Arizona Republic Features Scenic Drive

The Saturday, June 3, 2000 edition of the Arizona Republic contained an article on the Desert Foothills Scenic Drive and Friends of the Scenic Drive.  The complete article appears below.

Friends of the Scenic Drive hope others will expand on their work

Valley Landmark

By Anne Ryman

Drive along Scottsdale Road north of Happy Valley Road and you'll see simple signs identifying desert plants. 

You'll notice something else: few businesses, lush rolling desert and wide scenic setbacks. It's not by accident that the Desert Foothills Scenic Drive developed this way.

The 6-mile stretch between Scottsdale and Cave Creek is the work of Friends of the Scenic Drive, a volunteer group of about 200 members . It organizes cleanups, lobbies the city for environmentally friendly developments and maintains the 40 plant signs. It work is similar to the Adopt-A-Highway program, only on a larger scale. [Read More]

"The whole idea was just to have a positive impact on what was going to take place," said Les Conklin, president of the Friends of the Scenic Drive. "I feel we've been successful in that."

Scottsdale has a brochure on scenic corridors, which includes the Desert Foothills Scenic Drive and five other areas designated to be preserved in their natural setting. [Read More]

The group has been active since the mid-1990s, but roadside preservation efforts date to 1963, when a handful of Cave Creek residents (ed. there was only a handful of folks living in Cave Creek then) launched a preservation effort to keep the roads from becoming lined with strip malls and gas stations. The residents lobbied Maricopa County to establish scenic setbacks along Cave Creek and Scottsdale Roads and painted redwood signs to identify native plants. 

Families, who called themselves plant parents, adopted roadside plants. People "were standing in line to be plant parents," Scenic Drive founder Corky Cockburn said.[Read More]

At the time, the U-shaped scenic drive stretched 17 miles up Scottsdale Road to Carefree Highway and down to Cave Creek Road with views of the McDowell Mountains and Pinnacle Peak.  In the mid-1980s, Scottsdale and Phoenix began annexing land along the scenic drive, and volunteer interest waned. The 6-mile stretch along Scottsdale Road is the only section actively maintained.

Conklin hopes people living along Cave Creek Road will pick up the torch and continue preservation efforts there. Group members also hope other neighborhood organizations will follow their lead. But they realize there are few roadsides left to preserve.

"It's now or never," said Tony Nelssen, a native Arizonan and group member. 

Note from Friends of the Scenic Drive. To learn the complete history of the Scenic Drive visit the "About the Drive" section of this site.