How do you remember Phoenix? Stories from long time residents... (Scottsdale: move to, AFB)

[EdEKit]

Originally Posted by roosevelt

Let's not forget those awful paddle boats. Talk about sweating! Other kids would crash into you just for fun. A friend of mine in grammar school would make a softball sized ball of damp bread, refrigerate it, and then go fishing in the canals using pieces of bread for bait. I went swimming at Coronado a lot but the Encanto pool was much larger and the water was really cold even in the summer.

It would be really great if the park would bring back the Canoes. Those were the greatest fun when I was young, and crashing into others would get you BANNED from renting for a very long time.

I did write and put up photos at this Mid Town Enchantment | Gather url. It's modern, but showcases Encanto.

[roosevelt]

Originally Posted by jack swilling

Yes, I remember Encanto Park when it was like that. I moved and I have not seen the park since the 1980s. Maybe someone would tell me what it is like these days.
I began to go to the park with my grandpa in the 1940s. We were big on feeding ducks with bread we bought from a market down the street. Gramp would take me out on the lagoon--it seemed huge to a little boy born and raised in a desert--in one of the motor boats they rented alongside the canoes at what we called the "boathouse." The truth is that he and I were afraid of canoes. Yes, they had motor boats into the early fifties. They said they stopped offering motor boats because "seaweed" became entangled in the devices.
I was addicted to birdwatching and I saw my first Red-winged Blackbird and Canada Goose at the park.
Down 15th there was a small restaurant where we got a great breakfast or sandwich and a limeaide from fresh limes. Later, there was archery or horseshoes. If there was time, in later years, we hit the Palms for a movie, then walked up the street to the Golden Drumstick. I have never been so happy. I am not at all certain that there is an afterlife, but if there is, and if I somehow avoid the theological place of eternal punishment, 1940s and 1950s Phoenix will be the site of my heaven.
We children manufactured all kinds of fantasies in connection with the island in the Encanto Park lagoon, and its pampas grass intrigued all of us for some reason. Maybe that small island with the pampas grass had a secret door that opened to a staircase down into some people's heaven. Maybe Rod Serling set up the whole thing.
Encanto Park was a good place to collect pine cones, but Coronado Park had the best, the biggest, and the greatest number of them.

Took me a while but I found my photo of Encanto's duck island. Picture was taken standing on the boat dock in early 60's. And there is the famous canoe.

[roosevelt]

Lot's of talk about the bladder busting in Tempe and sending 95% of the lake downstream. Here are two old pictures of the flood of 1966 showing Phoenix from the Tempe side and the South Central bridge.

[Ritchie_az]

Interesting. Thanks for posting, roosevelt!

[azdr0710]

Originally Posted by roosevelt

Attachment 65816

Attachment 65817
Lot's of talk about the bladder busting in Tempe and sending 95% of the lake downstream. Here are two old pictures of the flood of 1966 showing Phoenix from the Tempe side and the South Central bridge.

a bit hard to see, but the old Ash Avenue bridge, built in 1913 as the first highway bridge across the Salt and predating the Mill Avenue bridge, is visible in the Tempe picture between the RR bridge and the Mill bridge....it was demolished in 1991, but the south "buttress" of it is still standing in Tempe Beach Park as a monument....

Ash Avenue Bridge - Tempe, Arizona

[nativephoenician]

Originally Posted by roosevelt

The most famous airplane during the 1940's was the P-38 at the old Phoenix Tech. It was sitting under a large canopy on Fillmore Street near Montgomery Stadium. I would go by it every time I went to Webster's Hobby Shop on Van Buren by Green Park.

Webster's Hobby Shop!! I remember it from a later location at the Uptown Plaza at Central and Camelback. Used to be a favorite kid destination for me and my buddies.

[baby sinister]

Originally Posted by roosevelt

Attachment 65816

Attachment 65817
Lot's of talk about the bladder busting in Tempe and sending 95% of the lake downstream. Here are two old pictures of the flood of 1966 showing Phoenix from the Tempe side and the South Central bridge.

We had to evacuate our house at that time and were told to go to South Mountain high school for shelter.

[roosevelt]

Sky Harbor in 1959. Passengers were in the great outdoors when loading and relatives were out there too. I heard when they first looked out of the control room there was a building blocking part of the runway and they had to raise it up higher.

[roosevelt]

Originally Posted by roosevelt

Attachment 66033Sky Harbor in 1959. Passengers were in the great outdoors when loading and relatives were out there too. I heard when they first looked out of the control room there was a building blocking part of the runway and they had to raise it up higher.

Here is a photo that was national news in 1951 when the tower was first built. I have looked closely at the picture an cannot see any evidence that the background was removed. Amazing job considering there were no computer photo programs.

[Ritchie_az]

Great picks of the tower. I'd love to go inside of it and look around. Too bad they don't make a museum out of it....