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Marilyn Monroe all relaxed under its roof. Like many local resorts, the Valley Ho can boast the debonair Clark Gable once roamed its halls. Tony Curtis and wife Janet Leigh made it their temporary home while they were filming on location. Jimmy Durante got a kick out of singing and playing at the lounge’s grand piano.

Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner chose Scottsdale for their 1957 nuptials to avoid the drama of a Hollywood wedding. Their ceremony was at the nearby Scottsdale Methodist Church, where City Marshal Henry Cooper and his deputies patrolled the church to deter any wedding crashers hoping to sneak a peek. Stars loved to sneak away from the bustle of Hollywood and soak in the Scottsdale sun.

The Valley Ho also attracted another type of celebrity: the athlete. Resorts like the Valley Ho catered to athletes and fans alike, especially during the bustling spring training season. Ted Williams, Bob Feller, and Leo Durocher all called the hotel home, along with teammates from the Boston Red Sox, Cleveland Indians, New York Giants and Chicago Cubs.

Owners and operators Robert and Evelyn Foehl were used to catering to the rich and famous. The hoteliers previously operated a hotel in Southern California, and many of their loyal clientele followed them into the desert. Guests paid $7.50 a night for their room, but the real luxury was at the diving pool, which sometimes featured fashion shows and banquets. The hotel also offered luxuries such as rollaway sofa beds, rabbit-ear television sets, central air conditioning, and kitchenettes. It was the ideal midcentury getaway for the jet-setting crowd.

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The sign read "John Rose, Fancy Groceries: Shoe Repairing, Barber Shop, Pool Hall, Ice Cream, Confectionary, and Soft Drinks." At various times it was also a vaudeville stage, silent movie theater, lunch counter, and classroom. Who was the man offering Scottsdale so much entertainment? And why did he leave it all behind?

Rose was well known in town, participating in civic life. He was a captain in the Scottsdale Liberty Loan fundraiser during World War I. He later served in the war, training at Kelly Field in San Antonio, TX with 140 other Valley men. In 1917 Rose married Paulita S. Valenzuela, daughter of a highly respected Mexican family. The 32-year-old Rose and his 16-year old bride lived behind the hall. Rose leased his pool hall as a classroom for Mexican children during the day until they had their own school in 1922.

Business was rolling, but Rose's desire to provide every possible service included illegal activity. Scottsdale was full of teetotalers, and voted to outlaw alcohol a decade before the U.S. enacted prohibition. The territorial government had already outlawed gambling in the state. Proprietors had to be creative if they wanted to keep their entertainment halls, operating legitimate businesses as a front. This was difficult to do in Scottsdale, where community members were especially concerned with not corrupting youth and protested unsuitable entertainment. In 1916 Rose plead guilty to operating a pool hall that was a menace to the community and was fined $25. The next year he was arrested for gambling and fined $100.

One evening in 1916, a local ranch hand named John Kennedy (no, not that one) brought an illicit substance to town with the intention of hosting a jamboree in the pool hall. He then "proceeded to uncork enough booze to render the village blacksmith invisible, the pool hall proprietor indisposed," and knocked the rest of Scottsdale off their feet. A concerned citizen alerted Sheriff Jeff Adams when "never before had there been so many headaches on a bright summer morning," and for the first weekday ever the blacksmith shop wasn't ringing with noise. Kennedy plead guilty and was fined $109. During his testimony he revealed he was part of a group bringing alcohol into Scottsdale for personal use. The Arizona Republican doesn't name anyone besides Kennedy - could that pool hall proprietor be one Johnny Rose?

Rose left Scottsdale in 1929, selling the store to the Song family of Gilbert. They continued to operate the grocery story, but dropped the recreational activities. So who was Johnny Rose? From bacchanalian party host to soldier to businessman, the man did it all.

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If you encounter, on your wanders through the Valley, any particularly ornate or captivating iron flourish--roses atop a gate, or a handrail shaped like a peacock--there is a very distinct possibility that Doc Cavalliere, blacksmith-turned-soldier-turned-craftsman, had a hand in it. George R. "Doc" Cavalliere returned from World War II with a skill that would renew the family blacksmith business and add to Scottsdale's flourishing arts and crafts movement: ironworking.

Doc spent his childhood learning the blacksmith trade from his father, shoeing horses, forging tools, and repairing field equipment for surrounding farms and ranches. He also shined shoes at the barber shop, cleaned the spittoon at Johnny Rose's Pool Hall, and worked at Sterling's Western Store (now Saba's Western Store), where he earned the moniker "Doc." When World War II began, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps, became a Technical Sergeant, and served on the European front throughout the war. When he wasn't working, he visited neighboring villages. In Italy, he met a local blacksmith who taught him intricate ironwork, creating roses, flourishes, and other metal wonders.

When Doc was discharged in 1945 he took over the blacksmith shop. As Scottsdale's agricultural roots faded and cars began to replace horses, Doc began marketing his newfound skills at the shop. He quickly became well-known for his metalworks, gaining a reputation among Scottsdale's artists and elites. He did the ironwork for the sprawling McCune Mansion in Paradise Valley, and he provided works for master architect Frank Lloyd Wright and Gunsmoke actress Amanda Blake. Whenever Senator Barry Goldwater came into town, he had a project for Doc. The down-to-earth Scottsdale blacksmith was friend to some of Scottsdale's most illustrious artists and celebrities, but he wasn't the bragging type. You wouldn't find him at glamorous galas because he wasn't the hob-nobbing sort.

Doc was extraordinarily creative, the epitome of a self-made man. His ironwork adorned Scottsdale street signs, inns, and public spaces. He created the iconic western silhouette, based on famous local cowboy Harvey Noriega, that graced the official City of Scottsdale seal. Doc's ironworks, inspired by his deep love for his hometown and for Arizona, exemplify the simple, yet dramatic motifs that contribute to Scottsdale's western image.

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If, as poet Wallace Stevens suggested, “The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream,” then Sugar Bowl founder Jack Huntress was a very important man.

Huntress opened the Sugar Bowl on Christmas Eve 1958, a date that seems especially appropriate given the ice cream parlor’s concerted effort to provide a family-friendly atmosphere. During the 1950s, Scottsdale was emerging as a tourism destination with a bustling arts and culture scene. Businesses were quickly populating the downtown area and Scottsdale boasted a number of eateries including the Red Dog Saloon, the Pink Pony and Lulu Belle. The gilded Lulu Belle was a Gay Nineties (1890s) extravaganza that functioned as both a nightclub and restaurant. With “the longest bar in Scottsdale” and an exuberant display of dance-hall-costumed waitresses and red velvet, Lulu Belle positioned itself as the premier cocktail lounge in Scottsdale. These businesses capitalized on the newly established glamour of Scottsdale. Their influence grew with Scottsdale. Not only did Scottsdale increasingly become a tourist destination, but also it's population exploded in the 1960s. The city's population grew from less than 11,000 in 1960 to more than 67,000 folks in 1970.

One evening after hearing patrons at Lulu Belle grumble about the fact that it was not an appropriate place to take children, Jack Huntress realized that Scottsdale had no restaurant that catered to families. A family-oriented restaurant would fill a vacant niche in the community and, by catering to an underserved market, would potentially be quite profitable. The restaurant industry flourished in the years immediately following World War II as a healthy economy put everyday luxuries like dining out within reach of more Americans. Nationwide, the number of meals served in restaurants tripled from 20 million meals a day before the war to 60 million meals a day after the war. However, by the beginning of the 1950s the restaurant industry was beset by new fears that American families were eschewing dining out in favor of eating at home in the company of their newly purchased black-and-white television sets.

The National Restaurant Association hoped to spark new enthusiasm for the restaurant experience by commissioning songs like "Pass the Meat, Pass the Potatoes" (1951) and "Let's Go Out to a Restaurant" (1953). The immediate popularity of the Sugar Bowl suggests that, in Scottsdale at least, families were only too happy to dine out when given the opportunity to do so in a venue that welcomed children.

It was this quality that separated the Sugar Bowl from other Scottsdale businesses and led to it becoming a community institution. Working there eventually became a high school rite of passage and the restaurant’s cotton-candy pink exterior became a comfortable and familiar part of Scottsdale’s landscape. As the decades passed, the Sugar Bowl actively participated in the creation of a sense of nostalgia for the past. It has changed little over the years in both décor and menu—and, indeed, the Huntress family still owns and operates it. Indeed, nostalgia is one of Scottsdale’s most valuable industries. It is the sense of permanence and stability, the sense that it is the site of memories forged long ago and the site of those forged today, that has led to the Sugar Bowl’s continued success.

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The hooves of galloping horses echo as they pound across a vast expanse of desert and neither rain nor sleet nor dark of night keeps the Hashknife Pony Express from reaching its destination. Every winter since 1958, more than two dozen riders from the Navajo County Sheriff's Hashknife Posse make the 200-mile, 2 ½-day trek from Holbrook to Scottsdale to deliver more than 20,000 pieces of mail and to kick off the annual Parada del Sol, a celebration that revels in popular myths of the American West.

The Hashknife Posse began as a search-and-rescue unit in the mid-1950s, but the Hashknife "brand" began with the rough-and-tumble cowboys who, in the late 1800s, staked out turf for the Aztec Land & Cattle Co., a New York investment company eager to profit off the still untamed land of northern Arizona. The original Hashknife cowboys, whose name came from the shape of the brand on the cattle that looked like the hash knife used by cowboy cooks, have become the subjects of rowdy tall tales that evoke an Old West of turf wars and gunfights, barroom brawls and dance-hall girls.

This "Old West" lies in a grey area between reality and myth, but it is based on the unsettled and unsettling nature of Western expansion during the nineteenth century. Land was up for grabs, ranching opportunities were seized, and settlers pushed the frontier ever forward. It is the spirit, the feeling, of this age of wild possibility that the Hashknife Pony Express resurrects each year in its symbolic ride into Scottsdale. The real Pony Express never operated in Arizona, but for 18 months, from April 1860 to October 1861, it filled the need for a swifter method of communication between the East and West. The completion of a telegraph linking both coasts made the Pony Express unnecessary, but brave young men battling harsh conditions and making their way across long stretches of the countryside remains one of the most popular images of the American West.

Today, the riders of the Hashknife Pony Express, who are not re-enactors but are actually sworn in by the US Postal Service, draw on the icons of the past to bridge the "Old West" and the "New West" and provide a reminder of the pioneering ideals that shaped "the West's most Western town." Even so, it is worth noting that the original Pony Express only operated briefly from 1860 to 1861, before the telegraph made it obsolete, and it never traveled through the Arizona territory.

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On March 12, 1956, America met Scottsdale on the pages of LIFE Magazine. Nina Leen's photographic essay, "Sands of the Desert Turn Gold," introduced the burgeoning Western town, which had been incorporated only five years earlier. Here was a place where the Old West had never become old, where horses were as common as cars, and whose glamour and refinement could satisfy even the most expensive tastes.

Scottsdale was quickly becoming one of the most popular tourist destinations in the Southwest alongside Santa Fe. Leen crafted Scottsdale's national reputation as a center for authentic fashion and art inspired by the desert and created by its people. The influence of Leen's article was evident at the time by the nationwide popularization of the broomstick skirt that appeared in the essay, a style that originated in Scottsdale as the "squaw dress." It is considered a uniquely American fashion staple because its inspiration is rooted in Navajo and Mexican women's dress.

A city with skyrocketing property values, six-figure homes, three-figure dresses, and $50 gift wrap, Scottsdale seemed a city built by gold. Selling Scottsdale's exclusivity and down-home cowboy charm appealed to middle-class audiences. Many visitors (and speculators) chose to remain. Only ten years after Leen's article, Scottsdale had become the third-largest city in Arizona.

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