A centennial anniversary out West is a wondrous thing -- unlike back East, anything lasting a hundred years here is automatically historic and worth examining more closely for its staying power.
Thus, as we come to the end of Arizona's first century as a state, it's a good time to look at how the ways that we live in Flagstaff today might have been shaped by forces at work at the beginning of statehood.
Flagstaff was incorporated in 1894, 18 years before statehood. Susannah Carney's excerpts this year from the Coconino Sun of both 125 years ago in 1887 and a hundred years ago in 1912 show what a difference 25 years can make -- a nearly lawless frontier town tamed by the leading families into a small but growing civic and business center.
Fast forward another hundred years, and some might say the Flagstaff of today would be nearly unrecognizable to those early settlers. But let's dig deeper into what gives Flagstaff its special sense of place and see how or if we recognize ourselves in the Flagstaff of 1912.
This is perhaps the most consistent theme over the course of the last century, thanks to Percival Lowell and his choice of what is now known as Observatory Mesa for his first telescope. But it hasn't been easy maintaining the momentum, despite the discovery of Pluto in 1931 and the arrival of more telescopes and astronomers at the U.S. Naval Observatory, the U.S. Geological Survey and Northern Arizona University. As the city and state grew, the clear night air at 7,000 feet began to be polluted by electric lighting, and only the pathbreaking Dark Skies initiative staved off what could have been the ruination of Flagstaff's astronomy industry.
This year, 100 years into statehood, Lowell Observatory dedicated a new telescope 40 miles southeast of Mars Hill at Happy Jack in partnership with the Discovery Channel. Meanwhile, the Flagstaff Festival of Science has grown into a 10-day extravaganza showcasing this region's deep interest in and love of science and discovery. It's almost like Uncle Percy never left us.
This is another Flagstaff narrative that won't go away as long as the Grand Canyon's South Rim remains just 80 miles from the city limits. Throw in other unique natural areas like the nearby Red Rocks of Sedona and the San Francisco Peaks and nearby volcanic fields, and it's unlikely that Flagstaff will ever lose its identity as a gateway city to these wonders.
Back in 1912, the Canyon was just becoming Grand, thanks to its dedication as a national park four years earlier and the paintings of Thomas Moran and other artists who brought the iconic landscape to life for Easterners. Miners had already staked claims and built trails below the rim, and Flagstaff's contribution was to promote better roads to get tourists in newfangled automobiles to the South Rim and back in one day.
Today, those roads and motor vehicles are even better, making the Canyon almost a backyard playground for many locals. But Flagstaff is no longer the main point of access -- the interstate highway system brings tourists each summer through our city but not necessarily to stay. And the rise of Las Vegas as a gaming and conference mecca has turned the Canyon into a half-day helicopter ride when luck is running low at the casinos.
It used to be that as the Canyon tourism season went, so went Flagstaff's hospitality industry that year. But today, the city's restaurant owners and hoteliers have realized they need to market Flagstaff as a two- or three-day hub destination in its own right and let the Vegas crowd do their own thing.
Even without the Grand Canyon, Flagstaff would still attract people who see in the four-season climate, high-elevation clean air and million-acre ponderosa pine forest a reason to get closer to the natural world.
A century ago, the early settlers saw the forest and grassy meadows as providing them with a way to not only get closer to the land but literally live off it. The lumber mills and cattle ranches that drove the local economy sprang from a verdant landscape that didn't exist in most of the rest of Arizona. If they overcut and overgrazed, it was mainly out of ignorance over just how much longer it would take the land to recover than back East or farther north in the even wetter Rockies.
The difference today is a greater scientific understanding of what it takes to restore conditions that will allow the forest just to survive, much less resemble preindustrial landscapes.
The recent drought decades have raised concerns over the forest even higher, as have the pressures that motorized access has placed on it. The old saying is that a healthy Flagstaff depends on a healthy forest, and residents today are much more attuned to just what "healthy" means. They will soon see the return of logging trucks to local roads, but this time hauling out small-diameter timber, not the big yellow-bellies of yesteryear.
Modern Flagstaff is more a hub than a crossroad -- various highways all lead to a city that is not only a county seat but also a center for shopping, health care, college education, government and legal services.
A century ago in 1912, the railroad had been in town for 30 years and roads for automobiles were just beginning to get attention from local officials as potential growth engines. Local residents could get more easily by rail to Los Angeles than to Phoenix.
In succeeding decades, air travel arrived after the first World War and cross-country highway travel after the second. People discovered Flagstaff sometimes by accident or while on vacation and decided to stay -- it's how W.L. Gore & Associates came to be located here.
But with easy access comes impermanence and transience. Flagstaff has long been a place to stop and try to make a new start after things didn't work out in California or back East. But it's not a cheap or easy place to put down roots, and the high turnover of a crossroads town endures today as it did when the railroad was carrying free spirits to a city that had a hard time holding them.
In some ways, the intentional community that persists today in the face of the higher cost of living caused by more expensive land in such a stunning natural setting has deep roots. The Babbitts, Riordans and other early entrepreneurs and their hired workers were risk-takers in an alien but fruitful land. The difference is that Flagstaff today relies not so much on its brawn as on its brains, even as it struggles to add better-paying jobs in sectors other than second-home construction, retail, government and hospitality. Some of the economic limitations the Flagstaff of 2012 is facing will test the resolve of community leaders to think outside the box in ways that Flagstaff's leaders of 1912 had already demonstrated by successfully courting not only Percival Lowell but also Northern Arizona Normal School.
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