Thea Cartier
Arizona History
1910-1920
2 August 2017
Arizona History; 1910-1920
Even before Arizona became a state in 1912, the history of the land was fruitful. In the years before Arizona's borders were defined, a war broke out in 1910. This was is recognized as the Border war or the Border Campagne. This title refers to the military confrontations over the Mexican/ American border. From the beginning of the Mexican revolution, our military stationed themselves along the border and was often found fighting with Mexican federation or rebels. The United States Army created numerous towns along the border to serve as a protection to United States citizens lives and to their property. The main goal of the border towns was to ensure that all fighting between the countries stayed on the Mexican side of the border.
During the Border War, the Chinese were leasing land from the Mexicans to operate grocery stores. When the dispute began, most of the Chinese found themselves relocated in Tucson The grocery store merchants serviced General John Pershing's army on their expedition versus Pancho Villa. The Chinese painted a community based on friendship and social integration.
In the city of Phoenix, the speed limits were increased to 12 mph, while having 329 legally licensed cars. The first luxury hotel was built in 1896 in Phoenix Arizona. The Adams hotel was the most expensive building in Arizona, unfortunately, due to a demolishing fire in 1910, the Adams hotel was burnt to the ground. This tragedy was a huge loss to the small town of Phoenix at the time but did not slow them down. The Adams Hotel was rebuilt shortly after and was even acknowledged as “fire-proof”. Towards the end of the year, with the growth and strength of the townspeople, Phoenix population hit 11,134.
The year 1911 was a quiet year for the “not-quite-yet” state of Arizona. The Roosevelt Dam, which was graciously dedicated by Theodore Roosevelt, creating the first multi purpose dam built under the National Reclamation Act. This was basically an act dealing with the irrigation of 16 states. A few months later, in December of 1911, Arizonan voters made the decision to approve a revised version of the Constitution.
1912, the Grand Canyon State is born. Arizona almost became a part of the Union as a branch of New Mexico as a republican plan to control the United States Senate. This plan was accepted by almost all New Mexicans, was widely rejected by almost all Arizonans. The people of Arizona wanted statehood along with other things such as a referendum and woman suffrage. Several of the proposals made were included in the Constitution submitted to U.S. Congress in 1912. President William Howard Taft signed the statehood bill on February 14, 1912.
While the victory of state ship was grand, the Hispanics had very little voice or power in the eyes of the government. Only one of all 53 delegates were Hispanic at the constitutional convention. He refused to sign. Another huge victory for Arizona in the year 1912 was the gaining of women suffrage in the state. This was eight years before the entire United States made the decision to grant women the right to vote. Around this same time, a city was founded by Dr. Alexander John Chandler which we now know today as Chandler, Arizona. He was the first veterinary surgeon of Arizona and bought over 80 acres of land south of Mesa in the Salt River Valley. Dr. Chandler studied the new science of irrigation engineering and was a large part of building the early canal system.
In 1913 the government began to evolve. The city of Phoenix created the council manager form of government. This is a predominant form of government for local areas in the United States. It is used in county governments where the body which governs is known as a council. This lead Phoenix to be one of the first cities in the United States to adopt the council manager form of government.
Women took the right to vote with storm, casting over 35% of the votes for the state. With this number increasing, and the legality of the woman's voice, population soared. The number of registered automobiles has nearly doubled since the year 1910 to become 646 registered automobiles.
The Ash Avenue Bridge, also commonly known as the Tempe State bridge, was the first way of highway transportation to cross the Salt River. The bridge was completed in 1913, only two years after the beginning of construction. The labor was given by felons staying in the Arizona Territorial Prison in Florence, Arizona. It was the singular, most dependable crossing from Phoenix, Tempe, and Mesa for all transportation from wagons to automobiles. Unfortunately, the bridge seemed to work much better for wagons than automobiles, and with technology increasing along with now 646 registered automobiles, the damage started to weaken it.
An election was held on March 19, 1914, to elect government officials to operate cities and town that have not yet found characters to lead. Positions such as Mayors and Commissioners were put into place. Mr. Thomas J. Prescott, the new mayor, along with the final four commissioners took their oaths to be leaders in office. This system began the third form of government in the city of Phoenix.
In this third form of government, the city founded the position of city manager. Mr. WIlliam Farish was the first manager of the city of Phoenix. Farish was a popularly known civil engineer. He was appointed by the city auditor, attorney, treasurer, magistrate, and the city of Phoenix Chief of Police.
Saint Mary’s Basilica, in Phoenix, Arizona was completed in the year 1914. It was officially named The Church of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary by the Roman Catholic diocese of Phoenix. The church was staffed by many Franciscan Friars since the construction began in the year 1895. The church is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is the oldest Roman Catholic place of worship in the Phoenix area. The church is also home to Arizona's largest collection of stained glass windows.
Phoenix expanded the sewer treatment system and in the year 1915, the city's first treatment plant was born. This new wave of technology brought settling tanks to treat all wastewater at the river. This expansion brought an abundance of health to the city of Phoenix.
As the years began to pass, the realization of the closing of Whiskey Row would soon be in place. What the city of Prescott began to understand in the year 1915 was that because prohibition had just gone into effect in the state of Arizona, the city tax revenue began to belittle from the sales and licensing of alcohol. This leads the fathers of Prescott to make harsh decisions and hefty cuts to public services such as the town libraries.
The 1916 gubernatorial election was in debate for the Governor of Arizona. The Hunt administration was facing severe backlash due to disputes between labor and business. Arizona created a ballot where they had the ability to mark a party column on the ballot to signify their vote for a specific party. The issue with this was that most voters that chose the Democratic column had also marked that they voted for the Republican opponent, Mr. Thomas Campbell. This fabricated a court battle over the simplicity of interpreting the validity of the ballots. The long and extensive amount of confusion over the Arizona ballots. The beginning results showed the two major candidates only 30 votes apart.
After this grueling process, Mr. Thomas E. Campbell was elected governor on the first of January 1917. Hunt refused to leave his office until a month later. Later that year Hunt took office on Christmas once the court ruled in his favor. This gave Campell less than a year in office as governor.
This same year, the women of Arizona’s voted were counted in the 1916 presidential election. This was still four years before women's suffrage was recognized nationally. President Woodrow Wilson was elected.
The wear and tear on the Ash Avenue Bridge had finally made its mark. In 1916, only three years after its initial opening, a flood took the bridge with it. A supporting arch was weakened and severely damaged the bridge.
February 27, 1917, Arizona owns a state flag. The flag of Arizona is made up of 13 rays to represent the original 13 states in the U.S. Red and Yellow on the Arizona State Flag are known to symbolize the uncapturable beauty of Arizona's sunsets. Due to the state's thriving mining industry, the copper stars were designed to represent the copper mining industry. The final amount of the flag is blue to tie in the representation of the Colorado River. The Legislature approved the bill to accept this flag as the one and only official state flag, despite hesitation from Governor Campbell.
Mr. Paul Weeks Litchfield was an executive of the Goodyear Tire Company and moved to Phoenix in 1917 to search for suitable land for the farming of cotton which had only been available from the islands off the coast of Georgia. He needed this cotton to strengthen the rubber in his tire, which made Goodyear the world's largest producer. Litchfield purchased close to 36,000 acres of land, including 5,00 which are around the presently known Litchfield Park. This purchase made Mr. Paul Litchfield the founder of the city of Litchfield in the year 1917.
With the cotton industry on the rise and Goodyear acquiring thousands of acres of cotton farming gave this area a final identity and transformed it from its roots. Cotton culture began shaping the area, and the new Southwest Cotton Company recruited 2,000 men to work in the desert, handling this new agriculture. A majority of these new employees were lower class citizens from Mexico, while several were also Native Americans. This was a difficult situation due to not only World War I in action, but the Mexican Revolution was at its peak.
The Spanish Flu struck Northern Arizona in 1918. The disease affected birds and mammals before attacking human species. It spread through air in ways such as coughing and even breathing. This influenza spread at a horrifying rate. Many citizens would feel ill in the morning and be dead by the time the sun had set. Because these symptoms were extraordinarily similar to having a cold, thousands of the infected did not know they had the flu until they were hours away from passing.
Influenza quickly developed into severe pneumonia where the infected would painfully drown from fluid build up in their lungs. The disease killed more people in total than both World Wars combined. Spanish Flu was not specific to any certain class but it seems that the survivors that are known today had a wealth about them. “Some of the better-known victims who survived the illness were General John Pershing, Franklin Roosevelt, Mary Pickford and President Woodrow Wilson.” (Abraham, Snyder, Blassingame, DeVaney, Martin, Fabozzi, and Marston 2004).
Several outbreaks of the Spanish Influenza were recorded in September of the year 1918. The city was not caught off guard, in fact, “the Yavapai Chapter of the Red Cross and the City and County Health Officer Dr. John W. Flinn presented plans for a flu hospital in Prescott.” (Abraham, Snyder, Blassingame, DeVaney, Martin, Fabozzi, and Marston 2004). They located this hospital in the science hall at their local school. Teachers and local nurses were placed in charge of running the make shift hospital. On October 8th, the city reportedly was under severe quarantine due to the copious amounts of death in the valley.
The epidemic was spreading like wildfire taking 350 lives with it in the small town of Winslow on October 12, 1918. In Arizona alone, children seemed more prone to the Flu, 125 high school students had fallen ill. The hospital in the science hall of the school quickly became overcrowded, so the town was using every resource they had to quarantine the sick. The school of grammar was now being used as the hospital for the fallen.
Flagstaff was reporting over 400 cases of the Spanish flu and in the city of Williams more than 300 cases. Various Native American groups around this area were especially unfortunate, without the right necessities, several tribes had been wiped out. Arizona was staring death in the eyes.
The people of Phoenix voted to extend city limits in 1919 due to anticipation of the forthcoming U.S. Census. The state began growing into a Metropolis. Skyscrapers began to rise in this year, among them was the state's very first skyscraper, the Heard Building. With this, also came Phoenix’s first political scandal. “the $1,300,000 bond issue of 1919 to build a redwood pipeline from the Verde River to Phoenix.” (Barney 2017).
Tucson, Arizona developed the first municipally owned airport in the United States in 1919. The Arizona daily star reported that tests were to be placed for the first time with airplanes in attempt to spot forest fires.
1920 was a big year for the state of Arizona as a whole. The Congregation known as Beth Israel was formed in Phoenix. On April 8th, 38 Jewish students all joined together to create a congregation. They met with the mayor of Phoenix to design a synagogue. In order to stay in tact with south western culture, a mission style building was designed. The final cost of the project was $14,000. For reasons unknown, the building was not facing customary east-west as in a Jewish custom house of worship, rather it faced a north-south.
The population only kept growing as the years went by in Phoenix, Arizona. It now reached 29,053 residents. The Phoenix Union High School now held over 2000 students interested in pursuing their education. This led to the addition of cars on the new and completely paved original Phoenix town site. Phoenix alone was now home to over 11,000 registered vehicles.
Arizona's cotton industry flourished during World War I due to the fibers needed for the tires made by Goodyear. In 1920 the price of cotton plummeted from $1.35 to only $0.35 a pound. This situation caused a drastic financial crisis in Phoenix. The Great Depression had an impact on Phoenix but not nearly as bad as the rest of the country took it. The economy in this city was extremely diverse. The main source of income for the city was cotton and the crash of the stock market dropped its value an entire dollar, which pushed the value down heavily. Copper mining, livestock, and agriculture also saw harsh reductions, yet cotton was the most intense loss to the city of Phoenix.
In 1920, Chandler held over 1,000 residents. Cars had become the town's main form of transportation which led to the town's roads being paved. Chandler’s utilities such as water and sewage were outdated and had to be updated but in the year 1920 due to the economic crash, that was difficult. The city's local Justice of the Peace, Mr. Arthur Price, designed the very first charter for Chandler, Arizona. Finally, in May of 1920, the citizens of Chandler voted to come together and now be one, as the Town of Chandler. Dr. Chandler agreed to be the first mayor of the Town of Chandler until the town could find someone who would be elected. Shortly they elected a council and a mayor to rule over the town.
The Great Depression actually did not have an effect on a large sum of Chandler's residents. The Cotton Crash in Phoenix and all over the valley had a much larger impact on Arizona's economy which was based on agriculture. This does not mean that residents did not struggle. In fact, Dr. Chandler did very poorly in the years of The Great Depression. The Bank of Chandler hit a wall and collapsed as he lost all of his creditors from San Marcos. He later retired comfortably and lived in a cottage on the property of the San Marcos Hotel.
Tucson, Arizona’s population was finally surpassed by the City of Phoenix in 1920. Tuscon held 20,292 residents. They lost their title as the “Metropolis of Arizona”. For over 65 years Tuscon was known as the state of Arizona's largest community. The water supplies and better agriculture surged the city of Phoenix with residents. It flew ahead in average population by the year 1920. Because Tuscon knew this, they created the Sunshine Climate Club and brought hundreds of tourists to their own town.
The years 1910-1920 were so valuable to the growth of our state. The trauma, growth, memories, creations, and residents are what built the ground we now walk on today. The history of the state of Arizona is fruitful and intelligent. Our land will continue to grow centuries on.
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