(upbeat funky 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 Alberto Rios.

It was an unforgettable decade for the Grand Canyon State from the Phoenix Suns making the NBA Playoffs to the arrival of Big Surf and Arizonans electing the state's first Hispanic governor.

Step into Arizona memories from the '70s.

(upbeat funky music) - [Pat] The 1970s for Arizona was a time of monumental change.

We reached higher, broke new ground, and faced horrors never imagined.

The Valley of the Sun teemed with water, a Polynesian paradise sprang from the desert, and a group of what some saw as ragtag hippies would change what we read and listened to forever.

These are Arizona Memories From the '70s.

(people protesting) - [Pat] For a time, the '70s looked and sounded a lot like the '60s.

Protests for equality and against the Vietnam War were common occurrences in Tucson and Phoenix.

The dawn of a new decade offered at least the hope for more peaceful times.

Phoenix turned 100 in 1970.

From a dusty desert farm town grew a metropolis of nearly a million people.

By the end of the '70s, another half million people call it home, making it the fastest growing in America.

And yet at the beginning of the decade, even the big cities didn't feel so big.

- Phoenix was a rural town.

It was nothing exceptional.

It very much of a country commune, it really is.

Tucson was still a very small town too.

Farming was very predominant.

We had a lot of Japanese farmers and cotton, and lettuce, and oranges.

- Scottsdale stopped pretty much at Camelback.

That was the boondocks.

I mean, if you drove north of Camelback, it was like going to the forbidden zone.

- My sisters lived in Phoenix.

I lived, to them, way out in Tempe.

There were some sheep ranchers out there and there were times that traffic would be stopped while the people herding the sheep would just take their time and the sheep aren't that fast.

- Change may have been in the air, but in Arizona's deserts, one thing remained relentlessly constant.

The summer heat.

A refuge appeared on the banks of the Salt River between Scottsdale and Tempe when in 1970, Clairol, a company promoting its surfing look, teamed with a local engineer to build Big Surf.

- You know, I came from Southern California and the ocean and being out here was one thing we missed was the beach.

So one day somebody said, "Well, why don't we go to Big Surf?"

And I thought, what is that?

And we walk in there and I said, "Okay, I'm at the beach."

♪ Big Surf feeling ♪ It's a Big Surf feeling ♪ It's a Big Surf feeling ♪ It's a Big Surf feeling - Big Surf was pretty cool.

That was like the ocean in the desert.

Some people had bikinis in and if the waves were right, I might watch some of them off.

And so that was always a big thing.

You'd have to be careful where all the children were because the water was not always blue in those areas.

- I took my kids to Big Surf and then there were times when they were old enough that I could just dump them, you know?

Oh, this is a thing that a lot of mothers in the '70s did.

We dropped our kids off and left them.

Probably not til they were 10 and 12, but still.

- [Pat] As a kid, Dave Manning spent entire summers at Big Surf and he wasn't alone.

- You had all ages.

I remember grandparents sitting on the beach and watching the action in the water even though they never got in the water.

Every weekend, you had late night dance nights.

Then during the days, it was sun, and sand, and surf.

(upbeat surfer music) It was pandemonium.

Rafts running over heads, everywhere rafts running over rafts, people washing up onto the beach.

I think one of the funniest things in summer was how hot the sand got.

People would race across it as quickly as possible.

- [Pat] But Dave wasn't interested in swimming or rafting.

He was there to surf.

- You had all these diverse characters together from all over the Valley who had this brotherhood and camaraderie, and really, truly developed a culture that revolved around our beach and our waves.

The culture was genuine.

The waves were artificial.

(exciting rock music) (waves crashing) - [Pat] Over time, new water parks featuring tubes, slides, and falls opened across the Valley.

But for Arizonans in the '70s, Big Surf was the cool way to keep cool.

(exciting rock music) On a crisp December evening in 1970, the Pioneer Hotel in Downtown Tucson buzzed with shoppers, guests, and hundreds gathered for holiday parties.

Then, someone smelled smoke.

- [Dispatcher] Pioneer Hotel, engine one, two, three.

- An early morning fire has swept through the Downtown Pioneer Hotel leaving at least 28 persons dead and injuring two dozen more, some critically.

The fire, believed to be the worst tragedy in Tucson's modern history, broke out on the fourth floor shortly after midnight and spread rapidly down to the third floor and up to the ninth floor through an open stairway, catching many of the victims before they had a chance to flee.

- And we heard the people screaming and the sheets hanging out of the window and people leaning out, begging somebody to come and help them.

We saw several people jump from the window.

- [Pat] In the end, 29 people died and 27 were injured, including several firefighters.

Among the dead, a mother and her five children, and the hotel's original owners, Harold and Peggy Steinfeld.

The 16-year-old convicted of setting the blaze is still serving a life sentence all the while insisting he's innocent.

What was once the Pioneer Hotel is now an office building and most Tusconans who pass it do so without realizing that it was here that their city's most horrific tragedy unfolded.

Tucson would demolish much of its old downtown in the '70s, replacing (indistinct) with shopping and office complexes, the Tucson Museum of Art, and the Tucson Community Center.

(contemplative funky music) (smoke billowing) The Valley of the Sun also leveled the old to make way for the new.

City halls, civic plazas, offices, shopping malls and banks, including the still tallest building in Arizona would rise during this boom.

Despite all the construction downtown, more and more people were moving to the newly developed suburbs on the edge and beyond the edge of town, Sun Lakes in Chandler, Dobson Ranch in Mesa, McCormick Ranch in Scottsdale, and the Lakes in Tempe were the first to feature manmade lakes.

- Oh, the Lakes.

I always wanted to live in the Lakes.

I remember the lakes being built and Ahwatukee, I still have trouble saying it, and I couldn't understand why anyone would wanna live there.

And I just remember it getting farther, and farther, and farther.

- I thought that the only people in Ahwatukee would be retired people.

And in Fountain Hills, nobody would go there.

- In the '60s, we basically stayed in neighborhoods.

Everybody knew each other, everybody knew their neighbors.

They did family things together.

And once the '70s came, I think it just sort of spread out the families just a little bit more.

- [Pat] All this growth had some screaming for more freeways while others feared that Phoenix might become another Los Angeles.

The Papago Freeway became the focus of the fight over growth in the '70s.

Designed in the '60s, the Papago would be an extension of Interstate 10, cutting right through downtown.

It was to be an elevated roadway standing 10 stories high and featuring two giant circular on and off ramps known as helicoils.

By the early '70s, neighborhoods had already been purchased and demolished.

- When I saw what the freeway was doing to the beautiful homes in its path and my home was six blocks to the north, equally beautiful, built in the '20s, we organized and we'd go down to City Hall by the bus loads and testify before the Phoenix City Council.

- [Pat] Jana Bommersbach covered the Papago freeway Controversy for the Arizona Republic.

The newspaper originally championed the freeway.

As details emerged, the Republic campaigned against it.

- And that changed the course of the freeway.

When people realized what those helicoils were all about, and what this 10-story thing, and the dead land below it, I mean, that would've been like a junk area below that.

Who would've ever built down there?

Nobody would've built a thing down there.

- What actually stopped the freeway in 1973 was a vote that the council allowed to happen.

And the newspaper made it clear to everyone in the city of Phoenix what was going on.

And the vote was 53% to stop the freeway against 47% in favor of the freeway.

That brought it to a screeching halt.

- [Pat] Eventually, a section of I-10 would be built through downtown.

The subterranean design reduced the number of homes and businesses demolished, but not before countless homes were destroyed to make way for the elevated freeway that never was.

By 1980, The Valley of the Sun had only 32 miles of freeways, including the Superstition which residents were amazed took them all the way to Dobson Road.

(soft rock music) Growth was not a statewide phenomenon.

As Interstate 40 was being completed across Northern Arizona, major sections of Route 66 were bypassed.

So too were the towns that depended on it to survive.

Some towns withered and died.

(horn blaring) Others like Winslow survived on the railroad, and ironically, Route 66 nostalgia.

In the high desert 35 miles east of Prescott, there was a new town emerging in 1970, Arcosanti.

The vision of architect Paolo Soleri, the community espoused a self-sufficient, environmentally sensitive lifestyle.

To some, these newcomers were visionaries.

To many of Central Arizona's long time ranching families, their new neighbor's way of life wasn't so new.

- We thought it was hysterical.

We sustained ourselves on the land already.

That was a lifestyle and they acted like it was a whole new concept.

Well, we're gonna live off the land.

Come out to my house.

Let me show you how to live without electricity and we perfected a three minute shower.

(upbeat rock music) - [Pat] A new generation came of age of the '70s, the Baby Boomers, the largest generation in American history.

And in Arizona, they made their presence felt.

- Arizona in the early '70s was one of the coolest places to come to.

The Mill Avenue scene in particular.

- Mill Avenue was incredible.

Anybody who lived in this area in that time will agree, it was magic.

- Everything was changing.

And instead of it just being a cowboy town, it became one of the hippest places in the United States.

- [Pat] They challenged the status quo, especially in their opposition to the War in Vietnam.

Believing that their opinions and concerns were not being voiced by the established newspapers of the day, they created new publications such as the Razz Revue and New Times.

- New Times was totally like the kid on the block who said, are you kidding me?

You might say that this is the story, but the real story is, who's winning and who's losing, whose power is being challenged, who's misusing their power?

And we were doing some incredible journalism.

- [Pat] Their clothes, their language, even their political views screamed of a new way of looking at the world.

- We ran him for governor.

- Yeah.

- And in a state that desperately needed a dose of new ideas.

We came up with some really catchy campaign promises.

- Well, free food, free gas, the elimination of all taxes, free cushy political jobs for all people that voted for me.

It was just really a big joke.

- And there's the '70s right there.

(laughing) - [Pat] Music was the true voice of this generation.

At the dawn of the '70s, Arizona was still more country than city and so was its music.

Country soon gave way to country rock, rock, blue grass, and blues.

♪ I got my mojo working, but it just don't work on you ♪ ♪ I got my mojo working (upbeat jazz music) - There was also a scene of jazz.

The jazz scene in Arizona in the '70s was hot.

People were coming from the East Coast to come to Phoenix to listen to jazz.

(rock music) - [Pat] The '70s saw the emergence of the rock festival, large concerts featuring multiple bands and venues such as Feyline field, Veterans Memorial Coliseum, and Big Surf.

Even Arcosanti staged benefit concerts.

That ended in 1978 when a brush fire consumed the cars of over a hundred concert goers.

- And mine was one of 'em and I lost everything I owned, my clothes.

I was just down to zero that day.

It was a bad day for me, but I rose above it.

- [Pat] Arizona's musicians helped define '70s music nationwide.

Waylon Jennings, Jessi Colter, Stevie Nicks, Linda Ronstadt, Alice Cooper, and the Tubes all had Arizona roots.

- Well, one of the reasons Frank Zappa was so taken back by us, he says, "If you guys were from San Francisco, or New York, or New Orleans, it would be really understandable that you're this kind of artistic outrageous sort of act, but you're from Phoenix, you know?"

And we went, "Yeah," you know?

He says, "Aren't the Tubes from Phoenix?"

We go, "Yeah, they're our friends."

- Most of the people thought we were from San Francisco, but in Arizona, we were always in Arizona band, and we were always Arizona boys, and we always have been.

We all grew up here and became twisted because of Arizona.

(radio static whirring) - [Announcer] With offices in a lovely ex-Safeway building in Downtown Mesa, Arizona, this is KDKB Mesa, Arizona.

- [Pat] If music was the voice of this generation, KDKB and its predecessor KCAC were its megaphones.

- [Announcer] KDKB FM Mesa, Phoenix, flagship station, Dwight Karma Broadcasting.

- [Pat] AM top 40 dominated popular radio of the day.

That was until Bill Compton and his friends from Texas began broadcasting on KCAC, a humble daytime only station.

While KCAC was changing the radio landscape, it was failing financially.

Dwight Tindle and Eric Hauenstein, two Easterners looking to start their own radio station, purchased an easy listening station in Mesa and hired Bill Compton and the rest of the staffers of KCAC.

The Arizona radio and music scene changed forever.

- KDKB with Bill Compton as music director was the most free form radio I ever heard in my life.

And literally, disc jockies could play what they wanted to play.

- And it was funny because people would say, "Oh, your station doesn't have any format."

And I'd go, "No, every station has a format.

Our format was we didn't have a format."

- [Male Speaker] It was every single disc jockey was like an artist.

They weren't really just playing songs.

They were sort of composing in a way.

I don't mean to make it sound too heavy, but they were literally picking out these collages.

- They'd go classical music, they'd do world music, they'd do jazz, they'd do rock and roll, they'd do funk.

- And then you'd hear Beethoven, a classical song in the afternoon on a rock station.

And so a guy like me would go, I love this station!

- [Announcer] Welcome to Forum for Thursday night.

- [Pat] KDKB had 15 minute news breaks and a nightly hour long public affairs program for which it won press prestigious Peabody Award.

It wasn't just radio, it was family.

- [Male Speaker] Every car in this town, Tempe, had the KDKB bumper sticker.

- You would rise 10 points in hipness factor and people would flash you the peace sign just 'cause you had that on your car.

- I still have one.

- Probably on the same car.

- [Pat] The early days of KCAC and KDKB had a magical musical spirit.

Ask those who were there where it came from and one name comes to mind, Bill Compton.

- [Male Speaker] Compton had a way of bringing in all of the spirits and all the forces of the music.

- [Male Speaker] He was the spokesman for a whole generation here in Phoenix.

And he would represent the hippies in Phoenix.

You were really happy because he was very well-spoken.

- He was the most charismatic person I think I've ever met in my life.

- But he also was a real professional.

He understood what made radio work.

- [Bill] And we have Stephanie Nicks from Fleetwood Mac here in the studio with us to talk to us a little bit.

- [Stevie] Hello, Bill.

Thank you.

Fleetwood Mac is a very, very special bunch of people.

I'm not talking about me.

I'm talking about the other four.

- He proved that with constant airplay of great music, you could take off the wall musicians, and bands, and entities like that, and actually turn them into a force that could sell tickets.

- [Pat] One of those musicians Compton took a liking to was Jerry Riopelle.

Riopelle became a favorite son of the Arizona music scene beginning with his first concert in 1974.

His annual New Year's Eve concerts were legendary.

He played where most of the KDKB discoveries played, the Celebrity Theater.

♪ Well, I might be in hock tomorrow ♪ ♪ Halfway to my neck - It very quickly became insane.

I mean, it just did.

♪ Walkin' on water You think everybody knows every word, there's so many people singing.

And halfway through the set, there's all these people that are dancing.

And I thought, look, we're a dance act, you know?

♪ Making all offers ♪ And I don't get paid just for wasting time ♪ They've got so personal.

They just, we were like old friends and we're just cranking it, you know?

And it would just be a stand up deal for two hours.

(upbeat rock music) (audience applauding) - [Announcer] Let's sing Merry Christmas all together.

♪ We wish you a Merry Christmas ♪ ♪ We wish you a Merry Christmas ♪ - [Pat] In December, 1975, many of the KDKB family gathered for a live holiday broadcast.

Few could fathom that within months, Bill Compton would be fired.

And in June, 1977, on the verge of his next musical adventure, he died in an automobile accident.

Bill Compton and others from KCAC and KDKB ignited a musical chain reaction.

The Celebrity Theater remained the hippest venue in Arizona for years to come.

Jerry Riopelle continued to sell out concerts for over 30 years.

And classic rock artists Compton introduced to Arizonans in the '70s are still played today on the station he helped create, KDKB.

- Bill had just planted this great seed.

And by the time he passed away, it was a full blown tree of culture.

- We didn't have the Cardinals to cheer for back in the '70s, but that didn't mean we didn't have sports.

Before the Diamondbacks, Arizonans rooted for the minor league Phoenix Giants and major league spring training was already in full swing in the Valley, Casa Grande, Tucson, and Yuma.

(audience cheering) Long before the Coyotes laced up their skates, the Phoenix Roadrunners were shooting and checking their way into Arizona hockey history, winning the Western Hockey League Championships in 1973 and '74.

- The term blood on the ice meant something back then.

I mean, you got in fist fights, they were real fist fights and you didn't have to worry about the guy spitting out his mouthpiece or having a helmet or a face guard or anything because they didn't exist.

- [Pat] The Phoenix Suns joined the NBA at the end of the '60s.

They made NBA history in 1976.

- When the team surprised everybody and made its way to the NBA Finals against the famed Boston Celtics.

- [Announcer] This has been one of the more incredible evenings in the history of championship play in the NBA.

- [Pat] Game five is NBA legend.

With one second left in double overtime and the Suns trailing by two, Gar Heard caught an inbound pass and fired a 20-foot arching jump shot, sending the game into triple overtime, Arizonans were glued to their televisions or radios.

- I was in my patrol car.

And between calls, I was cursing everybody calling because every time I got outta the car, I just knew it was gonna end.

I was gonna miss the end of the game and I'd come back.

And there's Al McCoy, yelling and hollering and going hoarse about the Suns, the Cinderella team, oh my god!

You know, double overtime, triple overtime!

And I'm like, "Oh god, and I'm missing it."

I remember that pretty vividly.

- [Interviewer] Did you miss it?

- Yes.

Got a call to a domestic and missed it.

- [Pat] Unfortunately, Boston would go on to win the game and the finals, but the '76 Suns put Phoenix on the professional sports map.

- The first triple overtime game ever in the history of the NBA finals in a game that still is called by fans as the greatest basketball game ever played.

- [Pat] The nation started to take note of Arizona's college teams.

Both the University of Arizona and Arizona State University were national champions in baseball.

And Grand Canyon College won a national basketball championship twice during the decade.

But by far, Arizona's most successful college sports program in the '70s was Sun Devil Football under Coach Frank Kush.

(marching band music) (audience applauding) Between 1969 and 1977, ASU topped the Western Athletic Conference seven times.

129 players from Kush coached teams made it to the pros.

Unbeaten in 1970, ASU faced North Carolina in a wintry Peach Bowl, the Sun Devil's first postseason action since the 1950 Salad Bowl.

- We came out at halftime, we were losing, and I kind of got on 'em at halftime and everything else and we really start playing great defense, and Joe Spag throw to JD Hill, a couple times, we score, and we beat 'em pretty handily.

They did not score another touchdown, so we beat 'em something like 45 to 36.

- [Pat] In 1971, ASU's success coupled with frustration over their being overlooked each bowl season sparked local business leaders to create Arizona's own bowl game, the Fiesta Bowl.

As Conference Champions, ASU played in five of the first seven Fiesta Bowls, winning all but one.

- [Frank] The big one was 1975, the Nebraska game.

Dennis Sproul, our quarterback got hurt.

We sent Fred Mortenson in and Fred did a commendable job.

My son Dan kicked three field goals.

He finally kicked the winning field goal and that had to be one of the greatest football teams we've ever had.

- [Pat] Although the Fiesta Bowl generated excitement and the Phoenix Sun's statewide pride, for Arizonans in the '70s, there was still just one must see sporting event.

- That would be the ASU UofA game.

- UofA, ASU.

- ASU and UofA.

- ASU and UofA.

- That was the biggest game of the year.

- [Male Speaker] That was the statewide rivalry.

(laughing) I mean, people that didn't even go to either one of the schools would choose sides.

- [Female Speaker] People traveled no matter the distance from Flagstaff, from the mining towns.

No matter where you were, you made that trip.

- [Male Speaker] And it was packed, the stands were packed.

- [Female Speaker] The end zone was full of kids, no adults down there, kids running around like crazy, occasionally finding their parents and asking for money.

- We used to go to the games and sit on the A Mountain.

And we could watch the game from up there, which was pretty crazy 'cause there was some pretty good parties going on up on that mountain.

One guy that we looked at, we saw him one minute then we didn't see him.

- Oh yeah.

- We think he went over.

There's always somebody falling off that mountain during the games in the '70s.

Luckily, it wasn't us.

- And the rivalry between two institutions, it wasn't only athletically, it was academically, socially, et cetera, and everything else.

- Oh gosh, it was a sin to even mention ASU.

- You wouldn't even dare talk about being from Tucson.

- Frank Kush handed us our heads every Thanksgiving and we became just a terrible, terrible thing.

But we lived for that.

- I had our guys so fearful of me, they were scared of contending with me in contrast to playing at UofA and losing to them because there's no doggone way that I thought we were gonna lose to those rascals.

But I enjoyed it because we were winning.

Now, if we'd have been losing, it might have been a different story.

- [Pat] The UofA ASU rivalry wasn't the only time-honored tradition in the '70s.

There was The Wallace and Ladmo Show.

Wallace, Ladmo, and Gerald started entertaining Arizonans in the '50s and continued throughout the '70s and '80s.

- On Monday, picketers appeared before the State Capital to-- - [Pat] Television changed dramatically in the '70s.

Phoenicians only had six channels to choose from and local TV was where most went for their news.

Although there were minority and women reporters, all of the prime time anchors were white men.

Then, along came Mary Jo West.

- A memorial to the 1,100 men killed when the USS Arizona was sunk at Pearl Harbor.

- Oh, I loved Mary Jo West.

Of course, now, there's so many women anchors, but she was a pioneer.

- I thought she was very good, very professional, very beautiful, and I thought she was a fluke and it wouldn't happen for anyone else.

- [Male Speaker] There was a lot of pressure and she had to be extremely professional.

She had to be very, very good because she was going to be viewed very closely by the television audience.

- She was the first and she was good.

And I was like, yeah, you know, do it.

- When I came to Channel 10, it was called Kool TV.

And my boss and co-anchor was a man named Bill Close.

And he had certain rules about what women could and could not do.

And we could not, for goodness sake, wear slacks.

You could not wear pants and you couldn't go out of town to do a story because obviously, you know, you might get romantic with the camera person.

At that time, it was just men.

Well, Governor Wesley Bolin is here in our studios.

And Governor, you've had a very busy day.

What exactly?

I remembered the Phoenix Gazette at the time, the headline said, "Anchorette debuts."

And I wanted to be more than an anchorette.

I wanted to do stories with substance and to show that women don't detract from the news, but can add perhaps even something special that men could not.

- [Pat] Women were making strides off camera as well.

Carol Lynde was hired as a part-time film editor in 1976, but she wanted to shoot.

- And then one day, one of the photographers fell off the roof of his house and broke his arm in three places and I had a job.

- Lynde went on to win 10 Emmys and shoot in all sorts of surprising situations over the next 30 plus years, but one moment stands out.

In May of 1979, Lynde became the first female TV photographer to enter the Phoenix Sun's locker room following her reporter who knew a shortcut.

- And he takes us through the showers.

And so it's like, oh my, oh my, oh my.

And so he went around and did his interviews with Walter Davis, and Garheard, and folks who were there at the time.

And they kinda laughed that I was in there, but they weren't bothered by it.

There was nobody saying, "Get her outta here!"

or anything like that.

But you did have to kind of, you didn't know where to put your eyes.

(laughing) - [Pat] Advances for women were not exclusive to television and certainly not Arizona.

Women across the nation demanded equal rights.

Some pushed for an amendment to the Constitution to ensure them.

- Women at that point had had enough.

I mean, the '60s, we thought was a fight for equality.

But what we discovered was a lot of our brothers really wanted us still to type the papers, not write them, you know, and cook the meals.

And so women started saying, "No!"

- [Pat] During the '70s, more women than ever before entered the workforce and were elected into government.

Margaret Hance became Phoenix's first female mayor and Sandra Day O'Connor the first female majority leader of the Arizona State Senate.

- The '70s was the time when women were able to get out and do their thing and it came with a price.

Lots of criticism, lots of heartbreak, but it was time for women to make that next move.

I'm Mary Jo West.

Goodnight.

- [Pat] Women were not the only Arizonans fighting for equality in the '70s.

Blacks, American Indians, and Hispanics all called for fairer pay, opportunities in the workplace, and equal treatment in the schools.

- Chicanos Por La Causa, for example, or the Barrio Youth Project are just two examples of civil rights organizations founded in Phoenix in the early 1970s.

(people protesting) - [Pat] The nation's eyes would be fixed on the state many times during the '70s when Arizonan, Cesar Chavez, would fast and lead strikes, boycotts, and marches calling for better pay and working conditions for farm workers, Christine Marin, then a student at ASU, remembers seeing Chavez at the Santa Rita Center in Phoenix.

- And I looked around and I saw common, ordinary working people with families and children.

I saw farm workers there, politicians there, students there from ASU.

I saw professional people there.

Cesar Chavez being in this hall brought all of us together for a common cause of social justice and fairness.

And that love that permeated that room that I could feel brought me back.

- [Pat] Arizonans elected the state's first Hispanic governor in 1974.

With the slogan a choice for change, Raul Castro won when the final votes came in from the Navajo Reservation.

- I always had faith in the American public.

I always get the feeling that if you convince the American public that you're honest, had honest convictions, and sincere about what you're doing, that they will follow you and will support you.

- [Pat] Just three months before Raul Castro was elected governor, Richard Nixon facing likely impeachment as a result of the Watergate break in and coverup resigned as President of the United States.

Arizonans played a paramount role when Senator Barry Goldwater and Congressman John Rhodes counseled Nixon to step down the night before his announcement.

America endured another shameful event 10 months later when in April, 1975, the last Americans unceremoniously left Vietnam.

Although this marked the official end of the war, American soldiers had journeyed back home through airports like Sky Harbor for years.

For many of them, it was a difficult transition.

- Well, you faced a, number one, an unknowing populace.

I mean, people didn't know what you had been through and there was no parade.

Second World War, man, you got the ticker-tape parade, and you got to kiss chicks, and I mean, it was a whole, there was a feeling of an accomplishment that you had done something that the community appreciated it, and they're gonna show you that they appreciated it.

Vietnam, you just kind of dribbled off the plane and suddenly you were back in society with really no thank you, with really no one.

And everyone just hated the war so much that they didn't want to talk about it.

- [Pat] In 1976, the country had at least one thing to feel good about, the United States Bicentennial.

The Bicentennial was celebrated on Sunday, July 4th, 1976, the 200th Anniversary of the Adoption of the Declaration of Independence.

For America's eastern states, the party began well before that and went on for months.

There were elaborate fireworks, parades, and even commemorative Bicentennial coins and stamps.

While there seemed to be an event every week in Boston, Philadelphia, and other major cities east of the Salt River, most Arizonans had a different reaction.

- [Interviewer] Do you remember the Bicentennial?

- You know, I really don't.

- Oh, the Bicentennial.

Wow.

- I don't recall vividly any great occurrence in '76 in the Bicentennial in Arizona.

- I know we had one.

(laughing) - Yeah, where was I at the Bicentennial?

- I don't remember the Bicentennial.

When was that?

- The Bicentennial year was, what year?

You have to tell me.

- [Interviewer] 76.

- 76.

- 76.

- 76.

- 76.

- The only thing I remember about 1976 was a triple overtime loss in Boston Garden.

- God, 'cause I was really into all that stuff.

- The Bicentennial came and went.

I don't remember a single major thing in Phoenix, Arizona happening during that time.

I don't think we celebrated it.

- I don't remember covering it, I don't remember an event about it.

- I don't think anybody cared back then 'cause we were in college, so it was just, it was a day.

We probably went out and had beers, but.

- I just got my Master's.

I had just start, oh.

I don't know.

- The Bicentennial train came through Tempe.

And so my husband and I took our children down there and they got to see the train, and all the music, and all the festivities.

But most of the Bicentennial stuff, I don't really remember.

I was just a baby.

(laughing) (funky disco music) - [Pat] Many Arizonans shared one unique collective memory in the '70s.

No, it wasn't 8-track tapes, Farrah Fawcett's hair, nor even the CB radio craze.

It was the floods.

(thunder clapping) (suspenseful music) Dams store water in reservoirs for use during dryer months.

Sudden excessive rainfall can fill the reservoirs and water must be released.

Sometimes, lots of water.

And in Arizona in the '70s, there was a lot of sudden excessive rainfall.

In the first half of the decade, three powerful storms hit Arizona, killing over 30 people and destroying or damaging nearly 1,000 homes.

Then in 1978, the weather turned really nasty.

(thunder clapping) (suspenseful music) - All of a sudden, that Salt River would become a raging giant river.

- Churning, lots of debris coming down the river.

- Just unbelievable amount of water and flowing so fast.

- You get junk cars going down, lots of debris, trees coursing down that river, hitting off the bridges.

- [Male Speaker] The water actually crept right up to the edge of town and we had people evacuated.

We had people in the gymnasium were living with other people.

- They literally were going door to door and warning people that they might wanna move because there was uncertainty about how long Roosevelt Dam was, or if it was gonna be able to hold up.

- And had that happened, we would've had a natural disaster as horrible.

I feel, in some ways, almost as bad as Katrina.

- It was incredible.

I mean, that stuff was powerful.

People would try to cross it, dead.

- [Pat] Between October, 1977 and February, 1980, there were seven floods.

Phoenix was declared a disaster area three times and 18 people lost their lives.

- [Mary Jo] It was terrifying.

And that was the time that the helicopter reporting really came into the forefront in television news.

Jerry Foster flying over and showing the flash flooding and the cars and the cactus going down the river.

- I remember him being in Channel 3's helicopter when the water was starting to come down Salt River towards the Tempe Bridge.

And we're kind of following in front of it in the air, but seeing kids and people running out in front of the water like, hey, this is great!

And you're just terrified that they're gonna get swept away.

- [Pat] Experts call them 100 year floods, a term that refers to the magnitude of a flood rather than its timeframe, a detail lost on those witnessing the cataclysm.

- They called it the 100 year flood.

The first time, I thought, well, good, then it won't happen for 100 years.

And they'd say, well, this is a different 100 year flood.

- How many 100 year floods did we have in the '70s?

It seemed to me we had one every other Tuesday.

I first got here and I had to cover one of them.

And they kept saying, "This is a 100 year flood."

I said, "What does that mean?"

They said, "This is the severity of flood that only happens once in 100 years."

- And then a couple years later, we'd have another 100 year flood.

- It just kept getting to be like flood, flood, flood, flood, flood.

- Good evening.

Arizona Governor Wesley Bolin is dead.

- [Pat] In the midst of the '78 floods, Governor Wesley Bolin died of a heart attack.

He had only recently been appointed to replace Raul Castro, who was named the US Ambassador to Argentina.

The job of leading the state in this time of crisis fell to then Attorney General Bruce Babbitt.

Bridges throughout Arizona had been destroyed.

In Downtown Phoenix, only the central avenue bridge stood fast.

East Valley residents nervously eyed their newly constructed bridges connecting Scottsdale to Mesa and Tempe.

- And these brand new bridges that cost millions and millions of dollars on Rural and McClintock would just wash out.

- And one remained and that was the Mill Avenue Bridge, which was the oldest bridge and the best built bridge.

- And then we'd all have to get on that bridge.

It would take three hours to get from Tempe to Scottsdale and it was just horrible.

There was no way to get from Phoenix, Scottsdale to Tempe, Mesa but that Mill Avenue Bridge.

- It played havoc with this community for a long.

The bridges were out and South Phoenix was totally isolated.

You couldn't even get from South Phoenix to North Phoenix.

You know, you couldn't get around.

I mean, one year, we had the Hattie B., which was the train.

- The railroad bridge survived.

People could take the rails into Phoenix on the Hattie B.

And the Hattie B. was named after Hattie Babbitt because she said, I'm gonna ride it to show that this can work.

- [Male Speaker] The Hattie B. was a cobbled together train.

- [Female Speaker] And it ran from the Phoenix Depot into Tempe to get people back and forth across the river.

- [Male Speaker] And was packed every morning and every night.

Sadly though, as soon as the water receded and bridges were repaired, the Hattie B. kind of went away.

- [Female Speaker] And so here we are now, you know, building light rail when we had the Hattie B. years ago and it worked just great.

- [Pat] By the 1990s, Salt River Project and the federal government completed more than $400 million in improvements on the Salt and Verde River dams, measures designed to keep flooding like that of the '70s and early '80s a distant memory.

- [Male Speaker] Well, I can laugh at 'em now.

I sure didn't laugh at 'em then.

- [Female Speaker] I remember never being so wet in my life, never being so cold in my life.

- [Female Speaker] It was a very, very scary time.

(upbeat rock music) - You'd think with all the floods, Arizonans would've had their fill of the Salt River, but once the summer heat returned, an annual migration began to tube the Salt.

- Well, tubing was a rite of passage.

I mean, everybody did that.

- Oh, tubing the Salt River was fabulous.

You had to do that as a newcomer.

- That's before they had buses to take you up and vans.

- And there were only a couple ways to get there.

You would take Shea all the way out and go up that way or you could go up the bush highway from Mesa.

And you'd have to take your own tubes.

- And there was one gas station, which is right on where Shea is now.

There was a standard station.

It was the only one.

And that's the last place you were gonna get a tube.

Okay?

- Then you had to have two vehicles though because you had to have a vehicle parked up on the Salt where you were gonna get in and down at Verde where you were gonna get out.

I'd be driving the pickup, so I'd have the five girls in the cab with me.

And the guys would have to be stacked on top of the inner tubes or hanging off the side.

- [Male Speaker] Looked like "Grapes of Wrath" or something.

Cars going up to the river with tubes tied all over the place.

- [Male Speaker] And then we'd just put the tubes in and have a great day.

- All of a sudden, you're in heaven, and you've gone away from the shore, and you're on a journey.

It's Huck Finn.

It's the whole Tom Sawyer deal.

And there you are out there.

There's pretty girls with halter tops on and some without halter tops on.

And I don't know.

To me, that's just somehow about as American as you can get.

- [Male Speaker] Everybody would take beer along, but they'd usually just kind of tie it to the tube and let it hang in the water or something like that.

- [Male Speaker] And there was always accidents there and you had to have people diving down to retrieve the beer.

- [Male Speaker] Save the beer, save the beer at all cost.

- Yeah, we started off with probably a case of beer each.

And by the time we got off, there was no no evidence of beer.

- There was nothing.

- It was just, there's a lot of beer at the bottom of that river.

- Tubing for me was a family experience and we just enjoyed the time together.

We enjoyed the barbecuing.

We enjoyed time with the kids.

It was times to throw each other in.

It was times to just chase each other.

There was no drinking with our family and so we would just have a good time.

- Tubing on the Salt was dangerous for me.

There were no sunblocks at the time.

- In fact, you put baby oil on yourself to go ahead and try to get burned and get a tan.

- I got horribly sunburned doing that.

- Oh, oh, the sunburns were brutal.

- Oh, blistered.

- That was sort of God telling you, this is what hell is going to be like.

You know, the next day after tubing.

- [Pat] Although the '70s was a time of promise and progress, a series of horrific acts would suggest that below the surface of Arizona's laid back lifestyle existed a dark world of violence, organized crime, and government corruption.

Two men slated to testify against organized crime figures were killed in broad daylight.

Actor Bob Crane of TV's "Hogan's Heroes" was beaten to death in Scottsdale.

And in the summer of '78, Arizonans were paralyzed with fear when state prison escapees known as the Tison Gang went on a murder spree.

This wave of violence eroded Arizona's sense of security, but no crime shocked the state and cast a shadow on the decade of the '70s like the murder of Arizona Republic Reporter Don Bolles.

- It was June 2nd, 1976.

And it was a hot day like Phoenix always is, about 100 degrees and about high noon.

And Don was going to meet a source who had information and they were gonna have the meeting at the old Clarendon Hotel.

And he met this person before and now was gonna get more information on the various criminal activity.

And Don pulled up in the parking lot, parked his car, went inside, waited for a while in the lobby, and got a call from this individual he was supposed to meet named John Adamson, who called him and said, "Something's come up and we're gonna have to change our plans.

And I'll call you later this afternoon."

And he went out to his car out in the parking lot, and he started that ignition, and he pulled out just a few feet.

(suspenseful ambient music) A dynamite bomb controlled by a remote control blasted off into his car and threw him halfway out of his vehicle.

- [Pat] The bomb blew a two-foot wide hole on the steel floorboard of Bolles' car and sent shrapnel over 100 feet away.

Would-be rescuers tried to help Bolles by fashioning tourniquets out of their belts and hotel towels.

Bolles whispered, "Emprise, they finally got me, the mafia," and the name, "John Adamson."

As he had done many times in the past, Bolles was writing to expose land fraud, organized crime, and government corruption.

- Don was incredible just like in life, being tenacious, never giving up.

He actually lived for 11 more days.

It was a bomb blast that ripped through our minds and tore through our hearts.

Here was a person killed just for doing his job.

- [Pat] Three men would eventually be tried for the Bolles murder.

Their various cases would drag out into the 1990s.

John Adamson confessed and was found guilty of planting the bomb.

He served 20 years.

James Robison, who Adamson said triggered the blast, would have his sentence overturned and go free.

And Max Dunlap, who Adamson alleges hired him, continues to serve a sentence of 25 years to life claiming he was set up by powerful people who wanted Bolles dead.

- There's been a number of controversy regarding various things.

There's people who have said there's various theories, but I think what people forget is this has been looked at by a lot of people over a long period of time.

There was no rush to judgment, no rush to prosecution.

We wanted to do it right.

And there was no reason not to get the right people, so we tried to uncover every rock we could and wherever it went, it went.

- [Pat] Despite all the investigations, trials, and convictions, the murder of Don Bolles continues to haunt Arizonans.

- Oh, that makes me cry.

- It was the saddest thing I had heard happening in Phoenix and it broke my heart for Phoenix.

- I just thought that Las Vegas thugs had come and taken over my city.

- Well, we felt like we'd entered someplace on the map with that one.

And it wasn't a good place to be.

- Well, we couldn't believe it happened in our little city.

First of all, who would murder anybody in Phoenix?

- How could it happen here?

It was my little cow town, no.

- That's Vegas or that's back east.

We don't have that here.

- Those were the sure signs that something was going on, that a city's growing up when you start having major murder stories.

- It made you feel vulnerable and you realized that this isn't just a little place of cactus and margaritas.

And all of a sudden, it was a dark and dangerous place.

- And the realization of that really shattered a lot of naivete, I believe.

- And I don't know that we've been the same since then.

- Everybody wondered who in the world would do such a thing and I'm not sure we know today.

We think we do, but sometimes I'm not sure whether they got it right or not.

- I still feel in my heart of hearts that the people who made that happen, that horrific horrible event happen didn't come to justice.

- The man who set the bomb has died.

He served his time in jail, John Harvey Adamson, and he has now died.

That's how long ago this all happened and we still don't know who ordered that hit, and why exactly did they order that hit, and why were they trying to punish Don Bolles.

And I still think that that is a question that needs to be answered.

(somber orchestral music) (footsteps pattering) - In the latter half of the decade, there was a new generation coming of age, and with them came a new sound.

They didn't have a war to fight and they weren't interested in taking it to the man.

They wanted to dress up and get down.

They wanted to boogie.

(upbeat disco music) - I loved it.

I loved the beat.

I loved the clubs.

I loved the dancing and I loved the shoes.

It was great, big platform shoes.

- And the disco clothes and the big Afros.

I can remember having an outfit that's scandalous.

- I was a pretty good disco dancer at one time.

I had to have a disco dress.

It had pointed hams like this so that when you twirled, the whole thing would twirl around.

- Polyester was something that was the in fabric to wear.

Wide lapels.

Big, thick, fat ties that were impossible to tie.

- Oh yes, we all looked so good.

I was gonna wear my leisure suit today, but you know.

- No.

I wouldn't be caught dead in a leisure suit.

- Couldn't afford 'em.

Thank God.

- I don't even know how to spell disco and I don't want to know how to spell disco.

- Disco was the dreaded enemy of rock and roll and the only album you were allowed to like was "Saturday Night Fever" 'cause that was the Sergeant Pepper of disco.

Everything else, Donna Summer, anything like that was like, you know, I mean, I had visual.

I was maybe one of the great generals in the battle against disco because we couldn't get played.

- And I think punk music was the reaction to that.

Suddenly, we saw these really angry kids saying, "No, no, no, live music is where it's at!"

And they were having to scream it.

And there was a whole generation of people rebelling against that horrible white-suited disco ball crap.

- Now, there was a good punk scene in Phoenix, but that was later on.

(intense punk music) - [Interviewer] How about Arizona in the '70s?

What was Arizona in the '70s?

- Hot.

- I remember being back in Minneapolis and they literally thought that we were still having some skirmishes with the Indians.

- In the '70s?

- In the '70s.

- [Producer] The '70s in Arizona was.

- The '70s in Arizona was the temperature of April.

- It was a different time though.

There's nothing really directly comparable to it today.

- But we eat better.

- I think we eat a lot better.

- And I haven't had my car repossessed.

- No, and nor do I. I own several and we just have them.

- We're going to lunch right as soon you, if you'd ever shut up.

- Okay, sorry.

- Yeah.