(upbeat music) - For over the past 60 years, Arizona PBS has told incredible stories of Arizona's distinctive people, beautiful landscapes, and treasured history.

Now relive those memories we've pulled from the vault.

Hello, I'm on Alberto Rios.

A time when the desert turned into the valley of dreams for young veterans, entrepreneurs, and families creating a new lifestyle for themselves.

Go with us through time as From The Vault presents Arizona Memories from the '50s.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] This is Phoenix.

The vitality of the people may be generated here by the new pioneers, men and women starting afresh in a new land.

- [Pat] In a decade of explosive growth, the valley was transformed by young veterans, entrepreneurs, and families on the move, who took a chance on a new desert lifestyle.

- [Narrator] Arizona people are active, happy people, people on the go, people in motion, doing things they like to do.

This is living.

- [Pat This is the story of the people who launched the boom years and turned the desert into the valley of their dreams.

(light music) Go back a couple of generations, and the view across the valley was that of vast farm fields and desert surrounding the modest skyline of Phoenix.

In 1940, Phoenix had a population of 65,000, a small city.

But small was good for most residents.

- It was a very nice town.

You knew a lot more people.

You walked down Central Avenue, and you could say hello to just about everybody you ran into.

It wasn't a house that had a lock on it.

They might have had a lock, but nobody had the key.

You stop, and nobody's home, you just go in, pour yourself a drink, and go walk on back towards your house.

- [Pat] For Hispanics, the strong neighborhoods gave life a special flavor.

- We always felt like we belonged.

I don't care where you were at.

You always had someone to say hi to, and them return with a big hello, a big hug, a big kiss, a big squeeze.

- [Pat] Like most farming communities, the area was stable, traditional, and run by a few powerful families.

But things began to change when a World War intervened.

(dramatic music) With a war to win, Uncle Sam went shopping for a place with clear skies and dry weather where soldiers could train every day.

The valley was perfect.

Soon, servicemen were pouring into army camps and newly built air bases like Luke and Williams.

Fear of a coastal invasion also brought defense plants to the area, taking advantage of the valley's isolated location.

- I got a job working on the Del Webb construction gang at the Luke Air Force Base, Luke Air Force Field.

And that was a good job, 80 cents an hour, union job, time and a half.

My sister and mother worked at Thunderbird Field in Glendale fabricating the material on the training planes.

- [Pat] It was the war that brought the first economic boom to the valley.

- World War II had a huge impact on the valley.

It's almost impossible for us to overestimate the impact it had.

And so it really was the start of the boom in many ways that turned Phoenix into what it is today.

- [Pat] When the war was over, some thought Phoenix would go back to what it was before the war, a quiet little city living off tourists and grapefruit.

But local boosters weren't about to let the boom end, and they didn't have to look far for signs of opportunity.

The abundant water behind Roosevelt Dam had made farming the principal industry of the valley.

But people saw richer opportunities here, for this farming community possessed most of the elements needed for housing and manufacturing: land, a good climate, and plenty of water.

In promoting economic growth, boosters portrayed their community as the shining city of the West.

It seemed a natural progression for Phoenix to attract the kind of high-tech manufacturers that had been so successful here during World War II.

And so Phoenix pursued the so-called clean industries rather than the old smokestack variety.

By the mid '50s, boosters succeeded in luring Sperry to the valley, joining companies like General Electric, Air Research, and Motorola.

- You have the land, the water, the capital, and the human skills were needed.

And that's the main reason that we had a boom.

(upbeat music) - [Pat] After the limitations of the war years, people were eager to get on with their lives.

- All the military men that were stationed in Arizona during the war, a good deal of 'em, fell in love with it while they were here.

And they were the first ones to migrate back to Arizona.

They loved it.

- [Pat] People began moving to Arizona in force.

They came not just for the healthful climate, but for jobs and a better place to raise a family.

In 1947, a newly married vet named John F. Long returned to Phoenix to find his own piece of heaven.

The future developer began with a single house.

- This first home was to be our own.

And I really hadn't decided what I wanted to do.

But anyway, we built the home, practically all the work ourselves.

Took us six months.

And before we had it completed, there was a demand for homes, and a couple came along and offered us what I thought was a good profit.

We sold the home, and then built the next one.

That was to be our home.

And I think we built 12, 13 homes individually like that until 1949 is when I started the first subdivision.

- [Pat] Now that the automobile allowed homeowners to live farther from downtown, Phoenix didn't just spread outward.

It took a giant leap.

- We started Maryvale 1954.

And the overall plan was to develop a community that would provide homes for young families and a place for their recreation and employment and so forth, and their shopping all in one given area.

- [Pat] In building an entire community from the ground up, Long pioneered the idea of a master planned community.

- He hired one of the eminent planners in that era to lay out Maryvale with streets that would create neighborhoods, where there would be parks that were planned in advance.

And in fact, he built many of those parks and then gave them to the city of Phoenix with school sites designated in advance of where they would go in the subdivisions.

(light music) - [Pat] Building on a mass scale allowed Long and other developers to experiment with ways to lower construction costs.

- That resulted in the ranch house being sort of hit on as the prototype for how to do this.

Simple construction, relatively plain house.

Typically one story, built on a slab, slab on grade construction.

It could be delivered very quickly and very efficiently.

- [Narrator] Phoenix is world renowned as a city of beautiful homes.

This is where the home building industry was revolutionized, where new building techniques were developed, where methods were devised to give the homeowner a lot more home for a lot less cost.

- [Pat] In those years, even a mansion was relatively cheap.

- I remember when they built the first $200,000 home in the Biltmore Estates.

It was a front page story.

Now, $200,000 homes are normal.

But it was beginning to show that real estate development was taking hold in the valley.

And it was not going to stop.

- I think future historians will mark in Arizona as 1950 as really the dividing line between old Arizona and the new Arizona.

With all of the changes that were coming in the '50s, when we were attracting a whole new type of people, no longer the agriculture and the mining types, but college-educated type people coming out to work in the manufacturing industry.

- [Pat] By the mid '50s, manufacturing replaced agriculture as the valley's number one industry.

The job market tempted even more people to move here.

- We were building as many as 20 houses per day, had a real difficult time keeping up with sales.

We'd sell...

There was times that we were selling 100 homes a week.

- [Pat] By 1959, more homes had been built in the valley in one decade than in the previous four combined.

In Scottsdale alone, John Hall was building 100 Hallcraft homes a week.

And in downtown Phoenix, Del Webb was erecting the city's first residential high rise.

A prominent feature of these new neighborhoods was the patio.

- About that time is when the family living was transferred to the backyard rather than the front yard.

Homes just used to have a front porch, and people sat on the front porch and watched other people and the cars go by.

And then it was in the '50s then that the patio and the barbecues and so forth went to the backyard.

And you very seldom see anyone in the front yard.

- [Pat] The patio was so popular, it spawned a new lifestyle.

- [Narrator] The sun-filled patio brings Arizona outdoor living into the home.

This is where the family is likely to congregate for rest, recreation, and relaxation.

The patio serves as a symbol too, a symbol of a way of life.

- [Pat] Patios were great, unless the temperature hit 110 degrees.

Then homeowners stepped inside and turned on their new air conditioners, which quickly became an essential part of valley life.

- Motorola had an enormous impact on popularizing air conditioning in Phoenix.

They had to have air conditioning for their manufacturing processes, to keep the rooms clean enough and so on.

So the people who worked in the Motorola plants got used to living in an air conditioned environment during the day and came to expect it in their houses when they went home.

- [Pat] And once air conditioning tamed the desert heat, the population really took off.

- I always took friends up to South Mountain so that they could overlook the valley.

And it's amazing how far you could see and how many lights you could see.

But then the difference from year to year, as those lights would spread out more and more in the valley because people were moving in.

It was an exciting time.

We had left small towns where they were more or less stagnant.

But here, we were all of a sudden in the midst of a growing, growing community.

We didn't realize it was growing quite so fast.

- [Pat] In fact, the population of Phoenix had quadrupled, jumping from 106,000 in 1950 to 439,000 a decade later.

Thousands upon thousands of Americans had staked their futures on the Valley of the Sun.

Prior to the '50s, Scottsdale was a sleepy, rural community of less than 2,000 people, so sleepy that fledgling developer Del Webb couldn't get a project off the ground when he was offered the deal of his life by a local carpenter.

- He says, "I've got 3,600 acres of land "in a place out here called Scottsdale, "right in the middle."

Paid 50 cents an acre, 1,800 bucks.

He said, "I need the money.

"I'm broke."

So Del didn't have any money.

He went to the president of the First National Bank, fellow named Sylvan Gans, and told Sylvan the story.

And Sylvan says, "Del, you'll never see the day "that there's anything but sage brush and jack rabbits "out in that place."

So he wouldn't lend him the money.

- [Pat] Tiny as it was, Scottsdale still had its boosters.

- The town incorporated in 1951, and the Chamber of Commerce had been formed in 1947.

And between the two of them, then they began to push for more tourist dollars.

Let's get the people to come out here.

(upbeat music) - [Pat] To give Scottsdale a distinct identity as a tourist destination, boosters took a cue from America's love affair with the West.

They named Scottsdale the West's most Western town.

- It actually became known as West Most Western Town in the late '40s.

When Malcolm white built the T Bar, T Theater, our first theater in town, he put a false front on it, a boardwalk, and put up a hitching rail for the horses, and convinced the other townspeople to do the same.

He realized the potential, the tourist potential.

- [Pat] A modest celebration called the Sunshine Festival grew into the Parada Del Sol.

The annual event was kicked off by Western week and a rodeo.

- Well, it was Western because we did dress Western.

And of course they would have Western week in the spring.

A lot of the women made, we called them squaw dresses, and they were brightly decorated.

And that was the West because it had the the Indian motif to it.

And the outdoor cookouts, the barbecues, things like that, that were part of the West.

- [Pat] The tourists loved it.

And the locals prospered.

No matter that the real West was considerably different from the boosters' version.

- The cowboys I saw wore brogan shoes, mostly covered with mud, and their jeans were all dirty, and the hats were slouch hats.

And I saw, that was the real cowboy to me.

Arizona was sort of a contradiction, I thought.

We had the real cowboy, the real working cowboy, and then we had the mythical cowboy.

And the feeling among the Chambers of Commerce, "Let's give 'em what they wanna see."

Let's give them...

If they wanna see the myth of the West, let's give 'em the myth.

- [Pat] Soon, tourists arrived in such numbers that accommodations were hard to come by.

The long established Jokake and Camelback Inns were joined by deluxe motels like the Safari, the Valley Ho, and guest ranches like the Yellow Boot.

Scottsdale also continued to grow as an artist's community.

- Artists often moved to Scottsdale because it was cheaper to live here than it was to live in Phoenix.

And the people here accepted them.

They were different than the farmers, but it was kind of you can do your thing, and we'll do ours.

And you're welcome here.

- [Pat] Townspeople were divided on the issue of growth, but the expansion happened so fast, there was almost no stopping the momentum.

- And by 1960, we couldn't build the schools fast enough.

And at that point, I think people really began to realize, "Wait a minute.

"This place is really taking off."

(light music) - [Pat] It wasn't just tourists who enjoyed valley recreation.

A growing population was pursuing the local pleasures.

- [Narrator] Nature's built-in picnic grounds are everywhere.

It's fun with the family and fun to get together with the folks from the home state.

Newcomers soon discover that most of their new friends and neighbors were also newcomers just a few months or years ago.

- We enjoyed being outdoors.

We enjoyed just packing up the kids and taking off into the desert.

There were no roads there.

And the kids would run and play and climb the rocks.

- [Narrator] To a man and his son, what can be more perfect than a day in spring at a mountain stream?

To a family, a weekend out of doors under a canopy of blue sky?

- Maybe it's just the memory.

Maybe it's just childhood.

But it seemed to me then in the early '50s, Phoenix was really an idyllic place.

And in those days, the canals were lined with beautiful cottonwoods.

And there were all sorts of wild life and little roads along them.

And we'd play in the canal banks.

And everything you needed in the child's world was right there.

(light music) - [Narrator] Phoenix has many faces, all of them adding up to a city full of life, full of people doing things, carefree, informal things that spell pleasant livings.

- [Pat] As the regions of the country became closely linked, ideas spread rapidly.

The struggle for racial equality took place in many parts of America, including the valley.

- The generation like my mom's generation, they suffered a lot, even in school.

That's why they wanted to make a better world for us.

- [Pat] Like so many cities of the fifties, Phoenix still had discrimination in jobs, housing, and education.

Children of color were sent to one set of schools, whites to another.

Some businesses had unwritten rules.

- At Sky Harbor, the place to eat was a long and curving counter.

And they would not let, we called them then Negroes, eat at that counter.

And Walgreens would not let people at that counter.

- [Pat] Throughout the decade, low key pressure was applied by individuals both black and white, and things began to change.

But there were times when local businessman Lincoln Ragsdale used a more confrontational approach, especially when it came to jobs for minorities.

- Well, he went down to the vice president's office of Valley National Bank and handcuffed himself to the chair.

So my father was trying to boldly get attention so that they would deal with him.

They ended up cutting off the handcuffs.

And finally, the president, the vice president and the president, were willing to sit down for a meeting and talk about, what can we do?

But I think that he really did help open a lot of doors.

- [Pat] In 1953, a Maricopa County Superior Court decision began the process of school desegregation, one year before the US Supreme Court's Brown versus the Board of Education ruling.

Phoenix was growing up.

In 1950, the Phoenix city limits encompassed 17 square miles.

10 years later, it was a staggering 187 square miles.

Despite this far flung growth, the population began to coalesce as people took a shared interest in new cultural and sports institutions.

- One of the things that was always true about Phoenix was that it wanted to be a sophisticated place.

It wanted to be like Denver or St Louis or some of those other places that had been there longer and had a more cultured kind of atmosphere about it.

And that was part of the boosterism too, that businesses would wanna come, and professional people would wanna come to a place that had these sorts of amenities.

And while they might wanna come to a place that was the West's most Western town, when they got there, they would want it to be a nice, cultured place.

- [Pat] One event that brought national attention was the arrival of Del Webb's newly acquired New York Yankees for spring training.

- We were a pretty backwater place in those days.

And the idea, the thought that the New York Yankees were coming to Arizona is...

I just remember, we were just all kind of an awe of it.

But the real draw was Joe DiMaggio.

Couldn't believe I was seeing such a great athlete, a great man in person.

And he walked by, and I was within about six feet of him.

I was behind the fence, and I just stood there with my mouth open.

I wanted to ask him for an autograph, and no words came out.

- [Pat] Culturally as well, Phoenix was on its way to becoming a more sophisticated city.

- So that by the time I was a kid here in the '50s, it was a good symphony orchestra that the Phoenix Museum, the Heard Museum had been started.

- [Pat] As people struggled to build new cultural institutions, the city leaders were eager to lend their support.

Ann Lee Harris, a Broadway actress turned theater producer, found the perfect spot for a playhouse, but couldn't afford to clear the site for construction.

- So I went before the city council, the Phoenix city council, and I pled my story.

And one said, "We've got lots of prisoners "up on the third floor, "and they're not doing anything."

Said, "I think we could send you some help."

They sent me 30 prisoners for three days.

So it was really fun because it just... Then the building just went up overnight.

- [Pat] First-rate theater with name talent became so popular that the Phoenix Little Theater was built a short time later.

- I mean, it really wasn't a bunch of hicks that were out here in the desert.

There was a very highly educated segment of people that appreciated the professional theater and were willing to support it.

- [Pat] The valley was coming of age, but it was still missing one ingredient: a university.

Arizona State College had simply outgrown its status as a teacher's college.

- So there had to be a university.

You can't have a great city without a university.

So it was clear that ASC had to transform and become much more than just a teacher's college.

- [Pat] This was an issue that united the citizens of the valley.

People pushed for a referendum, gathered signatures, and ultimately won the right for ASC to be called a university.

- This place exploded.

If you walk around this campus, you can't help but be conscious of how many buildings were built in the 1950s as it transformed itself from this little teacher's college into a great university.

(college fanfare music) - [Pat] What makes a city, a city is not merely that it serves as a crossroads of commerce.

It must also be a crossroads of ideas.

As a forum for new ideas, ASU helped guarantee the community's vitality.

By the end of the '50s, a major city shone in the Valley of the Sun.

- [Narrator] The Phoenix of today is a new city.

The neighborhood of which this home is a part is newer still.

But the values of the people are the values of their forefathers.

And by these values, they live, work, and pray.

- [Pat] For the most part, the people who moved here in the '50s found the opportunities they were looking for.

The proof is not just in how many people came, but in how many stayed.

For more than half a million migrating Americans, the Valley of the Sun was now home.

- [Narrator] Yes, a place for vital, active people to live and enjoy the living, for this is living.

(music fades) (upbeat music)