Drawn to the roaring fun like a mosquito to an artery, a swaying young woman in overalls staggers through the swinging doors.
Headed for the bar where folks are toasting and downing shots, she passes a hogpen-sized stage where Patrick James Jr. is wailing about how he wants “to get lost in that rock’n’roll.”
Laughing people are screaming to be heard – over the music but mostly over each other.
And the sun hasn’t even set.
Welcome to the Rusty Spur.
Though it’s a landmark in its own right, this may not be the best place for a history quiz – but someone gives it a try, anyway.
How old is Scottsdale?
“Two hundred and fifty,” blurts a brunette from San Francisco.
“No,” her local blonde friend corrects. “That’s how old the country is.”
Shrugging, the San Franciscan sizes up the dusty old museum-like bar and tries again.
“A hundred and fifty?”
Closer …
If you really want to know anything about Scottsdale history, ask Joan Fudala.
She’ll tell you Scottsdale – which is mighty proud to call itself “The West’s Most Western Town,” even if it’s a city – officially was incorporated June 25, 1951.
The city’s historian will lead a 75th birthday celebration at 7:30 a.m. Tuesday, June 23, at Western Spirit: Scottsdale’s Museum of the West.
Tickets for the breakfast-and-history lesson start at $40. For more information, visit scottsdalechamber.com.
Fudala has written seven Scottsdale history books and scores of newspaper articles.
As the Scottsdale Chamber of Commerce promises, “Scottsdale has a story worth knowing, and no one tells it better than Joan Fudala.”
She wrote a Scottsdale Airpark News (inserted in the June 14 Progress) “Remember When” column about the historic headlines in the Scottsdale Progress from 1949 to 1951, tracking the incorporation effort “and the immediate actions the Town Council took after our June 25, 1951, incorporation.”
Top 7.5
Fudala was asked to come up with her “Top 7.5” Scottsdale history moments – one for each decade, with a half for the decade-in-progress.
Her list, with the caveat “my selection criteria is what I’d personally like to ‘relive’ via time travel”:
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First Sunshine Festival (now Parada del Sol), when it was a 20-minute parade, BBQ and street dance in Old Town.
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Dedication of new City Hall and Civic Center Library in Oct. 1968 – a parade of residents down Main Street from the Valley Ho to City Hall, led by a Mariachi band playing on the back of a flatbed truck.
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Opening weekend of Scottsdale Center for the Arts in Oct 1975, when crooner Roger Miller was the opening act, “The Great American Nut Show” was the debut play and two art exhibits were staged in the atrium.
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The Phoenix Open first played at TPC in January 1987.
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Events held to garner support to establish the McDowell Sonoran Preserve and the vote to fund it through a modest sales tax increase.
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Celebrating Scottsdale’s 50th anniversary of incorporation in 2001 (and, on a personal note, publication of my first book, Historic Scottsdale: A Life from the Land, which introduced me to so many iconic figures); enjoying the new AZ Canal waterfront areas as they opened in 2006/07.
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Attending the grand opening of the long-awaited Western Spirit: Scottsdale’s Museum of the West in January 2015.
7.5. Dedicating Scottsdale’s Memorial for the Fallen at City Hall in March 2023 and honoring Scottsdale veterans during November with a series of banners along Drinkwater Boulevard.
Honorable mentions: first game played at new Scottsdale ballpark in November 1955, an exhibition game where Cincinnati Reds’ Ted Kluszewski hit the first homerun (I’m originally from Cincinnati); citizen initiative to Save the Little Red Schoolhouse, 1968; the opening of the McCormick Railroad Park in October 1975; first Barrett-Jackson and Arabian Horse Show held at WestWorld in January and February 1989; enjoying the first decade of Mayor Herb Drinkwater’s enthusiastic, collaborative leadership of Scottsdale; victory party when voters OK’d sales tax increase for buying Preserve land in May 1995; attending the dedication of the new Aviation Business Center and Thunderbird Airfield Veterans Memorial at Scottsdale Airport in 2018; ; emerging as a stronger, more connected community after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Historic spot
As for the Rusty Spur, it’s not quite the oldest business in town.
The first commercial enterprise in Scottsdale was the General Store, which opened its doors on the southwest corner of Main and Brown in 1897, according to the historian.
Scottsdale was considered a “settlement” back then. The General Store included a post office – where Bischoff’s Shades of the West is, Fudula notes.
“Another early business was Cavalliere’s Blacksmith Shop, opened in 1910 – and still there on Brown at Second Street,” the historian notes.
On Main Street next to the General Store, Farmer’s Bank opened in 1921.
After a dozen years, the bank cashed in its chips during the Great Depression.
It closed when Arizona Governor Benjamin Baker Moeur – a physician who became the state’s fourth leader – declared March 2 a “bank holiday.”
The Farmer’s Bank never reopened.
The Scottsdale Chamber of Commerce opened its first office here.
After a few other businesses came and went, the space was renovated and the Rusty Spur Saloon opened its swinging doors in 1951.
So Scottsdale’s oldest bar is also celebrating its 75th birthday this year.
As the Rusty Spur bartenders and regulars will tell you, “That calls for a toast!”