When bro & I visited the WalMart yesterday, we noticed the bright white of a picket fence going up and down amongst the granites behind the shopping center.
Very likely protecting pricey housing sites from (ugh!) nasty commercial operations and the hoi polloi, who might try to scale the vertically cut rocks.
Just for the record, here's the broader picture of the heights vs. the world of the common man. The maroon-roofed white buildings in the mid-ground are medical offices, BTW. No, I don't know who was here first, whether it was the merchants or the residents. I'm one who has little sympathy with people who buy near the airport and then complain about the noise, tho I certainly would understand if folks, who built a house and later had to endure a shopping center popping up next door, were a bit unhappy.For All Us Map Freaks: There's this site called Strange Maps which has, among other oddities, a map of UFO sightings in the USA. Just so you are aware -- the incidence of sightings of alien craft is higher in the western states than back east or in the south ... does this tells us something?
"the incidence of sightings of alien craft is higher in the western states than back east or in the south ... does this tells us something"
ReplyDeletePerhaps they should co-relate the sightings with the incidence of dope smoking.......?
No, avus, that would only apply to California. I suspect it's the wide open spaces, which 1) provide more privacy for landing UFOs and 2) make people crazy for more company.
ReplyDeleteGranny J:
ReplyDeleteThis might have been before your time but there used to be the most wonderful bakery in this shopping plaza. It was called Julie Ann's and we looked forward to stopping by there when we were in Prescott.
"No, I don't know who was here first, whether it was the merchants or the residents."
ReplyDeleteFor the record, the merchants were definitely there first. The old Ponderosa Plaza Mall, the Safeway/K-Mart strip mall, and the medical offices between them, have all been there as long as I can remember (I was born just down the street at YRMC, not quite 30 years ago). I don't think any of the houses up on that outcrop were there even 5 years ago.
Isn't the Arizona Pioneer Cemetery still up there on the heights?
ReplyDeleteQD -- I guess we came after the Julie Ann bakery; too bad! I always enjoy the products of a good local bakery.
ReplyDeleteJessel -- thanks for visiting -- and for clarifying that point; I've always wondered.
melanie -- yes, that cemetery is still on the heights between the formerly Ponderosa Plaza, now WalMart shopping center and four formerly five points. It shows in some of my pix, but wasn't quite in the angle of the picture I used.
Before the Ponderosa Plaza Mall (which was actually "Northern" Arizona's first climate-controlled mall, as I remember it) there was a beautiful ranch on this property. I don't know what kind of shape it was actually in, as there was never any cause to head onto the property. But it was a most pleasant view as one headed out Iron Springs Rd. The ranch house sat nestled nearer the boulder piles, and the corrals and other outbuildings swam away from it toward what is now Gail Gardner.
ReplyDeleteonepoet -- I suspect that if I had grown up here, with that ranch at the 5-points intersection, I would weep every time I see those shopping centers that have taken its place. That is one reason I'm glad I have spent my life living well within the city, where ever, for I haven't had to watch the countryside being eaten up every day by development.
ReplyDelete