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City of Gold: Book by local author offers a pictorial tour By Laura Marble - 03/12/2008 Explorer News More Info on This Book: Oro Valley
So when Barbara Marriott agreed to write a photo album-style book about the community’s history, she had her work cut out for her. “If you were to believe what you heard, its history started in 1974,” she said. After about six months of poring over archived articles and knocking on doors, the SaddleBrooke resident has compiled a collection of images that cover more than 1,000 years. “Images of America: Oro Valley” takes readers from the petroglyph days, through the Great Depression when one pioneer skinned rattlesnakes to make clothes, and to the nuclear age, when the United States government planted a Titan missile in the town’s backyard. The book, slated to hit major bookstores by March 18, is a project of Marriott and the Oro Valley Historical Society. “We called it a hunt for Oro Valley history,” Marriott said. “We actually hunted, and believe it or not, we found the history.” The search started after a representative from Arcadia Publishing, a large company that publishes regional histories, approached the historical society about creating an Oro Valley book. The area’s historical Steam Pump Ranch had been in the news due to efforts to preserve it. “I think the publisher thought if that was there, there must be more great history,” Marriott said. Jim Kreigh, the town historian at the time, asked Marriott to take on the project. They had worked together back when she wrote “Canyon of Gold: Tales of Santa Catalina Pioneers,” and he knew she could handle the task. Marriott flipped through the historical society’s files, looking for suitable photos. She found 18. She needed 200. Luckily, the golden town beneath the Santa Catalina Mountains had loyal fans. Descendants of the community’s early families felt passionate about their history and the history of the land. About a dozen shared their stories and photos. “If it weren’t for the people who called me up and who I was referred to, there wouldn’t be a book,” she said. As it is, the book contains a variety of little-known gems, starting with literal ones. Tucked into a crevice in the Santa Catalina Mountains, archaeologists found a Hohokam pot containing 100,000 beads and 30 copper bells — probably the wealth of an entire village. Photos show the pot, a local petroglyph of long-horn sheep and the site in Honey Bee Canyon where more than 500 ancient pit-style homes once sat. The accompanying text tells of the remains of ancient ball courts at the Romero Ruins site in Catalina State Park. The book’s first chapter, on American Indians, is separated from the second chapter by 600 years. “After the Native Americans disappeared, this was nothing,” Marriott said. “It was wilderness.” But in Chapter 2, the prospectors come looking for gold, with their wooden-floor tents and their tin cans for cooking stew. The pioneers show up, too. Old photographs show George Pusch’s property, named Steam Pump Ranch for a piece of equipment it held that was a mechanical wonder at the time. The text in the chapter describes the difficulty of cattle ranching on parched land — a task that sometimes necessitated burning needles off cacti so the animals could eat their way to water. Pioneers and prospectors sometimes met, as when two gold seekers dropped by the ranch to visit with Pusch’s daughter and spun a tale about an old lost mine operated by Jesuit priests and then closed with an iron door. The daughter relayed the story to Harold Bell Wright, another ranch guest, and he immortalized it in the book “The Mine with the Iron Door,” later made into a successful movie. Marriott’s book’s third chapter focuses on the settlers — a sickly but spirited bunch. The settlers began arriving early in the 20th century, often on orders from their doctors to seek healthier climates. But their stories portray them as full of life.Catherine Reidy, who had a heart condition, found herself living in the desert during the Depression. To make money, she skinned rattlesnakes and turned their hides into clothing. Others she sold to zoos and to a University of Arizona professor who milked them for their venom. Hal Burns, who suffered the effects of mustard gas poisoning in World War I, constructed a full-size airplane from cacti. The occasion was a visit from Charles Lindbergh after his world-famous non-stop Atlantic flight. The plane had ocotillo spines for wings and half of a barrel cactus for a nose. Lindbergh reportedly said, “Surely you don’t want me to get into that.” Marriott’s book lists other notable settlers as well, including Hank Leiber, who played baseball for the New York Giants and Chicago Cubs; the Countess of Suffolk, who was royalty; and Bee Dee Adkins, who owned the dog that inspired Daniel Mannix to write the children’s book “The Fox and the Hound.” Chapters 4 and 5 depict Oro Valley’s modern age — a time when community leaders selected the town’s name (it might have been “Palo Verde”) and the United States government inserted a Titan missile into a 150-foot silo outside town limits. It deactivated the site in 1983, and destroyed it along with 2,800 pounds of explosives. Marriott uses photos to illustrate the ties that bind modern-day Oro Valley to the past. The book begins and ends with artwork of a long-horn sheep — first as a petroglyph and eventually as a statue on the grounds of town hall. She said she hopes children, especially, will read the book and derive from it a feeling of continuity. “Everyone is so new here,” she said. “We look out of our windows and see a house and a garden. We don’t see what was there, because it’s not there anymore.” Buy It Now: Oro Valley $19.99 |
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