VIEW: To read more of Susannah Carney and Susan Johnson’s Flagstaff History series, point your smartphone camera at the QR code, then click the link.
VIEW: To read more of Susannah Carney and Susan Johnson’s Flagstaff History series, point your smartphone camera at the QR code, then click the link.
1925: Flagstaff’s new depot will be opening on the 10th of next month. The opening will be formal, it is said, and accompanied by a banquet and special program, details of which will be made known in the course of a few days.
D.A. Dudley, engineer in charge of installation of a stream-flow measuring station at Grand Falls, Little Colorado River, accompanied by J.A. Baumgartner, was in Flagstaff the first of the week for supplies. Mr. Dudley is working with the United States Geological Survey in cooperation with the state. The station will be one of many such automatic stations maintained by the Water Resources Bureau of the U.S. Survey and is connected with the main station at Lees Ferry and will be done about the middle of December. The Little Colorado, which is partly dry a great portion of the year, has an immense drainage basin as is shown by the fact that during the flood of 1923 it raised for a brief time the peak of the Colorado River above its normal June peak, thus its flow is an important factor in the storage possibilities of dam sites below its mouth.
1950: Hollywood film director Ray Enright called a powwow of the 75 Navajo Indians he has summoned to portray a renegade band of Utes, in Nat Holt-Paramount’s “Fort Savage,” on location (in Sedona.) “You are led by a famous outlaw of early Arizona history,” Enright explained to the rapt tribesmen whose leader, a self-educated Indian named Jackson Smith, interpreted. “The Cavalry and the ranchers pursue you to a fortress hideout in an ancient cliff dwelling and there is a big battle,” Enright added, concluding with: “Any questions?” Jackson Smith palavered at length with his warriors, then raised a hand for silence. He turned to Enright. “They say, ‘Indian want to win sometime maybe.’” An anthropological versatility undreamed of by their tribal forbears will be asked of the Navajos. This is due to the fact that producer Holt’s “Warpath,” recently filmed in Montana with the aid of the Crow Indians, needs one small scene to complete it, and it will be filmed here. Thus, the Navajos who are portraying Utes in one picture will impersonate the Crows who appear as Sioux in the other — a four-way switch in tribal identity to be accomplished by costume and makeup changes.
The picture was originally named “Canyon Diablo” changed to the English version of that Spanish name, “Devil’s Canyon,” and is currently known as “Fort Savage.” Of the 120 persons who came here to film the picture, 22 came by train to Flagstaff, 25 by chartered airliner landing in Cottonwood, and the balance by truck, bus and car direct to Sedona. (compiled from two issues Daily Sun)
1975: Northern Arizona University’s College of Education has established a special project for the training of 14 student teachers and course work aides at Rock Point, a northeastern Arizona community on the Navajo Reservation. Under the project supervised by Donald Platz, the student teachers and aides are involved in a directed training program taking place on the reservation instead of in the Flagstaff public school system or in the NAU Elementary School. The training is in addition to coursework taken by the students at the university when they are not on the reservation. All student teachers and aides speak Navajo.
Florence “Rich” Richardson is a well-known part of Flagstaff Community Hospital staff. She is supervisor of the emergency room and has worked at the hospital since 1968. When she came to Flagstaff Community Hospital as a part-time nurse and student, conditions were very different at the hospital than they are now. There was no door between the general emergency room and the cardiac arrest and major trauma room, and there was one nurse and no medics or paramedics on each shift. There was no nurse on duty from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. Now the emergency room is staffed around the clock, and more people are on duty each shift. They have an endoscopy room and schedule bronchoscopies and gastroscopies, and they also have three cardiac defibrillators. There is also an Emcom radio in direct contact with the ambulances and Department of Public Safety.
2000: An innovative program that merges old and new technologies of hogan building and creates an Indigenous business for the western Navajo Nation broke ground Thursday afternoon outside the Cameron Chapter House on Highway 89 north of Flagstaff. Several dozen officials gathered with local residents to witness the groundbreaking for a modern prototype hogan that will serve as an office for a new Navajo roundwood industry. Two years in development, the Navajo Nation Hogan/Roundwood Manufacturing Project addresses a serious shortage of affordable housing on the Navajo Nation by utilizing abundant supplies of small-diameter trees that are the by-products of forest restoration activities near Flagstaff. Recent estimates suggest there is a need for more than 30,000 new dwellings on the Reservation, a nation of 200,000 people. The need is especially great among Navajo elders who favor the traditional eight-sided hogan home.
In light of the recent Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad train collision in Bellemont just 10 miles west of Flagstaff, a Coconino County supervisor has had new wind put into the sails of his effort to get the tracks moved out of downtown. “I think this latest crash at Bellemont demonstrates once again that Flagstaff has a petrochemical complex in its midst,” said Paul Babbitt Jr. “It happens to be on wheels, so we don’t recognize it as such. … We find ourselves in a situation where those kinds of risks — really caused by the fact that the main line goes through our community — are by law taken up by the community,” said Babbitt. “I think it’s just patently unfair.” And unnecessary, Babbitt added, if the tracks were moved out of the downtown.
Susan Johnson has lived in Flagstaff for over 30 years and loves to delve into her adopted hometown’s past. She has written two books for the History Press, Haunted Flagstaff and Flagstaff’s Walkup Family Murders, and, with her son Nick, manages Freaky Foot Tours. You’ll find her hiking the trails with her corgi, Shimmer. All events were taken from issues of the Arizona Daily Sun and its predecessors, the Coconino Weekly Sun and the Coconino Sun.
Susan Johnson has lived in Flagstaff for over 30 years and loves to delve into her adopted hometown’s past. She has written two books for the History Press, Haunted Flagstaff and Flagstaff’s Walkup Family Murders, and, with her son Nick, manages Freaky Foot Tours. You’ll find her hiking the trails with her corgi, Shimmer.
All events were taken from issues of the Arizona Daily Sun and its predecessors, the Coconino Weekly Sun and the Coconino Sun.
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