Q: Why does Phoenix seem to have two downtowns — one “downtown” and then another grouping of high-rises farther north along Central Avenue?

A: Because many years ago, the city fathers and mothers thought big.

Unfortunately, they also thought wrong, or at least incorrectly.

The result is today we have a downtown downtown and downtown uptown, although we know of people who think of anything south of Northern Avenue as being practically the inner city.

According to Dave Reichert, head of the Phoenix Planning Department, back in the 1960s, when we only had one downtown and it was downtown, the city’s leaders had dreams of grandeur. [...] Continue Reading…

Test your knowledge of Arizona with this short quiz, originally published in Marshall Trimble’s Official Arizona Trivia. Don’t scroll down too quickly. The answers are posted shortly below the questions. When you’re finished, leave a comment with your score.

1. What is Arizona’s best-known nickname>

2. Name Arizona’s five C’s.

3. What is the largest Indian tribe in the United States? [...] Continue Reading…

Q: How did Sky Harbor International Airport get its name?

A: We take up this question with some reluctance because the entire staff and faculty of Valley 101 has a deep abhorrence of airports, which extends to even writing about them. At the same time, however, we always thought Sky Harbor was a cool name, in a 1950-ish, let’s-go-out-to-the-airport-and-watch-the-planes-land kind of way.

Actually, the name Sky Harbor goes back to 1929, a fact we found in Desert Wings, a history of the airport written by Michael Jones, a city Aviation Department employee. [...] Continue Reading…

Excerpt from “Arizoniana” by Marshall Trimble, the state’s official historian.

Most folks believe the art of pullin’ legs attached to tenderfeet began with the arrival of windjammin’ mountain men, prospectors and cowboys. But it seems that Arizonans have been tellin’ whoppers to newcomers much earlier.

Latter-day liars would be hard pressed to match the native raconteurs who greeted the Spanish explorers. Legends of golden cities provided the inspiration for the great Coronado Expedition into this area in 1540-42. The dashing Spaniard and his hard-riding conquistadores rode roughshod over the local natives in their quest for the mythical golden boulders of the madre del oro. Naturally, the natives quickly learned that the fastest way to rid their villages of the unwanted newcomers was to direct their search elsewhere.

After Coronado overran the pueblo of Hawikuh (near today’s Zuni, New Mexico), local natives told of seven cities to the northwest. Determined [...] Continue Reading…