In the middle of the twentieth century, the developers of the Dunes Hotel sought to attract a new generation of travelers to the American West by locating it along Van Buren Avenue - arguably Phoenix's central artery. The Federal Highway system,…

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…

Architect Frank Lloyd Wright saw great potential within the vast Sonoran Desert. The designer had just finished the designs of his renowned Usonian homes when he found himself deep within the McDowell Mountains of Arizona. In 1937, after ten years…

Fast food restaurants emerged as a vital part of American auto culture, first as drive-in restaurants and later with drive-thru lanes. The term itself appeared in the dictionary for the first time in 1951, about the time that Apache Boulevard's…

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…