Lake Havasu History Pioneer Stories

WE HAVA-HISTORY
A  Pioneers Perspective-based from an article in the Today’s News/Herald
The Beginning of Our History-told by Carlton Fraze,
October 1996
 
                You have all heard various stories and accounts of how this town has grown in 31 years, but how many of  you can visualize the actual beginning of the Model City this is supposed to be?  Picture with me as we stand down at the far end of the airstrip at Site 6 alongside a makeshift reception area, having just arrived on one of the McCulloch constellations or “Connie’s,” as they were called.  The month is March 1964, and we are looking up at a barren hillside that sloped back to the Mohave Mountains. 
                There is one paved road leading up that slope for what must be a couple of miles to the one cluster of green vegetation that can be seen.  Can this be Lake  Havasu City as the big ad in the paper ballyhooed?
                In that one cluster of green, the only structure on that whole hillside was the Lake Havasu Hotel.  Ground was broken for the hotel on Christmas Day, 1963, and the day we arrived was its first day of  use for us, “flakes” (as I found out later, that’s what those who came in on the flights  to purchase lots were called ). 
                The Nautical Inn was under construction, and it officially opened on Easter Sunday in April 1964 , with eight motel units ready.    By the time  I moved there on May 16, the Nautical had eight more units built but not furnished.  The Havasu Hotel had 10 units, but they were usually occupied on weekends by the sales personnel that accompanied the flights. Site 6 Trailer Park and Spratt’s Trailer Park were the only places to park a trailer.  McCulloch had quite a bunch of trailers in the Site 6 park that he  furnished for his  employees; if  they weren’t occupied,  they could  be rented for a week or  two.
                MPI, or McCulloch Properties Inc., was the developer of the town.  Almost everyone here at that time worked for MPI as landscapers, electricians, maintenance,  cooks,  waitresses, maids,  and  airport     and office personnel.  They were  paid the same $1.25  an hour plus  room, board and laundry.  If you owned your own trailer, you were paid subsistence, with free utilities, etc.  Until the Nautical Inn dining room was completed, the only place to eat was the old Site 6 mess hall.  There  were no groceries, markets, or stores, requiring trips each week to Kingman or Needles for groceries, clothes, gasoline, etc.  You could  buy cigarettes and six–packs of beer at the Site 6 mess hall.
                The only way in and out of  here was by a narrow, winding, paved-over fishing  road that came down from the  north from Route 66.  For a bunch of  those who traveled that road, distance wasn’t measured in miles but in the number of six-packs it took to get to Topock, Yucca, Kingman,  or Needles!
                Others here at that time to help in developing the city were;  Spears, Lake Havasu Material;  Kleck, Heavy Equipment;  McAfee Guthrie, pipeline construction; Trico Engineering;  Menke, Dean, & Menke, Builder;  and Holly Development.
                There were many amusing incidents in that first year of development.
                The construction got started that summer on homes, commercial buildings, apartments, and the McCulloch plant.  As the tracts were sold, the water lines went in and the streets were finished. Things began taking shape.
                Along with  the two trailer parks here, the Highlands (now known as Desert Hills) started  to develop, and so did Crystal Beach.  During the summer of 1964, over 560 people went through  the 90-some jobs at MPI.  Most were transient laborers who would work long enough for a steak and then move on.
                We were among the original 75 people in the Site 6 trailer park, but by fall those 75 had grown to over 200, still like one big family, mainly because of the limited development.  There was only one place to have fun and fellowship—the Nautical Inn.  The old Site 6 mess hall was closed  to the public after the July 4 holiday and the Site 6 bar  was closed later in the year.
                Let me get personal, if  I may, just  to give  you an idea of what most of us did who were really interested  in getting this town off to a good start.  As I said before, I moved up here from Tucson, on Saturday, May 16, 1964.  I got in at Site 6 about noon, went to the mess hall for lunch, sat down at the counter to eat, pulled out my cigarettes and lighter, and laid them on the counter, to show you how important it is to be proud to wear the button of an organization you belong to, especially when you are away from your normal surroundings, the cigarette lighter had my Masonic emblem on it.  The man sitting next to me asked if I were there  to go to work and,  of course, that was what I was there for.  He said he saw my Masonic emblem and on that basis welcomed me  to stay with him in his trailer and assured me of a job Monday morning.  I had rigged out my 1953 Chevrolet to sleep  in, not knowing whether I could find a place to stay.  He was a waterman for MPI.  I had a job before leaving the mess hall.
                At breakfast Monday morning he introduced me to the superintendent of Landscaping & Maintenance.  I worked on the landscaping crew and drove the tour buses and the school bus.  At that time there were no backhoes in town; we had to dig all the ditches and holes for trees, etc. by hand.  MPI had a pay loader and Clarence Ebeling had a scoop mobile.  We dug the holes by hand for those 40-palm trees around the Nautical Inn and the Lake Havasu Hotel.   The trees were brought in from a grove near Indio, CA five or six at a time on a lowboy.  Clarence would unload them with the scoop mobile and set them in the holes.  We would then shovel in the dirt to hold trees while he straightened them;  then the pay loader would  finish filling in around the tree.  All the landscaping around the original Nautical Inn, Havasu Hotel, and McCulloch  Plant was hand-planted.
                Driving the tour buses was Saturday and Sunday work: meeting the flights as they arrived in the morning, taking the people around the few points, like the Nautical Inn, the plant site, then to the hotel, and taking them back to the planes in the afternoon and evening.  Driving the school bus meant getting the 11 senior and junior high students out to the Junction of Rt. 66 to catch the county school bus coming up from Topock to Kingman, hot footing it back  to town to pickup the grade-school kids, and taking them to the two-room  school in Topock.  In the afternoon, I would drive back  to Topock and baby-sit  the first three grades on the bus for an hour while waiting for the upper three grades to finish their extra hour of school time.  I would get them all back to town, then go back  out to the Junction to wait for the kids from Kingman.  It was always dark  by the time we  got  home.
                The  deputy sheriff  would  not get off   my back until I got the ambulance service started. I got my franchise on July 8, 1964 from the Arizona Corporation Committee, using a 1962 Chevy II station wagon equipped as an ambulance.  I averaged about one to two calls a month and had to haul them to Kingman or Needles. I had the privilege at MPI to drop what ever I was doing to respond to a call.  Knowing I needed a phone for the ambulance, I applied for the  first phone in the trailer park.  Granted, MPI had phones at the Nautical Inn, Lake Havasu Hotel, Havasu Airport, and Site 6, but there was no other phone service.  My  son,  Dale, and I had to dig a ditch from the junction box, along side the airstrip, across what was later the parking area for the planes, into the trailer park to our trailer, well over 500 feet of ditch.  When the telephone man installed our cable and phone, he also laid a few more lines in our ditch.  Of course, I raised cain—let them dig their own ditch—but instead I got a few bucks from the others who got phones after I did, and I gave the money to Dale for helping me.
                My wife, Bee, worked as a waitress at Site 6 and Havasu Hotel, then at the Nautical Inn.  Dale also worked at the Nautical  in the kitchen, and our daughter, Mary, even though only 13, worked as a waitress at the Havasu Hotel.  As you can see, everyone pitched into get things going.  Different individuals took it upon themselves to do what they could to ease the burdens of others.  One man used his truck to bring in fresh fruit  and vegetables a couple of times a week: another brought in bread and pastries.
                We finally got a gasoline station in August, and  when Claypool’s couldn’t get  its store ready for a September  opening, its people set  up a small store in the Nautical where we could at least  get most of our staples.  The first retail store in town was Ray & Ed Hurdel’s Havasu Plumbing & Heating.  It was soon followed  by Valley National Bank, a liquor store, and a small post office, all in Arnold Plaza.  The Valley Bank was where the Citizens’ Utilities office later was located.  Now it  is the Sunrise Service Bureau.  Claypool’s finally got the big store opened there during the winter but still maintained  the small store in  the Nautical for the convenience of boaters and tourists.
                We now have over 30 different religious denominations, but in the beginning we had none.  This I could not buy, so I got permission for MPI to use the mess hall one night a week for an inter-denominational church service.  I challenged the Methodist minister in Kingman to conduct the services, and he accepted.  When he couldn’t make it down, the roving Baptist minister for the River Communities would fill in, and when he wasn’t available, I did it.  From this beginning the Catholics broke away and started having their masses on another night; the Baptists were the first to actually build their own church here on Acoma Boulevard.
                From such a humble beginning we have grown into a beautiful city, one of which all of us should be especially proud.