At the conclusion of World War II, a couple by the names of Joe and Alice Woods would purchase the building from the Chandler Improvement Company and convert it into the Parkway Theater; one out of three theaters that the couple would own in their…

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 which gave permission for the War Department to relocate Japanese and Japanese-Americans living in the western United States to concentration camps. In March 1942,…

The Vance Auditorium was built in 1904 by John Thomas Vance. People all around Mesa came to the dances. At the time of its construction, it was the biggest auditorium in the southwest. In 1919, Vance sold the building to the Maricopa Stake of The…

When the U.S. government sought a home for German U-boat sailors taken as prisoners-of-war during World War II, it found the ultimate contradictory landscape for the young mariners from the verdant nation along the Rhine: Phoenix's Papago…

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…

The prisoner of war camp that once stood in Papago Park was the site of stories like that of the ill-fated 1944 escape attempt of the "Crazy Boatmen," who planned on floating hand-made boats down the rivers they saw on their maps of the…