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© 2004 Michael Chow, The Arizona Republic Introduction Essay for Arizona 24/7 Pretty as a Picture By Richard Ruelas It's fitting that life in Arizona is celebrated with this book of photographs. Pictures are exactly what made the state what it is today, for better or worse. The camera loves Arizona, and it's easy to see why. With its clouds of purple and orange, the stately saguaros rising above the desert floor, and its extravagance of blushing rocks, Arizona is constantly posing. Back in the 1940s, the state put out a picture magazine called Arizona Highways. It was the Playboy of the desert. Lurid photographs showed Monument Valley and Oak Creek Canyon, Sedona, and Tucson spread out in all their natural glory. Armed with that imagery--and the advent of air conditioning--people headed to the desert in droves. Phoenix is now the fifth-largest city in the United States. One of the capital's suburbs, Mesa, is bigger than Pittsburgh. Growth has become the mantra. Chamber-of-commerce types get hopeful every time Arizona hosts a televised sporting event in winter. It means people back East shoveling themselves out of another blizzard will notice it's clear and 70 in Tempe or Scottsdale, and maybe they'll decide to move here. Growing up, I figured the state would never get too big because of the intense summer heat. I was wrong. Arizona isn't Texas, but it has hooked its future onto the belief that bigger is better, at least when it comes to population. All that urbanity and asphalt soak up the heat, making July hotter than ever. Summer rains used to drench Phoenix. Now the TV meteorologist points to satellite animation of clouds breaking up as they hit the column of heat blasting up from the city. The influx of snowbirds has changed not only the climate but also our politics. It has engendered an isolationist mentality and some poisonously selfish political posturing. There's the illogical backlash against illegal immigrants, a desire to send them all back to Mexico. At the same time, folks scarcely notice that these people are building our homes, cooking our food, and trimming our lawns. The conservative bent of state politics today is dominated by a Libertarian fervor that preaches the evil of government, twisting the limited-government philosophy of the state's most durable political figure, the late Republican Senator Barry Goldwater. He knew this state would barely exist were it not for the federal government's Herculean efforts to build the Hoover Dam and canals that deliver water to our beautiful desert homes--and, I might add, to the intricate and ubiquitous misting systems that keep us cool and comfortable. Every so often, when a new development or freeway is built, a backhoe will unearth an artifact of a native people like the Pima or Hohokam who thought they had figured out the way to live in the middle of a desert. Arizona, for all its unforgiving desert, is beginning to look more like Southern California. The farm town of Eloy, halfway between Phoenix and Tucson, is targeted to be the next metropolitan flower in the desert, to be paved with red-tile roofs, stucco, and Bermuda grass. These are the artifacts we'll leave in the desert as evidence that we too tried to tame it, after being drawn here by its wild beauty. Browse    View All    Pretty as a Picture    Hearth & Home    Hard at Work    Arizona at Play    Reason to Believe    Our Town Photos: 121 Photographers: 34 Towns: 35

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