VOL. 17 ISSUE NO. 27   |   JULY 6 – 12, 2011

jULY 6, 2011

Congratulations, Cave Creek!

Words from Mayor Vincent Francia

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Given the feisty, independent spirit of the good citizens of Cave Creek, it’s hard to imagine they collectively agreed to self-governance in 1986. Harder still to grasp, that was only 25 years ago. After all, Cave Creek was founded in 1870, 141 years ago. So, we’ve been free-willing it a lot longer than we’ve been governing ourselves.

A quick review of the town’s history reveals a common thread sewing together the various changes Cave Creek went through. That thread is a deep and abiding commitment to the idea of community. It can be seen in what we know of our Hohokam predecessors, and especially in the stories they left us in the rock art; it was evidenced in later native American presence in our area, specifically in multiple tribes “sharing” the bounty of Black Mountain while no one tribe claimed it as its own. In other words, for them, Black Mountain was a community site.

Moving briskly through Cave Creek’s history we see evidence of this spirit of community with the arrival of miners and then on to the presence of stagecoach and cavalry stations, and then sheepherders and ranchers.

During the New Deal, Cave Creek served as a social center and temporary home for the many workers involved in construction of the Horseshoe and Bartlett dams in the Tonto National Forest. During each of these decidedly different periods of Cave Creek’s history, the idea of community was further enhanced.

In October 1948 there was an alleged UFO crash in Cave Creek, near the Go John area. This is not being pointed out to profess any personal predisposition to extra terrestrial existence, but rather to bring to light the 162 hardy souls who comprised the population of Cave Creek at the time. Currently, Cave Creek has a little over 5,100 citizens. So you can’t say we’re growth crazy.

What can be said is the spirit of community, which began long before our little area of the world was called Cave Creek, continues today and is seen in the citizens’ commitment of respect and preservation to the desert in which we all live. That ethic was, is and will continue to be the guiding force of Cave Creek’s future.

The independent spirit of the town, for which it continues to be known, was not brushed aside when the town incorporated. To the contrary, the governing body known as the council became the public forum for all citizens’ voices to be heard. That alone is worth celebrating together on this 25th anniversary of Cave Creek’s incorporation.

swishMayor Vincent Francia
July, 2011

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