Landmarks, street names a lesson in local history
Street names in Arizona are a beginner’s lesson in local history. Like a puzzle with scores of interlocking pieces, elements of Arizona’s history unfold at sites throughout the state.
“There isn’t one place that tells Arizona’s story,” Arizona Historical Research historian Vince Murray said. “The state has all these components that tell its story and they are spread out.
“The layout of everything has some kind of historical notion,” he said.
Streets such as Sossaman Road and Germann (pronounced Germain) Road, for example, were named for farmers, early settlers and pioneering families that played roles in the Valley’s early development.
Others, including Mcdowell Road, bear names of historical developments such as Ft. Mcdowell that in most cases were located along the thoroughfares’ alignments.
Although the history of Arizona begins in its territorial days long before statehood, landmarks such as Wrigley Mansion, completed in1931for chewinggum magnate William Wrigley Jr., is a monument to the state’s longtime attrac- tion to winter visitors and developing tourism industry.
Wrigley, who at the time owned the Chicago Cubs Major League Baseball franchise, moved the team to the Valley in 1952 for spring training.
In Tempe, a monument at the tomb of Arizona’s first governor, George W.P. Hunt, is a tribute to the Arizona pioneer who was elected six times as the state’s chief executive, and served as president of the Arizona Constitutional Convention in 1910.
His wife, Duette, her parents and her sister are also entombed at the site.
Several other sites in the state are named for the governor, including Hunt Canyon in Cochise County.
Yet another Hunt Canyon in the same county is named for a cowboy who turned rustler in the early 1880s, according to the late historian and University of Arizona professor Byrd Howell Gran- ger.
The canyons are among historical placenames listed in one of Granger’s books about Arizona history, “X Marks the Place.”
The most constant reminders of the state’s history and some of its quirks are street names.
Alma School Road, for example, is named after Alma, a Maricopa community founded in the early1880s by Henry