SUSAN JOHNSON Special to the Daily Sun
100 years ago
1923: The heavenly bodies and spuds divided attention at Tuesday’s meeting of the Rotary Club. EC Slipher of Lowell Observatory spoke about the former, and LW Cureton, secretary and manager of the Coconino Farm Bureau Marketing Association, about the latter. Very listenable music was furnished by Mrs. GA Pearson and Mrs. CC Schwartz, the latter at the piano.
Mr. Slipher said the application of the science of astronomy is somewhat obscure to many people who do not themselves apply it and do not realize how it is applied to our everyday life. Our government sets time by the stars; our meridian lines, from which all our property lines are laid, were established from observations of the stars and astronomical science in various other ways affects our everyday lives.
Flu, which has been prevalent in the East for several weeks, has hit Flagstaff but very lightly. Most of the patients are children, and as far as known, none of them are dangerously ill.
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Few Flagstaff people know the names of the springs from which we get this wonderful water. There are five of them: Snowslide, elevation 10,620 feet; Flagstaff, elevation 10,280 feet; Little Bear Paw, elevation 9,810 feet; Jack Smith, elevation 9,280 feet, and Raspberry, elevation 9,310 feet.
75 years ago
1948: Hundreds of visitors are expected in Flagstaff for the weekend as the Thunderbirds of the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce present their second annual ski meet at the Arizona Sno-Bowl. The Flagstaff Chamber has been cooperating with the group in making the arrangements — which has drawn the top of the state’s skiers plus a number of out-of-state contestants. Topped off by Monday’s 10-inch snowfall, runs at the bowl are in excellent shape.
Swift action by the Coconino County Sheriff’s Office resulted in an arrest three hours after the reported burglary of the Black Cat Café. The burglary was reported when employees opening the café found that about $75 in change had been taken from a hiding place in the front of the café. Also missing was a contribution box for the March of Dimes, estimated to contain between $25 and $30.
“I’m afraid my party won’t be a success if I can’t serve cocktails,” a teen-ager recently wrote the editors of the New York World Telegram’s “Teen Talk” column. Adults would be in a better position to act shocked if so many of them didn’t feel the same way about their own parties. How can they properly squelch a teen-ager for being afraid to have a party without cocktails, when so many grownups are scared to death to entertain without being able to depend on a couple of drinks.
50 years ago
1973: University Heights open — first home occupied today. In the fall of 1968, about 180 Northern Arizona University faculty members and administrators organized the University Heights Corporation. The group purchased 387 acres of land south of Interstate 40 and west of Highway 89A from the late Joseph Dolan. The objective was to build a subdivision that would provide home sites for faculty members of the rapidly expanding university. Today, David Seaman, of the anthropology department, is moving into the subdivision.
This move-in climaxes a program that has been subject to controversy, public concern and financial problems. But it knew coming up roses, and few that better than Charles Little, NAU professor and president of the corporation since 1969. Housing for newly recruited faculty members has been a problem for a number of years in Flagstaff. The development of a subdivision to assist in providing housing was decided as one way of resolving this problem. Key to this development was a $2.6 million improvement district through which water, sanitary sewer, streets, curbs and gutters were installed. The 215-acre, 400-home site development has some land reserved for park purposes, but there is no school site, as Flagstaff School District turned down a proposed site.
Flagstaff’s “water crisis,” thanks to a heavy winter, is momentarily a thing of the past, but what city officials describe as “the money crunch” is very much a thing of the present. For that reason, the Flagstaff City Council, at a special meeting next Tuesday, could make what is known as the “emergency water rate” a permanent thing. The “emergency water rate” was first put into effect Aug. 1, 1971, and has been twice extended in the face of critical shortage of water in the city’s various reservoirs.
The city clerk noted that with the heavy winter water pouring into Upper Lake Mary and other reservoirs, there is no more “water crisis.” What exists now, he said, is a “money crunch.” Recently, the city received a series of reports from its water consultants, and one of the main recommendations was that the city undertake a capital improvements program, in water development, that would cost between $7 and $8 million before 1980. A major point was that the water department would have to increase its revenue producing capacity by as much as 34 per cent in order to begin financing such a program.
Coconino County assessor Richard Hillman was notified Monday to switch his operation to computer programming. “My office is mailing postcards out within the next few days advising people of their new valuation,” Hillman said. The values are near, or somewhat near, the true market value of the property, he said.
What the taxes will now be, Hillman could not say. That determination must wait on a number of things, including what the state Legislature does, if anything, on property relief for the homeowner.
But “as a whole,” per Hillman, the new computer programming system “will present a fair and equitable market value” on property.
Showing at The Orpheum Theater: Funny Girl, starring Barbara Streisand. Showing at Flag-East Theatre: The New Centurions, with George C. Scott.
Editor Chris Etling takes you behind the scenes of just one example of how we look through archives for information used in the Flagstaff History column.
Susan Johnson has lived in Flagstaff for over 30 years and loves to delve into her adopted hometown’s past. She has written two books for the History Press, Haunted Flagstaff and Flagstaff’s Walkup Family Murders, and, with her son Nick, manages Freaky Foot Tours. You’ll find her hiking the trails with her corgi, Shimmer.
All events were taken from issues of the Arizona Daily Sun and its predecessors, the Coconino Weekly Sun and the Coconino Sun.
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