A San Diego-Scottsdale, Arizona, connection lies in Mount Hope Cemetery southeast of downtown on Market Street. Buried in Section 26, Row A, Grave 16 is Winfield Scott, early settler of the city that now bears his name.
“Scott (who died in 1910) is buried in an area where Civil War veterans are buried,” says Scottsdale historian Joan Fudala. “He would spend summers in San Diego with his son and daughter-in-law.”
Scott, a well-educated minister, traveled much of the country, including California, before coming to Arizona’s Salt River Valley, where in 1888, he purchased 640 acres along the Arizona Canal.
“Today’s Old Town is the original (Scottsdale) settlement,” Fudala says. “It was considered a Western town but not a Tombstone. We were a tame town; the early settlers were religious and teetotalers. The town was slow to grow between 1888 and World War II, after which everything changed. People started coming in droves to live and start businesses here. When the town incorporated in 1951, it was less than a square mile.”
Today, the city of 243,000 spans 185 square miles, including the 30,500-acre McDowell Sonoran Preserve.
Post-World War II, the tourism and health care industries expanded exponentially.
“People were sent here for the climate and health camps,” Fudala says, and Scottsdale adopted the popular 1950s Hollywood image found in Western films. Its chosen motto: “The West’s Most Western Town.”
“We put up hitching posts and water troughs and called the gas station the livery stable,” Fudala says. “We had a kitschy-looking cowboy sign put up in 1952. A lot of photos were taken in front of that sign.”
Through the 1960s and 1970s, Scottsdale grew in size, height and sophistication, and in the 1980s and 1990s, “we realized it was really important to preserve local assets and started declaring historic properties, getting them on the National Register. We are trying to honor our past and be as contemporary as possible.”
Toward that end, the one-square-mile Old Town Scottsdale of today is divided into nine themed districts. One district still features the souvenir, Western wear and Native American jewelry shops; the other eight districts offer museums, public art installations, art galleries, performing arts center, trendy boutiques, fountains, grand architecture, bistros and a baseball stadium for the San Francisco Giants’ spring training.
Scottsdale even has a waterfront.
For decades, the Arizona Canal was seen “like a utility that you don’t look at,” Fudala says. “You’d see dumpsters at the back doors of the stores along the canal.”
A millennium light bulb went off and by the early 2000s, canal-side real estate featured hotels, restaurants, public art, a seemingly never-ending green belt with a miles-long hiking-biking trail, and staging area for the annual Canal Convergence.
For our four-day Scottsdale exploration, we headquartered at Omni Scottsdale Resort & Spa at Montelucia, which features a piece of California history. One of the 450 bells that once marked our state’s Royal Road (El Camino Real) is in the hotel’s Cortijo Plaza. Tiled fountains, giant, carved-teak doors, oversized Andalucian terracotta oil jars, pillared walkways and rich landscaping transport guests to the villages of southern Spain.
Deepen the immersion with the Prado Restaurant’s paella offerings. A nearby challenging trail up Camelback Mountain takes hikers to 1,420 feet and a 360-degree view.
Outdoor dining? Scottsdale has alfresco down:
• Cinnamon rolls for dinner? Why not. “It’s our version of bread and butter,” says our server, David, at El Chorro. If this helps justify eating these sticky sweet treats, then so be it. The Crab & Tuna Tower and Beef Stroganoff with creamy vermouth sauce also are scrumptious standouts.
• Every night is a fiesta on the expansive, tree-covered patio at Old Town Tortilla Factory. Heaters and misters make for year-round comfort. Best bets: mahi tacos, green enchiladas and the signature red-chili pork chop.
• Enjoy unmatched views of dramatic desert-rock landscape while savoring regular and gluten-free pizza at Lou’s Bar & Grill at Papago Golf Club. Bonus: lawn games and a family- and dog-friendly patio near the first tee.
• Great food and nostalgia are artfully combined at Postino Highland, where the mid-century architecture of a former bank encloses a tree-shaded patio. Impossible to pass on the bruschetta “buffet.” Choose from a dozen flavors, including seasonal offerings and gluten-free options.
For more, visit Experience Scottsdale and facebook.com/elouise.ondash.
