Mapping Wonderlands: Illustrated Cartography of Arizona, 1912–1962

Conclusion: Rereading Arizona as a Wonderland

180 Conclusion Rereading Arizona as a Wonderland During Arizona’s first fifty years of statehood, from 1912 to 1962, cartographic illustrators imagined the state as a tourist’s wonderland. In so doing, they used a variety of visual and narrative strategies. Cartographic illustrators incorporated the formal image characteristics and cartographic conventions typical of their place and time. They developed and pictorialized a circumscribed set of roles for map-makers and map users. Their images rewrote historical time in order to position Arizona as an engaging and comprehensible tourism landscape. By crowding the physical landscape, they filled Arizona with reliable routes along which tourists could encounter a series of appealing and educational sites. Finally, cartographic illustrators narrated Arizona—as a garden, a desert, a metropolis, a Spanish colony, and an Indianland. By honing and re-using these narrative tropes and pictorial strategies, cartographic illustrators established a familiar and enduring touristic imaginary for the Arizona landscape. This touristic imaginary persists into the twenty-first century. Though this study has focused on cartographic illustrations from the early to middle decades of the twentieth century, the formal and rhetorical image qualities discussed in the preceding chapters continue to influence tourism maps produced today. Chambers of commerce still distribute maps of self-guided walking tours through the historic districts in their towns. Arizona Highways still prints maps, both to illustrate magazine stories and to contextualize the photographs in their popular history and touring books. Maps still appear in advertisements, on postcards, and in the pages of guidebooks. One final case study concludes this investigation of cartographic illustration in Arizona: the map “A Historic Day ‘Out Wickenburg Way’: A Walking Tour of Wickenburg, Arizona.”1 Published by the Wickenburg Chamber of Commerce in 2007, “A Historic Day” includes “sketches and information on old buildings and points of interest.” It functions as a “tour map [of the] history of Wickenburg.” By walking along the mapped route, stopping off at numbered sites, tourists encounter the people, places, and events of Wickenburg’s history (see figure 8.1). Stops on the walking tour include the Upton House (the family residence of WPA artist Eugene Figure 8.1. Detail of “A Historic Day ‘Out Wickenburg Way’” (Wickenburg Chamber of Commerce, 2007). 182 • Mapping Wonderlands Upton), a Santa Fe Section House and Depot (the Chamber of Commerce is now located at the latter), and an elderly mesquite known as the “Jail Tree.” In the grand tradition of frontier justice, the tree “once served as the town jail. From 1863 to 1890 outlaws were chained to this tree—escapees were unknown.” In 1909, a jail building—stop number “4” on the walking tour—replaced the Jail Tree. Self-taught illustrator and landscape painter Rose Mary Goodson drew “Wickenburg.” Her map occupies a quarter of the folding brochure in which it is printed. Goodson’s career spans three-quarters of the twentieth century. Originally from St. Louis, Missouri, her first commercial work was a syndicated comic strip for the American Automobile Association; “Nellie” ran for almost fifteen years, beginning in 1925. After relocating to the Black Hills region later in her life, Goodson wrote and illustrated the Guide to Attractions in South Dakota.2 After several years of wintering in Arizona, she relocated again, this time to the small town of Congress, Arizona. There she turned her attention to local subjects and desert landscapes. Goodson produced and marketed note cards, prints, and landscapes in oil, as well as wrote a local history of Congress.3 Goodson’s map demonstrates many of the characteristics common to earlier cartographic illustrations of Arizona (see figure 8.1). It marks local streets, state highways, and railways. Directional arrows point to neighboring towns and attractions, such as Vulture Mine, an abandoned copper mining operation off US60. The Hassayampa River plays a pivotal role in the map’s narrative, emphasizing the familiar trope of water in the desert. A large bridge spans the river itself; built in 1961 “after the loss of several bridges to the torrents of the Hassayampa,” it denotes the force and extent of the river’s waters. A caption tells the “Wishing Well Legend,” which predicts that “[t]those who drink of the Hassayampa Waters will never tell the truth again.” The 1905 Vernetta Hotel, a National Register of Historic Places property, appears on the map under its contemporary name, the Hassayampa Building. The map focuses on picturesque architecture, depicting buildings typical of...