(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 Alberto Rios.

Go back in time to rich memories of a little red schoolhouse, exploring the legacy of Native American music, and Arizonans keeping cool in the desert before air conditioning became common.

"From The Vault" presents another edition of "Arizona Stories".

(bright music) - [Narrator] Phoenix, Arizona is now one of America's largest cities.

It rose not from the ashes, but from the hard work and determination of pioneer families such as the Luhrs.

They built Arizona's first skyscrapers, the Luhrs Building and Luhrs Tower.

Today, these buildings are little noticed sentinels of the past.

They once stood as beacons of the future.

- The Luhrs Tower and the Luhrs Building served as icons that represented to many Phoenicians the transition from Phoenix as a small town to Phoenix to a metropolitan center in a great city of America.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] In 1867, George Henry Nicholas Luhrs was about to be drafted into the Prussian army.

Instead, he decided to leave his native Germany and take his chances in the United States.

He spent two years building and repairing wagons in the California gold fields, then made his way to the Vulture Mine in Wickenburg, Arizona.

Luhrs became a US citizen, headed to Phoenix, and along with a partner, started a wagon making business and stable on the corner of Central and Jefferson.

While visiting his native Germany, Luhrs married the girl next door, Katarina Gretchen Dodenhoff.

She bid farewell to her family and Europe to make her home in the dusty, untamed, and isolated land that was then Arizona.

- It was the end of the world, and she had the first bathtub and the first curtains on her windows and all of that.

There wasn't anything here.

- George Luhrs helped change that.

In 1887, he and his partner built the 20 room Commercial Hotel, and over time, a reputation for fine lodging.

Later, Luhrs closed the wagon shop, bought out his partner's interest in the hotel, and changed its name to Hotel Luhrs.

It became the family home.

The Luhrs children, Ella, Emma, Arthur, and George Jr. all grew up in the hotel.

The boys were sent to Stanford University.

The girls wanted to attend Tempe Normal School, the precursor to ASU.

- Grandfather felt that women should be little ladies.

Well, it was Edwardian times, you know?

and so they didn't get their education.

(gentle music) - In the 10 years since arriving in Phoenix, George Luhrs had become a community leader.

He served on the Phoenix City Council, School Board, Board of Trade, and became a Mason.

His opinion was sought after and his advice trusted.

However, he did make mistakes.

When the territorial legislature was debating whether Phoenix should be the site of the state insane asylum or the University of Arizona, Luhrs campaigned for the asylum.

- [Jean] We think he was one of the ones that said, hey, bring that to Phoenix because that's gonna earn Phoenix prestige and money, and let Tucson have the university.

Well, Tucson was brighter.

- [Narrator] Luhrs' willingness to offer help to his fellow Arizonan often went beyond business.

- He was a very generous and thoughtful man.

And he would loan his friends and people who deserved money, but would not charge them interest, at the same time, he was paying 3% a month interest on the money he was borrowing.

- [Narrator] Despite being in debt, Luhrs borrowed money, and built the 10 story Luhrs Building in 1924.

It's soon filled with law firms, insurance companies, and other businesses.

A year later, George Luhrs suffered a stroke, leaving him unable to manage the day-to-day business.

The Luhrs children stepped in.

Son Arthur, a geologist, quit the profession to run the Luhrs Hotel along with his sister Ella.

George Jr. left a promising law career to manage the Luhrs Building.

In March 1929, the Luhrs broke ground on what would be Arizona's tallest skyscraper.

The 15 story Luhrs Tower George Luhrs Sr. would never see it.

He died two months later.

- George junior absorbed all of the responsibilities of his father in 1925.

He was about 30 years old at that point.

And it was an important transition.

Four years later, you had the Depression, which was a significant threat to the survival of the Luhrs' property and the Luhrs' businesses.

- [Jean] There were times when people would insist that he would take worthless stock and he did it because he needed to keep the buildings filled.

And besides, he knew they were having a hard time too.

- But there wasn't any business and they couldn't pay.

And it wasn't because we were floating in money and told them to wait, there wasn't anything else we could do.

- [Narrator] Without any money to pay their loans, George Jr. begged their lender to extend the loans instead of foreclosing.

It was the first time the lender agreed to postpone payment on any major loan.

The Luhrs' businesses survived the Depression, but the experience made the pioneering family of downtown Phoenix cautious about future development projects.

Whereas the Luhrs children had no choice but to work at the family hotel and properties, their children were discouraged from doing the same.

- Uncle George did not train one of his.

He had three nephews and one niece, and he did not train anyone to follow his footsteps.

And I think that was a very great error.

- [Narrator] By the mid 1970s, George Luhrs Jr's health was failing.

Faced with competition from new buildings, the family sold the Luhrs Building, Tower, and Hotel in 1976.

The nearly 100 year old Hotel Luhrs was demolished several years later.

Arizona's first skyscrapers, the Luhrs Building and Luhrs Tower, remain part of the Phoenix skyline.

They, along with a sonnet written by pioneer historian Charlotte Hall, remind us of a man and a family who helped usher Arizona into the 20th century.

Do you remember when the town was young?

The kindly honest, busy little man who, every moment of his lifelong span, helped build the place whence his success was run.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (soft music) At the dawn of the 20th century, the booming mining town of Wickenburg faced a problem.

It already had nearly 600 residents, it was growing fast, and yet it had no place for its children to go to school.

That was until Ignacio Garcia, a pioneer landowner, deeded land to Wickenburg as the site for its first schoolhouse.

A makeshift wooden schoolhouse was brought in.

- The school was in somebody's house up until then, they decided they needed a larger one.

So for $50, I think, they bought and set up a schoolhouse here.

It was drafty and full of rodents and it wasn't very comfortable, but it lasted 10 years.

- [Narrator] In 1905, the School Board passed bonds to fund a new school.

Soon after, this red brick school house was built.

That was a long time ago, but in Wickenburg, things seemed to put down roots and so do people.

- Well, after here you go into high school, then on to college and onto life.

And then you come back and here I am.

Sitting where I started.

- [Narrator] Many of the one time students of this school still call Wickenburg home.

The schoolhouse brings back rich memories of their days in pigtails and dungarees.

- If you were good, you got to clean the Blackboard.

And if you were good, you got to feed the... We had a big pot stove, that was our heating, and you had to feed it coal or wood.

So whenever that stove needed to be fed, well, if you were one of the good students, you got that privilege.

(school bell ringing) - I remember they used to ring the bell when it was time to come in from the playground.

In the afternoons, you went to school all day in first grade.

And I remember that we were tired and we had to bring towels to take our... We actually had a nap period.

And you had to lay out on this floor and take a nap.

- [Narrator] Eugene Quesada was a first grader there in 1933.

- Well, for instance, one time I was asked to go up to the chalkboard and write out the alphabet.

And at a certain point, she asked me to write it backwards.

So I wrote it backwards, you know, showing off.

And I don't remember how she knew I could do it, but she knew I could do it.

- [Narrator] The schoolhouse was later divided into two rooms.

Many memories of school teachers remain.

- Not the fondest, but the best memory, is being sent out to a friend's stoop because of a disturbance about every day, talking, pinching the girls, slapping somebody.

And I know they were glad to get rid of me.

Ms. Radus was, she's awfully glad to get rid of me out of that class.

- My first grade teacher was an old maid, Miss Anne-Marie Radus, and the day that we graduated from first grade, she had us all file in single file down the stairs out that door right there.

And we had to all kiss her on the cheek.

- Ms. Anderson was my first grade teacher, the most beautiful woman who ever lived, and then she ran out and got married.

That was it.

- [Narrator] As Wickenburg continued to grow, a new schoolhouse was built next door.

The little red schoolhouse was eventually relegated to duty as a store room.

It's locked doors intriguing to idle students.

- It was kind of a mystery place for us that we all wished we could get into.

So during recess time, one of our sports was myself and a couple of friends, we would get sticks and start to dig between the rocks that are holding this thing up, trying to dig our way into the basement of this thing because we knew it was full of wonderful treasures.

- [Narrator] The little red schoolhouse outlived its replacement.

In 1978, the new school building was destroyed by fire.

Amid rumors of its impending demolition, the building was purchased, restored, and served as a bank until 2003.

Today, it's the home of the Wickenburg Cultural Organization.

(bright music) The Wickenburg Cultural Organization, or WCO, music programs for children living in rural Arizona.

The little red schoolhouse is once again a place of learning.

- This building was built for the town and the children of this town.

And I feel that it's come back to the town, that it belongs to the town again.

(gentle music) (bright music) - [Narrator] Tucked away in arrest area off Interstate 10, 40 miles south of Phoenix, stands a monument to the Gadsden Purchase.

In 1851, the Southern border of the United States was drawn at the Gila River.

a year later, US minister to Mexico James Gadsden and Mexican dictator and Alamo general Antonio Lopez De Santa Ana began negotiating the purchase by America of thousands of square miles of Mexican territory.

Gadsden wanted a Southern route for a transcontinental railroad and an American port on the Gulf of California.

Santa Ana wanted money.

The US never got its port, but it did get its railroad route and a tract of land roughly the size of Pennsylvania for about 33 cents an acre.

However, the deal was so unpopular in Mexico, Santa Ana was driven from office and banished.

The Gadsden purchase completed what became the 48 continuous states and marked the end of continental expansion in America.

(car horn honking) (bright music) - [Narrator] Arizonans have always had to be creative when it comes to keeping cool in the summer.

In times past, one way was to take a plunge into the pool at Riverside Park.

Riverside Park had the city's largest fresh water pool.

It was a desert oasis where families escaped the blistering heat and teenagers worked on their tans.

- [Lou] It was extremely popular for a variety of reasons.

It had the coldest water you could ever imagine, it was breathtaking.

And it was a huge swimming pool.

Beautiful picnic area all around it.

- [Narrator] There was also a 30 foot diving tower that provided a great opportunity for young men who wanted to impress the ladies.

But the main attraction was the tall cement slide.

That's where a young Barry Goldwater first showed signs of his competitive spirit.

- I've had the record for going down the slide and then how far you could go out over the water.

I don't know how many feet it was, but I got pretty damn good at it.

- [Narrator] To truly master the slide, you had to know some tricks of the trade.

- We'd roll our bathing suits up so we got our rear ends exposed, and you put little a soap on it.

You just go down that slide like a bat out of hell and you go over the rope, swim back, go up again.

(bright music) - [Narrator] Of course there were other ways to beat the heat on a scorching summer day in Phoenix.

Before the 1950s, air conditioning was a rare luxury and hardly anyone had a backyard pool.

So kids turned to ice cream cones, the garden hose, or a dip in the local canal.

(children yelling) - [Lou] Oh, well that was our own.

We thought it was our own private pool.

- [Barry] We had no fear of the canals.

That's where we had our recreation.

- The way we learned to swim in those days was the older kids threw you in and said "sink or swim".

And you learned to swim pretty quick.

- We had a ditch that went right by our house, big one.

And at night we'd slip outside and wet the sheets, jumped in the ditch, and wet the sheet and slept outside.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] There was a time when canals were beautiful tree-lined waterways.

- There was a big, huge cottonwood tree that had a branch that extended out over the canal.

And we had a rope on that tree and we used to swing like Tarzan and then drop into the canal.

- And then we would make our own boats out of galvanized tin and used tar and whatnot, and we would float down the canal, oh, two or three miles.

- [Narrator] The canals were put to all kinds of creative uses.

There were baptisms performed in canals.

Some people even trapped beaver in them.

But if you had a board, a rope, and a car to pull you, the canal was an excellent place to surf.

- Oh yeah, sure.

Somebody held the rope out out of the Model A Ford, somebody was driving, somebody else was holding the rope, often from the rumble seat of that Model A Ford, and pulling that surfboard, you could get up to 25 miles an hour.

And that was going pretty fast on top of that water.

- [Narrator] The canals were truly an adventure, often exciting, sometimes dangerous, and always full of surprises.

- We had to be very careful because there was always dead cows and stuff floating down it, but we'd use any kind of water to swim in.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) - Here we go.

(bright music) - [Narrator] R. Carlos Natki was an unemployed schoolteacher when he recorded some songs on tape.

He had to beg the Herd Museum to let him sell cassettes during an Indian art show.

Natki soon got a call from Canyon Records.

- People were saying, "this man is calling you and he wants to talk to you about your recording".

And I said, "oh no".

I said "obviously I've infringed on somebody's copyright", but it turned out they wanted to market my recording instead.

- [Narrator] That recording was released on the Canyon Record label in 1984.

(gentle music) Since then, Natki has become Canyon Records' top artist, with more than 3 million copies of his music sold.

Not bad for an out of work teacher who once pleaded with Indian trading posts to sell his music.

- I thought I've been going all over the place trying to find people who would take this on consignment.

And most of the trading posts all over the four corner said, "nah, it's not traditional", and "You're a Navajo and a Ute and they never played flutes" and "we don't know if we want it".

And now I go back to Gallup and Santa Fe and Albuquerque and Cortez and Durango and they all have my music in their shops.

(bright music) (Natki chanting) - [Narrator] Canyon Records got its started in 1951 thanks to a Navajo singer named Ed Lee Natay.

The Phoenix Little Theater wanted to use Natay's songs in a play and asked Phoenix film producer Ray Boley to record the singer.

- And after the recording of Natay, Ray was so struck by the beauty of Natay's singing, he thought, "well, why don't we release an album of his music?"

Now, Ray did not have a record label.

He was just simply moved by the artistry of Natay and later tracked him down, then released an album at the 1951 Arizona State Fair.

And that was the beginning of Canyon Records.

(bright Indian music) - Ray Boley, after he started producing a few records here in the Southwest, other Indian peoples would realize that this was happening because he would go to places where there were intertribal gatherings, powwows and things of that nature, Indian fairs, the Gallup Indian fair.

And pretty soon Indian cultures from the Northwest, from Canada, the Northern Plains, the Great Lakes, people were driving down to Phoenix or seeing him at some kind of a powwow event and saying "we wanna be recorded too, can you record us?"

- [Narrator] By the 1970s, Ray Boley and his wife Mary had put away the film camera and began recording Indian music full time.

But not all native Americans wanted their songs recorded.

- There were certain tribes that absolutely did not want to record, and they had justifiable concerns that they'd lose control of it.

Once it's recorded, it's out of their control, and they didn't want that.

And the Boleys would always respect that.

(gentle flute music) This really needs longer notes, even finishing up-- - [Narrator] Robert Doyle began working at Canyon Records in the early 1980s while finishing a Master's degree at ASU.

- Okay, give it the Natay magic.

- A little.

- [Narrator] Doyle took over Canyon Records when the Boleys retired in 1992.

The timing couldn't have been better.

- '92 was a very critical year for Native American music in general.

It was right when general interest and Native American themes was developing, fueled by such things as "Dances With Wolves", then all the big television specials on Native Americans, people were beginning to turn their attention there.

- [Narrator] Doyle made the most of the opportunity by broadening the genre of music recorded by Canyon Records.

(mysterious music) - And that required increasing the quality of our graphics and of our recordings because we were no longer competing against other Native American oriented labels or small independents.

We were really competing against the majors.

And so our product had to be equal to, or sometimes superior to theirs, to survive in the marketplace.

♪ Overseas was your dream fighting for America ♪ - [Narrator] The commitment to quality hasn't gone unnoticed.

Canyon Records artists have received numerous Grammy nominations the past few years.

The duo of Verdell Primeaux and Johnny Mike won Canyon Records' first Grammy award in 2002.

- The critical acclaim is most important in terms of affirming the artists.

And the importance of something like the Grammys is not so much that it increases our sales, it's that it becomes a validation from the greater culture to the Native American culture, saying "you are important in our eyes".

(gentle flute music) - [Narrator] The success of Canyon Records extends beyond the number of records sold.

- I think working with them and finding that the true heart and soul of what they are as a recording company is not just in mass marketing, a popular media at the moment, but to demonstrate to everyone, especially the indigenous tribes that you've got to record what remains.

You've got to put it down in viable form because the younger people in the future are going to need this information desperately.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] In 50 years, Canyon Records has put out more than 500 works of music.

Some of the songs new, others centuries old.

- In a way we don't own this music.

We are only caretakers until it goes to some other place.

And I think that's what keeps us grounded and is the basis of our longevity and hopefully our longevity with the future.

(applause) (gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music ends)