Volume 3 Issue 4
$4.99 Winter 2014
Serving Contracting Firms and the Arizona Community…
• In It for the Long Haul: James Bond Trucking • Just a Façade: Old Town Scottsdale • Sunstate Hosts ARA of AZ Fall Fiesta • Radiant Roadsides: Millet’s Neon Legacy • Wespac’s “Grand” Mid-Century Facelift • Area 66: Alien Architecture along I-40 • Sun State Builders “Reframe” Bowling Alley • Turning Dirt into Gold: The Isbell Company
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Publisher William Horner Billy@arizcc.com
Editor Douglas Towne Douglas@arizcc.com
Contributing Writers Lee Addis J.J.M. Czep Katie Mayer Gary Nelson Catherine Slye John Larsen Southard Doug Sydnor Maureen E. Towne
Magazine Consultant Chuck Runbeck Chuck@arizcc.com 602-881-0907
Production Manager Laura Harley Laura@arizcc.com 623-698-6436
Publisher’s Representatives Tom Hogarty Tom@arizcc.com 480-559-2327
Circulation Manager Tina Crigler Tina@arizcc.com
Barry Warner 602-920-7325
Advertising Manager Chuck Runbeck Chuck@arizcc.com 602-881-0907
Serving Contracting Firms and the Arizona Community… Then & Now
issues year, 4 ues 1 6 1 $ iss years, 8 2 8 2 $ to:
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Printed at Lithotech Arizona Contractor & Community (ACC) magazine is published quarterly (spring, summer, fall, & winter). ACC is a professional publication designed for the contracting industry, engineers, architects, equipment rentals and others interested in Arizona and its history. Content including text, photographs or illustrations may not be reproduced without the written permission from the publisher. The publisher does not assume responsibility for unsolicited submissions. ACC reserves the right to reject any editorial and advertising material and reserves the right to edit all submitted content material. Arizona Contractor & Community Copyright © 2014 All rights reserved.
Volume 3 Issue 4 Winter 2014
CONTENTS 8.
From The Editor: Alien Architecture Douglas Towne
10. 28. 30. 32.
Construction Around Arizona Industry Highlights Sunstate Hosts ARA Fall Fiesta - Katie Mayer In It For The Long Haul: James Bond Trucking Maureen E. Towne
38.
Radiant Roadsides: Paul Millet’s Neon Legacy Douglas Towne
43.
Turning Dirt into Gold: The Isbell Construction Company - J.J.M. Czep
47. Finding unique Solutions to Solve your Changing Needs!
Concrete History: Valley Sidewalk Stamps Catherine Slye
48.
Just a Façade: The West’s Most Western Town John Larsen Southard
55.
Golfing Vision in the Desert: Paradise Valley Country Club - Doug Sydnor
58.
Digging Through the Archives: N.G. “Herk” Reynolds - William Horner
61. 62. Certified Cranes Certified Operators Machinery Moving Site Surveys - Storage 480-967-0026
Bid Results - Bidjudge ACC Advertisers’ Index
Front Cover Top: Two belly dump trucks at the James Bond Trucking yard, ����. Bottom: Vintage advertising on James Bond truck, ����. Story on Page ��.
From the editor Douglas Towne
I
n my last editor’s column, readers were promised a “grand” issue covering Phoenix’s lone diagonal thoroughfare, Grand Avenue. I’m upping the stakes this issue by tackling a topic that’s literally out of this world: buildings with paranormal accoutrements. Although everyone loves a good ghost story, tales of haunted places pale in popularity compared with extraterrestrial visits. Roswell, New Mexico bases its tourism marketing campaign on the alleged nearby 1947 UFO landing. The Little A'Le'Inn has become an unlikely tourist mecca in remote Rachel, Nevada because of purported interstellar spacecraft at nearby Area 51. Absent such celebrated UFO occurrences, it takes a truly remarkable architectural design to have a structure become linked with visits from little green Martians. One such rare building is the Dinesphere, which has also been referred to as the “Arizona Death Star” or the “Cosmic Golf Ball.” This elevated, 40-foot-diameter
geodesic dome is located near Interstate 40 in Yucca, a small community southwest of Kingman, Arizona. The Dinesphere is currently the centerpiece of “Area 66” which includes a convenience/curio store, a flying saucer and other alien spacecraft, and a stationary, lime-green Volkswagen bug “driven” by a similarly colored space creature. The attraction’s name stems from a nearby 1952 realignment of Route 66— and the other worldly appearance of the Dinesphere and its UFO accessories. The Dinesphere has a bizarre history that matches its current incarnation as a base for interplanetary life forms. It was originally designed as an elaborate restaurant and night club to attract attention to a real estate development called Lake Havasu Estates. Construction started in 1972 and the shiny exterior that looks like an iridescent golf ball on steroids is actually fiberglass covering plywood sheathing. Architectural plans called for a row of tall water jets in front to hide the
building’s supports and to provide the illusion that the dome was suspended in space, riding on a huge fountain of water. “It would have been an impressive site out there in the desert,” Mohave County historian Dan Messersmith says. The architectural sophistication of the Dinesphere, however, was not matched by the scrupulousness of the development, which promoters claimed could one day house 75,000 residents. “It was more a land scam than a land development,” Messersmith says. In a classic mid-century Arizona land development swindle, buyers paid premium prices using low cost installment plans for sight unseen home sites they believed offered scenic lakeside views, according to an article in the Kingman Daily Miner (July 4, 1979). Promotional materials aimed at out-of-state buyers
…It takes a truly remarkable architectural design to have a structure become linked with visits from little green Martians.
Eight
several years of remodeling, the interior was split into three levels with 3,400 square feet of living space. From bottom to top are a kitchen, living room, and bedroom, with a bathroom on each floor. As if their home wasn’t striking enough, the Schimmel’s riffed off the Space Age architecture and parked a 12-foot diameter flying saucer outside. The couple eventually sold the Dinesphere to John and Patricia Grady, who came up with the Area 66 theme, added a store and additional spacecraft, and hope to open a UFO museum on the grounds. The only things the site lacks are actual extraterrestrials, but that’s if you discount the alleged crash of a flying saucer northwest of Kingman at Red Lake in 1953 according to UFO magazine (April 1976). Witnesses claimed to have seen "three small bodies packed in dry ice" that had large heads and brownish skin. Perhaps alien survivors from this 1953 crash have simply relocated to the Dinesphere and are doing their best to fit in with their Mohave County neighbors by purchasing a mobile home and selling jerky, soda, snacks, beer, tobacco, ice, groceries, and tchotchkes to curious earthlings.
Wyoming couple converted the dome into to a private residence, as there had long been concerns the structure would not meet Mohave County commercial fire codes. After
Images courtesy of Douglas Towne
featured distorted maps showing Lake Havasu, a large reservoir created on the Colorado River by Parker Dam, as just a hop, skip, and a jump away. In reality, the water body was located 40 miles distant. Moreover, the “home sites” were nothing but unimproved desert lacking utilities or roads. Eventually the development scheme went bankrupt and work was halted on the incomplete Dinesphere. It’s no surprise that such a unique structure sitting vacant became the subject of redevelopment plans and wild rumors. There was a proposal to reopen the geodesic dome as the centerpiece of a truck stop in the late 1970s. In the same decade, the Dinesphere became the stuff of urban legend when an unsubstantiated tale surfaced about a drug deal gone bad, ending with a woman’s dead body dropped out of the dome’s bottom floor in an effort to make the “murder” appear accidental, according to the Kingman Daily Miner article. The Dinesphere was eventually purchased by Hank Schimmel as a birthday present for his wife, Ardell, in 1981. The
Across page top: Dinesphere and associated billboard image, early 1970s. Across page bottom: Flying saucer at Area 66 Top left: Dinesphere Bottom right: Martian using VW Bug to reach his UFO.
Arizona Contractor & Community
Image courtesy of Arizona Contractor & Community
Construction Around Arizona
Construction Around Arizona Freeways ● Roadways ● Commercial
Above: Two men going over plans at the Maryvale Shopping City site. In the background is a John F. Long Wagner Tractor with Be-Ge can setup, 1958. Story on page 12. Left: Progress on the new Grand Central Tower, Wespac Construction. Story on page 16. Ten