A Farm Security Administration farm in the Chandler area during the Great Depression.

The recent turmoil in world financial markets has led many to incessantly check their retreating 401(k) retirement accounts. There have been inevitable comparisons to the stock market crash of 1929. However, local newspapers in late October and November of 1929 reported on the Wall Street turmoil, but did not have an immediate visible local connection to the impending economic disaster that became the Great Depression.
Reports from Wall Street described it as a Grand Canyon surrounded by “sky piercers.” Newspapers pointed out that billions of dollars were lost in this canyon. Tourists were reportedly disappointed that there were no riots on Wall Street when they visited. New York Police were acting as tourist guides to the visiting throngs, pointing out places of interest such as the stock exchange, the J.P. Morgan building and the location where George Washington took his oath of office as first president of the United States.
“Main Street at home has (Wall Street) beat” for excitement one article noted. Perhaps the article was right. Back in Phoenix, it was reported “a praying, rolling-eyed colored man charged with the murder of a 14-year-old colored girl interrupted a hearing…to determine his sanity…by adding, with his life, a point in support of the theory that he was insane.”
The accused murderer, Samuel Butler, 36, was dubbed the “hoe slayer” for how he killed Mary Slade. Butler used a heavy grub hoe to allegedly chop the girl to pieces in August 1929. Butler then attacked the girl’s father and the two police officers who arrived to arrest him.
As the stock market crashed, Butler was in court for his sanity hearing. The Phoenix Evening Gazette reported that while one of the doctors was testifying about Butler’s mental competency to stand trial, the manacled Butler broke free from his two burly guards and made “a perfect dive through the small opening provided by the half-opened window, struck a ledge one story below and turned over and over on the rest of the journey to the ground. He crashed against the fender of an automobile parked in the yard and struck the hard ground squarely on his head, breaking his neck.”
The opening of the Arizona State Fair in mid-November 1929 also captured the attention of much of Arizona.
“The agricultural, dairy, livestock, machinery, mining, poultry, and pet-stock exhibits (are at the fair)… so that instruction has been provided for all who are interested in any of the diversified industries of Arizona,” it was reported.
Walter Reinhart, a 14-year-old, took a number of boxes and crates to the office of State Fair Commission entry clerk Mrs. R. W. Anderson. Reinhart, who lived in the county near 36th Street and Thomas Road, successfully entered his rabbit, a bantam rooster and his pet duck into the State Fair competition.
Reinhart then reached into a box and pulled out “a squat, wriggling, mottled reptile” and dropped it on the counter in front of Mrs. Anderson. Reinhart innocently inquired how much it was going to cost to enter his pet Gila monster into the State Fair Exhibitions.
It was reported that Mrs. Anderson had to be revived with smelling salts. After she regained her senses, she ruled “there would be no entries of Gila monsters, rattlesnakes and like ‘pets’ received for this State Fair.”
The State Fair also included what was called the ‘Joy Zone.’ The fair and the zone were open daily from 10 a.m. until
midnight. Admission to the fairgrounds was free after 6 p.m.
In 1929, the ‘Joy Zone’ was extremely large and included 16 amusement features which were sideshows along with seven rides. Some of the elements of the zone included Mason’s Natureland, filled with many animals and rare birds, including a monkey staging a tea-party with several children as guests, an athletic show, a prison show, Donny the half-boy, as well as thrilling rides as the “whip,” the “heyday,” the merry-go-round, the “up-and-down,” and the Ferris wheel. Sadly, we are only left to imagine what some of those rides were like.
The hardships of the Great Depression were yet to arrive in full force in Arizona. As the stock market crashed in 1929, Arizonans were probably mostly enjoying the cool weather after the heat of another Arizona summer.
— Mike Miller. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection,
LC-USF34-036117-D.