From its humble beginnings in the arid landscapes of Papago Park, the Phoenix Zoo has transformed into a renowned non-profit zoological park, captivating locals and visitors alike with its commitment to education, conservation, and community outreach. Once a barren desert expanse, the zoo's origins can be traced back to the 1930s when it served as the Hunt Bass Hatchery, a Works Progress Administration initiative to generate jobs during the Great Depression by raising fish for local ponds in man-made lakes. In 1959, ownership of the land transitioned from the Arizona Game and Fish Department to the Arizona Zoological Society, led by animal enthusiast Robert Maytag, who utilized his family's washing machine fortune to bring his vision of a zoo to life.

Although Maytag tragically passed away before the zoo's grand opening, his widow, Nancy Maytag Love, assumed the mantle and took on the role of President of the society's board of directors. On November 11, 1962, the Maytag Zoo officially opened its gates, subsequently rechristened as the Phoenix Zoo in 1964 to solidify its connection to the local community. Building on its mission to educate, the zoo fostered deep bonds with countless Phoenix families over the years, resulting in a significant economic impact of over a billion dollars in investments towards food, equipment, and infrastructure that benefit the wider community.

Gone are the days when zoos were characterized by bare concrete floors and steel bars. The Phoenix Zoo prides itself on its expansive habitats and commitment to animal enrichment, underscored by stringent educational requirements for its staff. As a testament to its dedication to animal welfare and conservation, the zoo has attained full accreditation from the esteemed Association of Zoos and Aquariums, exceeding rigorous scientific standards.

The Phoenix Zoo's influence extends far beyond its gates, playing a vital role in conservation efforts within Arizona and on a global scale. The zoo actively participates in breeding programs aimed at reintroducing endangered and nearly extinct species back into the wild, including the remarkable Operation Oryx, which witnessed the birth of 225 Arabian Oryx at the zoo in 2002. Additionally, the zoo has been instrumental in breeding the endangered Black-footed Ferrets since 1991 and expanded its efforts with the establishment of a dedicated 6,200-square-foot breeding center in 2010. Collaborating with organizations like HUTAN for orangutan conservation, the Grevy's Zebra Trust, the Giant Armadillo conservation program, and the Anteaters and Highways Project, the Phoenix Zoo actively contributes to a multitude of global conservation initiatives.

With its unwavering commitment to education, conservation, and community engagement, the future of the Phoenix Zoo shines brightly. What began as a modest presence in Papago Park in the 1960s has blossomed into a renowned force in animal welfare, making the Phoenix Zoo a source of immense pride for the Salt River Valley community.

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When walking through downtown Mesa, the relatively small-scale streets and buildings have a quaint feeling that does not hint at Arizona's largest arts center sitting squarely downtown on Main and Center Street.  However, once you get within a block of the Mesa Arts Center, the site becomes apparent from any direction.  With tall glass canopies, blue border walls, rows of trees, and large theaters standing at its heart, the Mesa Arts Center cannot be missed.  Aside from its architecture, the art banners, show advertisements, and people milling about are sure to garner any attention the complex may not have gathered on its own.  The Mesa Arts Center is a massive complex covering seven acres, with four theaters, five galleries, and fourteen art studios.  The center is 212, 755 square feet encompassing all of the theaters and studios, with about 5,500 square feet of art exhibit space.  The five galleries compose the Mesa Contemporary Arts (MCA) Museum.  The four theaters are the Ikeda Theater, the Virginia G. Piper Repertory Theater, the Nesbitt/Elliott Playhouse Theater, and the Anita Cox Farnsworth Studio Theater.  The Mesa Arts Center hosts various events, from classical music concerts to art classes, lectures, and cultural celebrations, across their campus. The presence of the Mesa Arts Center in the middle of downtown Mesa is not by convenience or happenstance; it was chosen to be an integral part of creating a new Mesa.  The term 'revitalization' frequently appears in discussions about the city's changes, and it has for the past two decades.  Mesa was once one of the most successful downtowns in Arizona.  It hosted the largest movie palace in Arizona just down the street, a plethora of businesses and restaurants, and more and more people every year.  However, after the Second World War, the population growth that brought the city more people also brought those people further out.  The historical boundaries of downtown Mesa are relatively small, only about a mile each.  After World War II, the proliferation of suburbs pushed people further and further away from the city's center.  The effect on downtown Mesa was devastating.  By the 1950s and 1960s, businesses had closed, and shopping centers designed for the newly thriving suburbs threatened most businesses that had managed to stay afloat.  These effects changed the culture and reputation of Mesa for decades, and only recently have they begun to see change.  The implementation of the Mesa Arts Center was designed to bring people, life, and activity back into the city.  It was strategically placed at the exact place people get off the light rail, and it is accessible from every side of the street.  It not only plays a dominant role in its immediate surrounding landscape but has also shaped the changing dynamics between the people of Mesa and the idea of what the city should be.  The Mesa Arts Center does an undeniably excellent job of advertising itself.  The center is a work of art that is evident from the street.  This is not by accident.  Every aspect of the arts center was designed to be inviting, artistic, and stimulating.  Martha Schwartz's idea for the landscape was a shadow walk, "a place where the rich interplay of overlapping shadows, trees, and architectural canopies creates a cool and inviting environment." Colored glass canopies, boulders, a water system mimicking southwest waterways, banquet tables, textured trees, and other features were chosen to make the arts center not only accessible but intriguing.  Just walking the grounds without ever going into any of the buildings that make up the complex becomes an artistic experience.  Designing the entirety of the Mesa Arts Center was a major artistic project, combining the work of Auerbach Pollock Friedlander, McKay Conant Brook Inc., Paragon Structural Design, Martha Schwartz Inc., and Lowry Sorenson Wilcoxson. The entirety of the complex was designed with the goals of accessibility, functionality, and sustainability.  The art galleries and studios were placed around the edges of the center to put activity on the main streets, and the theaters were placed at the heart of the campus to draw people into the center.  The Mesa Arts Center was also designed to be as sustainable as possible, using thick walls, solar shading, placing the museum below grade, and even the exterior water feature reminiscent of arroyos works to temper the climate.  The center took inspiration from several natural features to become a more sustainable complex, from the arroyos cooling component to using angles of the buildings to mimic the cooling characteristics of desert canyons and shade canopies.  Even within the buildings, like in the ceramic studios where artist Jeff Reich helped to design a sloped studio floor to trench drain and shade sails to protect the kilns to create state of the art facilities and a modern, efficient, and sustainable complex. It is not only the physical aspects of the center that make it accessible but how it interacts with its community, which has become one of the central focuses of the center.  Executive Director of the Mesa Arts Center, Cindy Ornstein, described this, saying "My view of the arts is that it is fantastic to offer exhibitions and performances... but that if you don't look to figure out how you create accessible points for all different people, if you don't figure out how to welcome the community in and give them ownership over some of the programming, if you don't make sure there are different ways for people from different ways and walks of life than you end up not serving the community needs as you should." The center's interaction with the community has significantly increased in the last eleven years, going from limited interactions of community engagement to a thriving dynamic of programs, festivals, and classes designed to give the people of the city ownership of the Mesa Arts Center.  Building this complex was a vast project and required funding of about 90.8 million in construction costs and about 95 million total, a massive expense with what should be an even greater payout.  The Mesa Arts Center is an intelligently constructed and booming art complex.  Still, it represents something even bigger, a rebirth of Mesa, with arts at the center.  One of the architects of the project, Michael Tingley, explains the larger implications of the center, "A fundamental strategy for the Mesa Arts Center project was to create a new image and identity for the city of Mesa in the twenty-first century that would spur economic investment in the downtown core.  Transitioning this suburban community into a sustainable city for a new millennium requires establishing a sense of place, pride, and identity".  The Mesa Arts Center is the culmination of this idea for a new Mesa, an economic and cultural renovation designed to reinvent the city's image and reputation.  A project this significant physically and economically always has conflict.  Still, it took almost no time for the center's impact to become apparent.  From 2000 to 2005, the local economic impact of arts and culture went from 18.1 million to more than 47.57 million.  In five years, the event-related spending from visitors outside of Maricopa County grew tenfold. The Mesa Arts Center is clearly one of a kind, utterly unique in its design and architecture, and impact on the surrounding landscape.  Unlike other cities in the valley, the face of downtown Mesa has not been dominated by skyscrapers and office buildings.   Mesa has a complicated history, a once thriving downtown slowly dying down as suburbanization pushed people outwards.  As people return, the downtown is reminiscent of the old-timey downtown.  Still, it has begun to see the changes of urbanization.  The Mesa Arts Center is a part of this phenomenon of returning life to downtown, but rather than overwhelm its landscape; the center is designed to add to it.  The center looks incredibly different from its surrounding buildings, but rather than look out of place, it appears as a focal point.  Its wide breadth and posture over its neighbors are eye-catching but not so large that it seems out of scale.  Whereas the opaque glass of the rectangle buildings that dominate other downtowns are uninviting, every possible entrance to the Mesa Arts Center is designed to bring people in, with pathways to guide you and colorful panels to beckon you forward from the streets of Mesa and into its immersive experience of art and culture. 

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In 1887, Mormon leader Brigham Young sent out the Lehi Company to settle the Salt River Valley. A year later, another group of Mormon settlers arrived under the banner of the Mesa Company and camped approximately five miles away from the Lehi settlement. Just a few months later, the settlers filed for possession of the land now known as Mesa’s Town Center. In 1880, a third group of Mormon settlers established a community approximately one mile away from the town, near what is now Alma School Road.

When constructing the town that would eventually grow to become the city of Mesa, the settlers made sure to follow the layout that Joseph Smith had initially envisioned for his City of Zion. Because of persecution driving the Mormons to the frontier, many western towns and cities share this layout, most notably Salt Lake City. Smith's design called for streets 132 feet wide on a one square mile grid. Each block contained eight rectangular lots one and one-quarter acre in size. Though Smith's plan called for three public squares, only two were included in the plat of Mesa. The organizational structure of the Mormon Church dictates the formation of membership units known as wards and stakes. A ward is the local congregational unit in the LDS church, with membership in each one ranging between 300 and 600 people. Members of each ward live within prescribed geographic boundaries. Alma Ward was the ward associated with the third community of pioneers.

As the Alma Ward membership grew, the community made plans to construct the Alma Ward meeting house, which was built in 1908. Eventually, the Mormon church outgrew the building, and the meeting house changed hands numerous times over the decades. In 1962, it served as the very first campus of Mesa Community College, tying the building to Mesa’s educational history as well as its religious history. Today, the Alma Ward Meeting House hosts wedding planning and reception business.

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When it first opened in 1924, the Nile was a state-of-the-art theater, with sloping floors, a large central stage, and the best cooling system in the city. Despite the theater only being able to feature silent shows at first, the grand movie palace brought people from across the Valley into downtown Mesa. Featuring a massive Egyptian styled sign, the outside of the Nile Theater was unmistakable even without its movie posters and weekend crowds. The city of Mesa has a long history of growth, but it was not until 1930 that Mesa actually grew based on land accumulation. In 1930, Mesa annexed six subdivisions of land from its original city limits of just one square mile. In the decades to follow, particularly after World War Two, the physical growth of the city was followed by an explosion in the population. However, rather than bring an even greater buzz to Mesa’s downtown center, it pushed people further out, enticed by other shopping centers designed for the convenience of new suburbs. The constant thrush of a downtown crowd drawn into the Nile’s bright lights trickled down until finally in 1951, the movie palace closed its doors.

The building of the Nile Theater came at a time when movie theaters had just begun to proliferate, their size and designs increasing to create buildings that were as much of an experience as the pictures they put on. The idea of a “movie palace” as the Nile would have been referred to is truly what these buildings were, the Nile Theater’s name even coming from the popular Egyptian influences of the 1920’s after the discovery of King Tut’s tomb. These movie theaters were developing as centers of American cultural life, and featured the most modern innovation, notably being early leaders in air conditioning technology. After World War One, by 1920, about thirty-five million Americans were attending the movies every week, ushering in an era of movie theaters at the center of nightlife and creating a new scene of movie stars that would define what it meant to be American pop cultural icons. However, the success that the post war era of World War One brought to movie theaters would be directly opposed by the decline following World War Two. The expansion of television, laws requiring studios to divest from theaters, and the growth of the suburbs all played a role in the demise of movie palaces. In the case of the Nile Theater, the suburbanization of Mesa proved to be fatal. The Nile Theater followed the same path that many of the other businesses on the once bustling Main Street went down, struggling to hold on for a few years as more and more people moved out, but eventually closed by 1951.

After the theater’s closure in 1951, it underwent major structural changes on the inside. The sloped floors were leveled, and the chairs removed, becoming almost unrecognizable from its original purpose. Once the inside of the building could never be mistaken for anything other than a theater, but quickly transformed into a simple and open box, suitable for the variety of stores that would occupy its space, including small businesses selling clothes and books. The changes in ownership and product would fluctuate multiple times throughout the years, but it was not until the 1990s that the Nile would once again become known as an arts venue, although this time very different from its predecessor.

In the 1990s, the Nile Theater became a venue for live music, specifically underground music for goth, punk, and ska bands and artists. The theater that was once the sparkling symbol of culture for downtown Mesa had been transformed into the hub for the city’s darkest music lovers. Due to the growth of the suburbs around downtown Mesa, the strip that had once proliferated with the Nile Theater had undergone financial struggle, and the Nile became heavily associated with criminal activity including drug usage and violence to the point that there was backlash from the community, which continued until 2002 when the venue was finally closed down. The reputation of the Nile actually follows very similarly to that of downtown Mesa itself, and in many ways the building and its history is a representative of the city around it. After the hardships of suburbanization caused the slowdown of the downtown, what remained began to develop a new reputation and idea of Mesa. Gone was the image of a downtown that people once got dressed up for to go to a showing at the Nile or for dinner on the weekends. Instead, it became an undesirable destination, the effects of community rhetoric adding even more inflation to the demise of the downtown.

Walking down Main Street of downtown Mesa, the tall brick building that once boasted its title of movie palace in neon lights, now just has simple white letters, “The Nile, Est 1924”. Rather than a box office, the front space of the building is now a coffee shop and vegan eatery which was opened under the Nile’s owner since 2010, Michelle Donovan. Donovan divided the building into the Nile Coffee Shop, and has maintained the back portion of the building with a live music stage and the ability to host shows. The Nile continues to be a live music venue, and under Michelle Donovan has once again become a valuable member of the Mesa community as an arts and entertainment hub of downtown Mesa. In fact, the Nile has added a front patio to its coffee shop, and a walk up window to place orders at, quite literally interacting with the street around it. If you decide to venture inside, the first sight that catches your eye is the mural on the wall with bold letters that say “Mesa” three times, reminding everyone who walks inside that the culture of downtown Mesa is just as present within the Nile as it is on the street outside.

The Nile was built at the height of the influx of movie palaces, designed to be a staple of American culture present in cities across the country. The days of the Nile being the largest building and theater people had ever seen seems so far away it’s more of a myth, but the building itself remains a story of the Nile’s influence. Now, the building and its owner imagine it in a different way, to represent a culture of the community in downtown Mesa. In the complicated landscape of current downtown Mesa, where Main Street still maintains original buildings and designs of historical Mesa but is surrounded by the construction of a new Mesa with modern architecture, businesses, and even universities, the Nile is a representation of the clash of a historical Mesa existing through the process of urbanization. The old red brick building that stands slightly taller than its neighbors tells a story of the past while flaunting the new changes that have managed to keep it alive. The Nile Theater is no longer the biggest venue in the Valley, and the building transformed from the grandeur of a movie palace, but those walking downtown Mesa at night are still drawn in through the brick walls from the sounds of people and the arts spilling onto Main Street.

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In 2003, Tempe Town Lake finally emerged on the bed of the Salt River after nearly 40 years of planning. In 1995, the beginning of the construction was marked by a huge ceremony near Tempe Beach Park, which was a focal-point for recreation in Tempe.. The concept for the lake called for dispersed islands, but plans were changed making the lake a body of water flowing along the channel.

The idea for the lake first developed in 1966, when a group of architecture students at the Arizona State University was challenged by the dean of the college of architecture to create a plan that could combine flood control and environmental design. The students created the “Rio Salado” project. The purpose of this project was to transform the Salt River into a major asset for the town of Tempe.

After years of public debate, construction work started in 1995 south of Curry Road in Papago Park. Bridges were built for people and cars to cross over the lake, which is two miles long and 800 to 1200 feet wide, depending on where it is measured. It can contain up to 980 million gallons of reclaimed water. Four years and many millions of dollars later, Tempe Town Lake was completed on June 2nd, 1999, and water from the Salt River started flowing in, filling it within a month and a half.

Later, on November 6th, 1999, a large opening ceremony was held to celebrate the completion of the project. More than 30,000 people attended the event, and Mayor Giuliano gave a speech concluding, “… and to the citizens of Tempe, this is your lake, this is your project, this is your legacy.” The lake was open to the public the very next day.

The dams of the lake are made out of strong, inflatable rubber barriers secured to a concrete base. These tubes are controlled by a system that regulates their inflation and deflation so the water can flow easily. On the west dams, water can flow over the top of the dams to create a waterfall. This water is then recollected and pumped back into the lake

The dam that produced the lake is only the most recent dam along the Salt River. As early as 1906, Arizonans sought to slow down the unpredictable flooding of the Salt River and to provide a consistent water source to the growing valley through the construction of dams. The Roosevelt Dam was dedicated on March 18, 1911. More dams and canals were constructed over the following years, and the Salt River was diverted in many places for agricultural, industrial, and domestic uses.

As the Salt River was dammed, the riverbed adjacent to Tempe (as well as Mesa and Phoenix) became drier and drier through the year, which is what prompted efforts to rethink the Salt River in the 1960s.

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During the twentieth century, jobs,  mild winters, sunshine, and outdoor recreation attracted millions of people from all over the United States to Arizona. Boating and sport fishing on Arizona's many reservoirs lured newcomers from states like Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and even New York. By the 1980s, Arizona Highways -- a long running journal published by the State of Arizona-- routinely touted Arizona as one of the best sport fishing locations in the nation despite the fact that it has the second least amount of surface water in the country. 

Arizona’s urban fishing program began in 1983. The main goal of the program was to provide more convenient fishing opportunities for people living in the city. It was an alternative to long-distance drives to different states. This made more people want to move to Arizona in hopes of a better life. The Game and Fish Department, along with the Parks department of Chandler, Mesa, Phoenix, Scottsdale, Tempe, and Tucson made this possible for Arizona. There are about 27 different species of fish commonly caught by the Arizona urban fisherman. Of the 27 species of fish found in Arizona, there are 160 stream management systems along with 80 lakes of impounded water. Of all the bodies of water in Arizona, one stands out when living in Phoenix: the Papago Ponds.

The Papago Ponds are located in east Phoenix right next to the Phoenix Zoo in Papago Park. Three ponds cover 6 acres and range from 7 to 11 feet deep. They are home to channel catfish, rainbow trout, largemouth bass, bluegill, red dear sunfish, crappie, tilapia, and carp, stocked by the Arizona Game and Fish Department. Water for the ponds comes from the Valley's extensive canal system which transports water from the Salt, Verde and Colorado rivers and groundwater. 

Today, fishing and hunting bring hundreds of millions of dollars into Arizona's economy. With Salaries and wages totaling to $708 million, the hunting and fishing industries were responsible for 21,000 jobs. These fishermen and hunters generated $155 million in federal taxes along with $123 million in state taxes. The dry desert state is blessed with abundant opportunities for fishermen and outdoorsmen alike.

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Scottsdale eventually came to be known as “the West’s Most Western Town,” but for its founder, Chaplain Winfield Scott, “the West” need not be wild. In the untamed wilderness to the southeast of Camelback Mountain, he saw the potential for a vibrant and sustainable community. As a gifted cultivator of the agrarian landscape and its natural resources, Chaplain Scott was equally as determined to nurture and cultivate the hearts and minds of the peoples who would become a vital part of his homestead, including the young people who were raised on the land. Scottsdale needed a school.

Cultured trailblazers on the frontier, like Chaplain Scott, his wife Helen—who happened to be a school teacher—and some of their distinguished neighbors, believed that education was a marker of civilization and schools were the best conduit to ensure the settlement would develop and attract educated, engaged residents. If their beloved homestead, originally called Orangedale for the citrus trees that thrived there, was to grow from an outpost into a flourishing community, it needed an educational center to bring a sense of civilization and civic duty to its residents. Over time, their journey to establish suitable schooling for youngsters paralleled Scottsdale’s development as a viable market town: as Scottsdale grew and prospered, it needed larger and larger schools.

American settlers commonly raised temporary schools until they could construct permanent schools. In 1896, Scottsdale’s first makeshift school formed at Mrs. George Blount’s Ranch, where she taught eight children not far from the Scott homestead. As the settlement grew, this school was insufficient. Later that year, Scott formed a school committee that organized an official Scottsdale school district, named in honor of Chaplain Scott. Shortly after, area residents came together in one of their first acts of civic unity and built a school—a small, one-room wooden building to accommodate the rising number of pupils in the district. In 1909, locals expressed faith and pride in their community once again and voted unanimously for a larger, more enduring brick school: the little red school house.

For residents in early Scottsdale and in other settlements-turned-towns across America, the little red school house was a local symbol of its permanent status and its promising future. For Arizona, the push for school s also had significant consequences for state and national politics. As one gauge for the area’s potential as a civic body, the presence of numerous public schools in the Arizona Territory played a role in its attainment of statehood in 1912. Chaplain Winfield Scott never lived to see that day, but without doubt, he would have been proud to see his cultivating mission played a small part in bearing such fruit.

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Scottsdale has a rich cache of local history and traditions, but safeguarding this legacy is a constant job. Over the last fifty years real estate development, economic revitalization, and other changes have placed particular historic buildings, neighborhoods, and artifacts in Scottsdale in precarious positions. While frustrating and unsettling for local preservationists, historians, and concerned citizens, these threats have a silver lining: in the face of adversity, diverse groups came together to defend and protect Scottsdale’s history and heritage, and in the process, they created new organizations and strategies for historical preservation and heightened public appreciation of Scottsdale’s past.

The fight for the Little Red Schoolhouse was a key turning point in Scottsdale’s road to committed historic preservation. In 1968, the school faced demolition to make way for a new downtown development, the Scottsdale Mall. Concerned residents—some of whom were former students—made a stand. Coming together for a common cause, they formed the city’s first preservation organization, the Scottsdale Historical Society, whose mission was to save and restore the building. Despite heroic attempts to raise the needed restoration costs, the society fell short of its goals. Its efforts, however, did not go unnoticed, but inspired another organization, the Scottsdale Chamber of Commerce, to contribute to the preservation fund. The school was home to the chamber for nearly twenty years, until finally in 1991, the historical society occupied the building that mobilized its members into action.

Buildings like the Little Red Schoolhouse strike a nostalgic chord because they represent so many facets of Scottsdale’s history and traditions. In its early days, the building was more than a school. As the civic heart of the community, it served as a church, a polling place, and a community meeting spot. In the 1950s, the newly incorporated city took ownership and turned the school into the police station, the Town Hall, and the County Court Office. When the offices outgrew the building, it became the public library. In all of its varied forms and functions, the Little Red Schoolhouse was branded into the memories of Scottsdale residents—young and old alike. For some, losing the school and the history embedded within it was akin to losing a significant part of Scottsdale’s identity.

The success story of Scottsdale preservation did not end with the Little Red Schoolhouse. Since then, the City of Scottsdale has joined in local preservation efforts established key government entities and mechanisms for identifying, protecting, and promoting Scottsdale’s history and heritage. In 1997, the City Council created a Historic Preservation Division and Commission, both of which are active in maintaining the City Historic Register, a list of historic Scottsdale buildings, as well as residential historic preservation and community education programs. As for the Little Red Schoolhouse, the Scottsdale Historical Society museum that holds historical objects, exhibits, and collections does its part to ensure Scottsdale’s history will not be forgotten.

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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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