Tom Mix and Scottsdale's Scenic Drive - A Peek at the Peak Magazine

Posted By Les Conklin on Aug 30, 2021

Originally Published August 15, 2016

By Les Conklin

Did you know that there is a connection between Tom Mix and Scottsdale’s Scenic Drive? I’m probably one of the few people in the world that know about the connection, but read on and you’ll know about it too.

No; Tom Mix didn’t ride his favorite steed, Tony the Wonder Horse, down Scottsdale Road. No; Mix did not help create the Desert Foothills Scenic Drive. No; Mix was not the first mayor of Scottsdale. No; Mix is not the author of the slogan, “The West’s Most Western Town.” The connection is much more obscure and personal than that.

Tom Mix was Hollywood’s first Western superstar. He appeared in more than 300 movies. He was a hard-drinking, fast-living cowboy who married five times. When Mix was killed, no Indians were involved and neither was Tony the Wonder Horse. He died violently and alone, in a single car high-speed accident.

In the mid-’90s, I was seeking information about the Desert Foothills Scenic Drive. After several phone calls, I reached Corkie Cockburn, a long-time Cave Creek resident. The Scenic Drive was her brainchild. I learned that the idea for a scenic drive on Scottsdale and Cave Creek Roads was conceived in 1963. The goal was to establish setbacks, attract tourists, and preserve roadside vegetation and views. Residents installed redwood signs to showcase and identify roadside plants. Corkie told me that, while it was the first such scenic drive in Maricopa County, it was not an original idea. She told me that an earlier scenic drive, the Pinal Pioneer Parkway, had been established by the Arizona Highway Department in 1960.

I was curious, so a few months later my family and I drove to the Pinal Pioneer Parkway. It’s a 41-mile stretch of road that is the southern portion of State Road 79 from Oracle Junction to just south of Florence. The road passes thru a high desert plain and provides views of the Santa Catalina and Tortilla Mountains. So, what does this have to do with Tom Mix?

Hopefully, you’ve seen the brown plant identification signs along Scottsdale’s Scenic Drive. Well, as we were driving southeast of Phoenix on Highway 79 South, passing and admiring similar brown plant identification signs marked “Ironwood Tree” and “Saguaro Cactus,” I saw the Tom Mix death site marker. In 1940, Mix died there, clubbed to death by his own suitcase, when his 1937 Cord touring car ran off the road. The Mix monument is a black riderless bronco, which has been stolen and replaced several times over the decades. It still stands today for you to enjoy.

After returning from that sightseeing trip to the Pinal Pioneer Parkway more than twenty years ago, I parked Tom Mix in my cranial parking garage, where he and the connection between Scottsdale’s Scenic Drive and the Pinal Pioneer Parkway, have remained until last month, July 2016. That’s when I decided to embark on a long-anticipated adventure and study my father’s college yearbook. It had resided for decades in an attic in Rhode Island before I brought it home to review.

My father graduated from Rhode Island State College, in 1929. He died in 1952, years before either the Pinal Pioneer Parkway or the Scenic Drive were created. He never got to travel west of Niagara Falls but, as you will see, the West intrigued him.

In 1929, college yearbooks were do-it-yourself affairs; empty scrapbooks that included instructions for collecting and pasting-in the mementos of college years. And guess what I discovered in that dusty scrapbook, along with humorous comments from my father’s fraternity brothers and friends, dance cards, hand-written notes from college debates, grades, and bills? I found the newspaper flyer, shown here, promoting a Tom Mix appearance in a circus in Providence.

That was it; Tom Mix and the Pinal Pioneer Parkway emerged from of my mental parking lot and I was re-connected. Enjoy this flyer and a bit of western history. It’s a long-forgotten gift from my father. Also, enjoy the plant identification signs along Scottsdale Road. Like the Mix memorial they have been stolen, moved, and replaced over the years but they still stand. They too, remind us of other times when cattle and real cowboys roamed the Desert Foothills and what is today, north Scottsdale. They also remind us that more than 50 years ago, long before most of us drove onto the scene, folks cared enough to make the effort to preserve our special roadsides and views.