Week 45: Arizona Republic at 125 Years
From the Chandler Museum’s perspective, one of the most valuable resources for historical research is local newspapers. They regularly, often daily, outline all types of occurrences, from important national events to the seemingly insignificant notes about local social calls. For the last 125 years, the Arizona Republic has been Arizona’s newspaper of record. The Republic is especially important to Chandler history because it documents Dr. Alexander J. Chandler’s earliest activities in Arizona, well before the town’s founding in 1912. Dr. Chandler himself recognized the importance of the Republic. He used it as an important marketing tool when it came time to advertise the sale of his Chandler Ranch lands.
From 1889 until the mid 1900s, Dr. Chandler busily acquired land to use for agricultural purposes. Backed by money and partners from Detroit, he managed to acquire more than 18,000 acres of land which he named Chandler Ranch. By 1911, the completion of the Roosevelt Dam made the acreage more valuable as real estate than ranch lands. The newly available water source combined with the deaths of his Detroit business partners led Dr. Chandler to divest himself of the land by developing a town.
Dr. Chandler selected May 16, 1912, as the day he would open the Townsite of Chandler to buyers. In order to ensure success, he began advertising in the Republic (then known as the Republican) nearly a year in advance. In the June 25, 1911, edition Chandler ran his first advertisement – an attractive half page ad promoting Chandler Ranch as the “Garden Spot of the Fertile Salt River Valley.” The ad bragged about the abundance of water – not only from the Roosevelt Dam, but also from wells, “producing nearly 100,000,000 gallons of warm water (78 degrees) every twenty-four hour [sic].” The vast quantity of water supposedly available was offered as proof of the stability of the investment in Chandler land.
Just one week later, a new advertisement appeared under the headline “Fertile Chandler Ranch Under Roosevelt Dam Now Open to Settlers.” Atop this advertisement was a photo of former President Theodore Roosevelt superimposed over Roosevelt Dam. Dr. Chandler used this ad to editorialize, telling the readers that they already knew how great Chandler Ranch lands were and what a great deal the land was at a mere $100 an acre. Then he bragged that he was about to open a national advertising campaign for the sale of his Ranch lands, and locals had best get in on the deal early because people would come from far and wide to buy up this bountiful, fertile, and productive land. Two weeks later, he followed up stating that “Many shrewd Arizona people are wisely making selections of land on Chandler Ranch.”
Throughout the summer similar advertisements appeared on a regular basis. While small classifieds started to appear daily in October, Dr. Chandler outdid himself with a full page advertisement gushing over the greatness of Chandler Ranch land, the great availability of water, and, for the first time in print, relating a story about his arrival in Arizona. As we have learned, this story, and its companion which appears in a much later edition of Arizona Highways, is highly dramatized to say the least and, in parts, outright fabrication. But it made for a good story, full of embellishments and flowery language, and was useful in pushing people to purchase land.
By February of 1912, Chandler’s marketing campaign shifted focus from selling lands to selling lots in the planned town. All of these efforts were intended to get people to come to the townsite to purchase land, which they ultimately did to the tune of $50,000 in sales in one day. He could not have accomplished this without the Arizona Republic. This newspaper with its wide local and national readership helped to create the town of Chandler and make Dr. Chandler a very wealthy man.