Phoenix in the twentieth century : essays in community history / edited by G. Wesley Johnson, Jr.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Johnson, G. Wesley, Jr., 1932-2018.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Phoenix (Ariz.)--History.

Phoenix (Ariz.).

Physical Description:

xii, 288 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Norman : University of Oklahoma Press, [1993]

Summary:

Phoenix, Arizona, if it is to live up to its name, has four hundred years before it burns and then rises from its own ashes. In the meantime, visitors and residents exposed to the city's summer temperatures have cause to think that the legend is fulfilled. In fact the city did spring from the ashes of an earlier civilization. The Hohokam, who vanished mysteriously, left a brilliantly engineered system of canals and irrigation ditches, and when westward-moving Anglo-Americans found these, cleaned them out, and began farming and ranching, the future of Phoenix was secured. The twelve contributors to this volume have told the story of the city. Each writes about a facet of Phoenix: its economy, its elites, its women, its ethnic groups, its water- and labor-management problems, its development and transportation growing pains, its politics, and its never-ending drive to become as important as Los Angeles and Dallas. Today Phoenix suffers the same growing pains it had in its youth. Industrial, agricultural, and business enterprises drawn to the city during the two world wars, but particularly during World War II, have grown and attracted still more of their kind, success begetting success. Phoenix in the Twentieth Century portrays the city and its Valley of the Sun in their first one hundred years of glory as a Sunbelt jewel, and in their down-to-earth humanity as a metroplex serving a multitude of needs and desires in a pollution-threatened setting. With an enthusiastic can-do philosophy, Phoenicians are not about to consign their beloved home to the flames of legend.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0806124687

OCLC:

27815971