Castle Hot Springs Reopens with Green Welcome Mat

Green Living, March 2019

“This spring is a beautiful place, surrounded with fine scenery, and if the water proves possessed of medicinal properties it will certainly be a place of resort in a few years,” wrote pioneer settler Abraham Harlow Peeples, in the Arizona Miner January 30, 1874. Castle Hot Springs did become a resort, opened by another Arizona pioneer, Frank Murphy, in 1896 for the health conscious about 50 miles from Phoenix in the Bradshaw Mountains. From here, his brother, Territorial Governor Nathan Oakes Murphy, made the first Arizona telephone call in 1902. The resort later welcomed, in January 1945, a Massachusetts naval lieutenant, John F. Kennedy, who completed a post-war rehabilitation here. The 220-acre “green-inspired” resort reopened February 1, 2019, with luxury bungalow and cabin accommodations. Come: “Take the waters.”

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Grand Canyon National Park Celebrates Centennial

Green Living, February 2019

“You cannot see the Grand Canyon in one view, as if it were a changeless spectacle from which a curtain might be lifted, but to see it you have to toil from month to month through its labyrinths,” wrote John Wesley Powell in The Exploration of the Colorado River and its Canyons. This year, 2019, we celebrate the 150th anniversary of Powell’s milestone 1869 journey through the mouths and labyrinths of the Grand Canyon in what is today Arizona. We also celebrate the 100th anniversary of the creation of Grand Canyon National Park, by President Woodrow Wilson, February 26, 1919. At the same time, we recognize that in celebrating the parks by even visiting them as often and as lovingly as we do, we harm them through wear. Stewarding the Grand Canyon National Park through another 100 years, then, is as challenging today as it was a century ago.

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Love Canal Legacy

Green Living, December 2018

Forty years ago, Love Canal, near Niagara Falls in New York State, was an environmental nightmare that awakened America. Approximately 22,000 tons of chemicals, stored in steel drums, buried and capped in clay from 1942 to 1953, had leaked into the adjacent working-class homes. By 1978, the released diozin, halogenated organics, chlorobenzenes, heavy metals and hazardous waste had begun to produce high incidences of heart disease, cancer, rashes, kidney failure, allergies, immune diseases, epilepsy, asthma, migraines, nephrosis, birth defects, leukemia and miscarriages. Today capped, fenced and closely monitored almost two decades following EPA remediation, the 70-acre site still contains most of the chemicals. Some positive results were Superfund legislation and our state environmental agencies. But the best outcome was the inspiration to prevent similar future events. (Thanks to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation for the Love Canal images.)

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McDowell Sonoran Preserve: A Picture of Preservation

Green Living, April 2018

Scottsdale’s McDowell Sonoran Preserve (MSP) is the triumphant result of four decades of work by citizens and city, including the acquisition of more than a billion dollars of otherwise developable land. The preserve encompasses 30,580 acres and 195 miles of hiking/biking/equestrian trails in a sublime section of Earth’s most biologically diverse desert. Among the heroes of the preserve effort were legendary Mayor Herb Drinkwater, who was inspired in the 1990s by Phoenicians such as the late Senator Barry Goldwater, who helped set aside the Phoenix Mountains Preserve two decades before, providing miles of hiking and biking trails for a city reeling from sprawl. Desert EDGE, a proposed nature-education center inside the MSP has brought praise for its innovative virtual approach to desert education, though some have criticized it because, they say, it violates the terms and spirit of the agreements creating the preserve. Scottsdale City Council is awaiting the results of a citizen petition drive, due this July, to stop Desert EDGE from being built inside the MSP boundaries. Stay tuned for more.

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The Clines: Recycling Arizona History

Green Living, January 2013

Arizona history and environmental awareness are both at home with the Clines, a Tempe family anchored in 150-plus years in state and territorial history. Their remodeled and expanded home, built in 1968, celebrates various influences: his growing up on a horse and cattle ranch near Payson in the Star Valley; her love of the Spanish Mission style; Frank Lloyd Wright’s organic architecture; and the work of Greene and Greene, whose Arts and Crafts style inspires the work of Larry Langhurst and Bernie Becker of Phoenix-based Woodesign, which handcrafted the beautiful millwork. The design team also included the team of general contractor, R.D. Hendrickson, of Scottsdale-based Modern Group; Tony Sutton’s interior design firm, Est Est Incorporated, Scottsdale; and architect Joe Conk, AIA, principal of Fort Worth, Texas-based Conk Architecture.

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