First impressions from our summer vacation

Jane and I just got back from a week in the desert southwest, mostly in search of places like this...

The Grand Canyon, from the South Rim Bright Angel Trail

...and this...

Wapitki Pueblo, Arizona

...but also spending time in towns.

Real knowledge of a place, of course, requires spending a lot of time in it. First impressions matter, too, though, at least I hope they do, because I'm going to spend some quality time sharing them with you. Take them for what they're worth--they are first impressions, after all.

We spent the most time, and were most impressed with, Flagstaff (pop 70000 [+11.9% since 2010], metro area 140000). Like most American cities of any size, it contains an older core as well as massive suburban development. The sprawl is what it is, but the core is of the highest quality. We stayed in a guest house near downtown, not far from the Lowell Observatory and Northern Arizona University. We were a short walk away from their high-quality library...

...and historic downtown.

Firecreek Coffee

Downtown and the surrounding neighborhood features a proper street grid and plenty of street trees, which I trust are climate-appropriate.

The day we visited there was a farmers' market, which was open to the public, as well as a Hullaballoo in the centrally-located Wheeler Park... behind a fence, so I'm ambivalent. The downtown is full of brewpubs and coffee shops, as well as the delightful Peace Surplus Store, where Jane scored some binoculars. There is less of a functional nature--for groceries or hardware you have to go to the stroads.

So, not perfect. But the cool dry air typical of summer days felt amazing after Iowa's soggy spring and the searing heat at lower elevations. What's not to like?

We flew into and out of Las Vegas (pop 650000 [+10.3% since 2010], metro 2.25 million), the Entertainment Capital of the World. Leaving aside what you or I might consider entertaining, or what we think of gambling, Las Vegas is an urbanist's nightmare. The Strip, the internationally-famous entertainment district, has wide streets, and buildings that are as exaggerated in style as they are massive.

The Strip gets points for having created a unique sense of place, but there's no walkable urbanism here. I think you're supposed to stay inside and gamble.

The downtown area north of the Strip features gridded streets and older buildings that have been through a variety of re-purposings, but with all the economy focused on the Strip and all the wealth out in the suburby areas, downtown is desolately squalid.

The vaster part of the city's area consists of suburban development, in a manner exaggerated as only Vegas can. Streets are way overbuilt with multiple lanes, with 45 mph speed limits that underestimate how fast people can and do actually drive--and who would not, with all this room?

Sahara Avenue, looking east toward Durango

The network of interstates and other limited access highways are worse: a lot of room, wide variation in speed, and sudden moves as exits appear and lanes disappear make it all thrilling. "Thrilling" is not a positive attribute in my worldview, by the way.

There are some starts toward light rail and bus rapid transit. I took the Sahara Express to the ballpark, but the advantages of BRT were limited by the lack of congestion (see above), as well as the driver taking a break at one of the stops to talk to a friend.

Las Vegas has made the desert bloom... which may not be a good idea, either. Our friends have lived there over 20 years, and commend the mild winters. Quite a lot of other people live here, too, and the city will shortly add the NFL Raiders to their NHL franchise, so they're going major league in more ways than just pop music and casinos. We were not there long enough for me to see the attraction, however, and the exigencies of the 21st century would seem to mitigate against this sort of development elsewhere.

[SEE ALSO: Lauren Wilder, "Why You Should Visit Las Vegas at Least Once in Your Lifetime," Culture Trip, 30 May 2019]

We passed through a number of other, smaller towns. The town that made the strongest impression was Colorado City (pop 4818 [+ 0.8% since 2010]), where we stopped for a timely coffee. There was something strange about the town--large residences, a lot of them vacant, and a mix of paved and unpaved streets, like a suburban subdivision under construction that hit 2008 and never bounced back. But a suburb of what?

Colorado City compound (photo by Jane Nesmith)

The story of Colorado City turns out to be much stranger, and I'll leave you to this Wikipedia article. A longer, autobiographical account can be found in the book Escaped by Carolyn Jessop (Broadway, 2007). Every town comes into existence for a reason, as a port, say, or a service center for small farms... or as a headquarters for a polygamist sect. The more we read, the creepier it felt to be there--definitely a sense of place, but of the wrong kind. The adversity faced by your average rural small town is nothing compared to the difficulty in figuring out how to overcome a past like Colorado City's.

Mama Cecile's Barista and Cafe is a charming coffeehouse, despite its inexplicable name, and for us was an oasis in the desert. I don't know if there's a real Cecile, or what tragedies her life story might contain, but the coffee was good, the refills were free, the WiFi was reliable, and there was a sizable children's playroom on the side away from the counter. I've not seen that in a coffeehouse before, but it suddenly seemed like a good idea; if you've always wanted to run a coffeehouse but your area seems saturated, you might aim for the young mother niche with a play area. That's how towns are built, or rebuilt, right? One opportunity at a time.