Carefree in Cave Creek

After being slightly underwhelmed by the Pioneer Living History Village, we looked into places that might be similar, but better. Checking on the website of the Central Arizona Museum Association (dedicated to the promotion of museums) Matt found a listing for the Cave Creek Museum. It described it as “living history of the desert foothills.” That sounds promising, right?

It was a beautiful day and rather than brave I-17 again, we went north on the Desert Foothills Scenic Drive. This stretch of northern Scottsdale Road is cool enough to have its own website and a support society. The Scenic Drive was established by locals back in the 1960s as a tourist attraction. The drive provided a reason for “snowbirds” to come and patronize the businesses at both ends. Perhaps they were hoping to follow the Pigeon Forge-Gatlinburg model. Maybe they just really liked the look of the desert flora. That was long before the development of the area so both sides of the road today remain utterly “wild” looking. You can almost forget that you are in the middle of a huge metropolis because the cityscape is blocked out by giant mesquite trees and towering saguaros. There are signs along the way that name the different plants. They are names we have come to know well: paloverde trees, teddybear chollas, fishhook barrel cacti… It is an amazingly scenic drive. You can even take a piece of it home with you! Twice we saw guys selling full-grown saguaros out of the back of their trucks. They were all packed up and ready for transport.

Looming up ahead of us the whole time was Black Mountain. It looks like an impossibly large pile of black gravel. Most of the mountains around here look that way, but most of them are red. The mountain was mined from the mid 1800s up until 1942. The Mormon Girl Mine on the southwest side of the mountain is famous. Famous in Cave Creek, anyway. Cave Creek started up to support the mining on Black Mountain and in the other area foothills.

The museum was not really what we expected. It was just a museum. Nothing “living” about it. That isn’t to say it was bad, it just wasn’t what we were looking for. Actually, it has an impressive collection and several nice displays for being a small place. It seems that all the individual towns around here have their own history museums. Since they have all become islands in the middle of sea that is Phoenix it’s more important for each municipality to showcase its own individual story, no matter how small it is.

The story for Cave Creek is like that of many other places in Arizona. First came the Native Americans. They ate saguaro fruits, colored their clothes with various desert plants, wove baskets, made lots and lots of pots and then all mysteriously disappeared about 1450 C.E. Of course we already knew that. Maybe it’s just that we have heard about the Hohokam a few times now, but the signs and information panels in the Archaeology Wing seemed very clear and informative.

Next came the prospectors. They dug, dynamited, crushed ore, melted out the silver and the gold and kept their deeds in steel tobacco tins. About the time the gold and silver ran out, people were settling down in the area and ranches sprung up. Some of these were later developed, some turned into parks and some enjoyed a spate of tourism by re-branding themselves as “Dude Ranches.” A taste of the wild west specially packaged for tourist consumption.

In the central gallery was a large, wall-sized, aerial picture of the area in the 1960s. It showed a whole lot of nothing stretching away into the distance. However, close to the bottom of the picture, meaning somewhere nearby, was a huge sundial. Huge! Matt just had to go check it out. We found out that right next to Cave Creek is the rather newer town of Carefree. Carefree was a 1950s planned community designed for up-scale residents. With street names like “Easy Street” and “Nonchalant Avenue” (really!) it appears to be trying very hard to meld the Old West and the New West. It has worked to some extent. Cave Creek (old) and Carefree (new) have a join chamber of commerce.

So, the sundial. It’s on Sundial Circle at the town centre. Carefree advertises its sundial as the “third-largest working sundial in the Western Hemisphere.” The 75 foot long gnomon (that’s what a sundial’s arm is called, apparently) is 35 feet high. It has been bringing people to Carefree since it was erected in 1959. Hey, we went to look at it! The town centre has other interesting features like a nice fountain with a stepping stone bridge across the splash door, a gila monster-shaped slide and a stature of a cowboy. We took a look at all of this, mostly because Matt wanted to see it all. “When will we be back here?” he asked. He did manage to resist, however, going a little way up the road to see the world’s largest katsina. But here’s a picture of it…