There was a development in my old town called Timber Ridge. The first thing the builder did when he started work was to cut down every last tree.
There’s a section of the Grand Canyon where all of the side canyons were optimistically named by prospectors who presumably thought it might bring them luck. Agate, Sapphire, Turquoise, Ruby, Emerald, Serpentine. None of these things were ever found by the miners, so I always thought they should have continued the tradition of naming the side canyons after things that are not there. Plum, Giraffe, Obama, Cyclotron, Mozzarella.
I would make a pilgrimage to Cyclotron Canyon.
Nope, no, NO! These people bought property in the middle of the desert and refused to be incorporated because they didn’t want government involvement in their lives. They have known for YEARS that Scottsdale was going to stop allowing them to haul Scottsdale water and have never been willing to do anything that involves incorporating or coming up with a water district…because government bad and taxes bad.
Now they want the taxpayers of Scottsdale to bail them, their big pools, their expensive landscaping and livestock out.
I’ve been watching this develop for years, many of the people out there bought their land knowing that Scottsdale was going to shut the water off. Many of those big homes with pools use more water in a month than we use in six.
They get zero sympathy from this desert dweller.
The oldest street in the city of Decatur, Georgia - which dates back to the 1820s - is called Sycamore Drive. It does not now, nor has ever had, sycamores growing on it. At the city’s main square, it intersects with a road called Clairmont Drive, which does not run from, to, or past anything called Clairmont. Another main road had been called Nelson’s Ferry, because it led to a ferry run by a man named Nelson. But that was far too sensible, so in the early twentieth century, it was renamed “Ponce de Leon Avenue” after a prominent Spanish nobleman of the 15th century, who had no connection whatsoever with what is now Georgia.
So it ain’t like this is a new phenomenon.
You live there? I used to live in Worthington Valley, off Snapfinger Road.
deleted because I figured out that the article was paywalled. sorry.
Arizona state law allows “lot splits”, splitting up a parcel - typically a former ranch - into up to five sections. The owner can then sells those sections to a new owner, who can then perform his own lot splits in turn until the lots are the size of the minimum acreage allowed by the county. These are often termed wildcat subdivisions, although the purpose is to avoid the subdivision process as that involves the county government.
It should also be noted that Arizona permits anyone to drill for and use their groundwater under whatever land they own. If one owner drills down farther than others, brings up lots of water and the water table subsides, that’s just tough for other wellowners, who then have to redrill deeper themselves.
Oddly enough, that community includes frontage on the Verde River, one of Arizona’s few perennial streams (particularly since they are downstream of Bartlett Dam). So there is quite a bit of river water flowing near their community - but the rights to that water are tightly controlled, and the town can’t use it.
Arizona state law is specifically written to forbid counties from interfering with lot splits, except to ensure compatibiity with minimal zoning requirements and accessibility of the lots for travel and utility easements. This was done at the behest of land speculators and real estate developers, who have a lot of money and political power in the state.
The lot split law also has the effect of helping developers to blackmail county and municipal governments when making regular subdivisions - the land speculator can always threaten to use land splits rather than go through the subdivision planning process if the requirements for the latter become too onerous. As often as not, the government will fold like a cheap suit.
And of course, the fact that they are mad at Scottsdale for turning off the water access, rather than at the developer who sold them property without any kind of water supply, is a feature rather than a bug.
I still do and probably will never permanently leave the place believe me I’ve tried
My particular community is called “Monterey Park”.
It is often a challenge to find a place to park.
I also am unaware of any Mountain King residing here, but I could check Nextdoor and ask around.
At one time I used to live on a street known as Deerfield road which was in a mildly rural area. It was accurately named.
Concerning the whole “if someone jumped off a bridge” thing… I remember once when I was a kid my grandmother asked me that question and I asked her “well why are they all jumping?” That conversation did not go well for me. But to this day whenever I hear that, knowing what the real point is of course, I can’t help but thinking “there’s necessary information missing from this hypothetical.”
Ditto for San Tan Valley where we were looking at acreage but those lots in Rio Verde were not that but, as wguy123 mentioned, big houses on small lots with a goddam golf course winding in between. Why didn’t they just live in Fountain Valley instead?
Because Reagan once said ‘The ten most dangerous words in the English language are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.”’ and basically broke the social compact that made America (and generally any country) great.
Yep. I used to run a culinary tour of the city, which led me to learn a bit of its history, where I came across the quote I’ve plagiarized and paraphrased above.
Cool. We moved from Decatur back in, God, 1973 or so, went to the Smoke Rise area east of Tucker.
So when I was about six or seven, I was hanging out with some older kids who decided to break into a school. They busted in a window and then had me go and retrieve the rock. I had no sense that this was illegal.
We got caught. The police came to their house, where I was also staying. They interrogated all three of us. At one point, the cop says to me, “If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?”
To which I confidently replied, “Yes!”
“You would?”
“If I had a parachute.”
Fortunately for my smart ass, they thought it was funny.
More fool I. I have since developed a crippling fear of heights and would not do it even with a parachute. Honestly, I’d have a hard time if the bridge was on fire.
I’m guessing that you live in the (general) area and have a much better idea of what’s really happening than the rest of us invisible people ranting on the interwebs.
All of this really does prove a point that I have been making for years - the “mainstream media” is neither liberal-biased or conservative-biased - it is shock-biased. Mainstream Media outlets are all corporate, and therefore need to bring in profits. Writing a story along the lines of “Scotsdale finally stops selling low-priced water to desert community that refused to set up their own water district” doesn’t bring views to the site or eyes to the program. “Scotsdale cuts off water to suburb” is more shocking - how dare they! Think of the children! Yeah, well the residents of Rio Verde bought there fully understanding that they were trucking in water, and as with any other free-market system, may have to change suppliers.
Notice that the article talks to “regular people” - no pools, no grass lawns, etc. You know that the guys with the pools are immediately getting water from somewhere else. An additional $400 / month is nothing to them. To the rest of us, however, that would be an extreme hardship.
Just another invisible name on the interwebs spouting off about stuff they know nothing about. Silly me. Would have taken 30 seconds to actually pull up a map and see that they do have a green river in the area. Mea culpa. Much easier to rant about “ironic names” than to check to see if the name actually made sense.
I am sure it has been said many times by many people, but they don’t care about red or blue, just green.
That’s one reason my main news source these days is NPR. It doesn’t take long for you to realize they clearly don’t give a shit about that sort of thing. 
I mean, they care about money, since they can’t be on the air without it, but they get it by begging listeners to donate. (And I do.)
NPR also gets lots of money from corporations and large foundations. No idea if these sources are more or less of NPR funding than individual donors.