Marie's Oral History

Hi, my name is Marie and I lived on Katchina Court in Indian Ridge for over 40 years. I moved in October 1965 and I moved out to a townhouse in December 2006. Tucson was certainly a great deal smaller when I moved here and I don’t recall many paved roads beyond Wilmot.  There were no restaurants on Tanque Verde, except a restaurant called Sneaky Pete’s and no traffic to speak of.  Traffic of course was nothing like it is now and those days if you were turning north into Indian Ridge, we seldom had to wait to make a left turn, now it’s next to impossible.

                                                            Me - 2003

By this time there were supermarkets on each corner adjacent to Indian Ridge. The corner of Indian Ridge and Sabino Canyon that was always a commercial corner and then on the other side of Sabino Canyon was another grocery store. I don’t remember what other stores but it was a small shopping complex on each corner.   One was a local owned grocery and drugstore. I think there was also a bank, but it was mostly just parking lots. Udahl Park was basically desert with the U.S. Geological Center there and I believe there were just foot paths.

                                             1969 Fourth of July Parade

The east side of Sabino Canyon Road was open desert except for the Rancho del Rio and the Tack Room restaurant.  There was a horse corral directly opposite Indian Ridge and we had a lot of flies in our patios during the summer months. Sabino Canyon Road was safe enough that the girls could walk across and ride horses around.  A horse for a dollar an hour or something like that and ride down to the wash.  There was nothing along Sabino Canyon Road which was just two lanes.  The houses in Indian Ridge behind my house on Katchina had a utility easement and at that time you just walked right out and onto Sabino Canyon Road.  My daughter would ride her bike to the University. There was so little traffic and of course the kids road school buses.  My daughters went to parochial school, but their friends all went to either Lizzie Brown Elementary or Townsend Junior High.  My husband’s career was an Air Force Officer, and I worked part-time as a registered nurse at Tucson Medical Center and then I worked in a doctor’s office. I worked for one doctor for 11 years until I retired.

                                               1969 Fourth of July Parade

Why did we choose Indian Ridge?  Well we came here from Northeastern Montana, which is right in the plains and when we saw Indian Ridge with its big trees, we just couldn’t look at any place else because even at that time there were more trees and big trees in Indian Ridge than any of the other available areas.  The neighborhood swimming pool was pretty much the center of activity.  As soon as the pool opened for the season, that’s where all the activity was. The girls were on the swim team and we used to have movies. I think once a week they rented a movie and they had an outdoor movie around the pool. My daughter and a couple of her friends had a little candy concession.  They’d buy up supermarket, candy, and sell for a profit. The Fourth of July was a very big thing when the girls were younger because everyone seemed to get involved.  People with pickup trucks decorate them this floats.

                                                1969 Fourth of July Parade

All of the Ridge was constructed by the 1965. I don’t know much about the Indian Ruins, but we always would walk back there. It used to be open to the public and that was a good place to walk your dog.  We accessed it from Indian Ruins Road.  The road is still there.  You can walk in for not even a quarter a mile and then it’s fenced but until they protected it, it was wide open.  But we couldn’t tell anything about it not knowing or having any experience with Architecture or Anthropology.  In Indian Ridge there were quite a number of doctors and the nickname for Indian Ridge was “Pill Hill” because there were so many physicians who lived here.  I think most of them are gone now.  I worked for several of them at different times in their offices. There were several nurses also living in Indian Ridge and the word got out that we are available for part-time work so the doctors would call on a couple of us to substitute so that’s how I really got back into nursing.

                                               1969 Fourth of July Parade

We usually made at least one long trip during the summertime,  One of my daughters was married and living in New England so we would usually make a long trip there.  It seems like quite a few people went to San Diego or to the White Mountains, but most people stayed right in Indian Ridge. The parents were involved with the Swim Team and planned their vacations after the championship finals because Indian Ridge for many years held the championship of all the neighborhood pools. It was late in July when they had the championships because it was always when thunderstorms would come up so frequently the meet would have to be called off because of that and then everyone took their vacation after that because kids wouldn’t leave the Swim Team.

                                                 1969 Fourth of July Parade

I was in Canada one Christmas. I think it was 1988 and my son called my neighbor and ask him to take a picture of my mother‘s house. It’s snowing, he had heard it on the weather report that there was snow in Tucson and that particular day the temperature in Calgary Canada was 1° warmer than in Tucson. I think that was probably one of the biggest snowstorms that we had. It didn’t last very long. There was always flooding with the normal rain falls. Rain storms not serious flooding but the drainage system hadn’t been improved and there’s a arroyo going into Katchina Court and every thunderstorm that would flood so we couldn’t drive through it. I drove over only once - the girls were coming home from school one day and, of course the arroyo was flooded, so they walked back to Acoma and Sabino Canyon Road and came in behind the north fork of Katchina.  Pete was in the corner house and he and his son occasionally you see them out with their trousers rolled up to help push a car out of out of it. Somebody drove in and got stuck so then they put those drain pipes in. It gets a little wet bit wet, but it doesn’t flood like it used to.

                                              1969 Fourth of July Parade

I remember not in Indian Ridge but on Fifth Street we used to go to Elcon to shop because that was the only shopping mall.  In the afternoon if there was a cloudburst, the water was often hubcap deep driving down Fifth.  I think the storms were heavier then, now they’re more dispersed. Elcon was the only mall but out along Speedway there were a couple of little clothing stores and things like that.  I remember there was a Ben Franklin variety store at the Monterey Plaza but I don’t remember how many other stores.  It was very handy to say the least.  Casa Molina was there across the street and the Lotus Garden the Chinese restaurant was there.

                                               1969 Fourth of July Parade

We had a cooper hawk build a nest in the tall eucalyptus tree on the corner of Katchina and Indian Ridge Drive.  Just a few years before I moved and I saw one in my yard one day and so it was kind of strange.  He didn’t leave and then the next day he was still in the same position.  Well turned out he was either injured or sick and he died so I called the animal control people and somebody from the University of Arizona came out right away because they were doing a study of the hawks in the neighborhood trees and they were watching the nest. I suppose he did an autopsy or whatever on this hawk.

                                              1969 Fourth of July Parade

We had a desert tortoise that wandered into our yard one day and he was there for quite a while he just wandered in. I guess our place was more open and we fed him and he became quite a pet really.  He would come when we called to come and get food. Then I guess he got too big and I guess that’s why he stayed.  Then one day somebody left the gate open and he was gone.  We would always walk early in the morning and often saw coyotes.  In fact on Indian Ruins Road as you start down the hill, the left is open desert area. There was a cave in there for coyotes which actually had their young several years. The family who lived there were the ones that told me.  They said to me “when you’re walking take a look because they have babies in there”. That was pretty close to civilization.

                                Races Following The 1969 Fourth of July Parade

There was a Pik-Quik store across Tanque Verde. I think it’s where the nursery and tree place is now.  I think it was in that building or about that location the kids loved it because every chance they got they’d sneak over there, but they were not supposed to cross Tanque Verde.  My kids mentioned something about at the end of Arrowhead or maybe the north fork Katchina, where the easement met Sabino Canyo Road there were two pink pillars, and all the kids called it “The Pink Gate”. They’d love to go out there because it would flood whenever the rains came, and there was a cattle guard or something there, and it filled with spring peepers, the tiny toads.  The kids will go out with jars and get them. I believe that was the road that went into the Indian Ruins originally.  It had a cattle guard which went into the original ranch house.

                                                        Me and my son

Liz and I had Girl Scouts and we took the Girl Scouts at least once and maybe twice to campouts along the wash where the Girl Scout Hacienda is now.  We actually slept on the ground out there. That’s how different things were then.  We had a bunch of kids and we often went out there and spent an overnight.  We would cook on a fire - had a real camp out with marshmallows. Thank you very much for your time and sharing.