Douglas C. TowneCactus Garden was a roadside establishment that once touted itself as the “Show Place of the Desert” and offered relief from asthma, arthritis, and other ailments. Yet, this seemingly magical place has vanished off the map. The reasons for its disappearance are complicated, but they involve an old real estate axiom: location, location, location, and few taking the road less traveled.Cactus Garden opened its doors in the mid-1930s, perched on a modest ridge eight miles southeast of Wickenburg, Arizona. A Continental Oil Company gas station operated out of a stone building adorned with palm fronds and an adjacent botanical collection showcasing the region’s plant oddities. This exotic business was a beacon for motorists on U.S. Highway 60/70/89, then the main drag from Phoenix to Southern California or Prescott. The service station proudly advertised “Conoco Bronze Gasoline” and offered “Expert Repairing” for autos. A café for motorists doubled as a trading post selling curios and refreshing beer.The Cactus Garden Lodge was a tourist court at the rear of the property, which boasted “Perpetual sunshine, dry air, purified over a windswept natural laboratory of desert and mountains,” in a 1939 ad in The Arizona Republic. Its eight furnished cottages were advertised as a haven where travelers could seek relief from asthma, arthritis, and other ailments.At the time, the two lanes of U.S. 60/70/89 near Cactus Garden had sinuous curves that followed the contours of the land, including up a ridge to the gas station and lodge.But as early highways were prone to do, the blacktop shifted. By 1964, a highway realignment had left the business stranded on a seldom-used meander. Instead of curving up to Cactus Garden, the winding road was straightened, leaving it 1,000 feet from the gas station and lodge.By 1992, the service station was gone. Still, a large sign encouraged drivers to take the bypassed segment to what was then called the Garden City Motel Lodge, which offered apartments and kitchenettes on an overnight, weekly, and monthly basis.Today, the once-public cottages have found new life as private residences, retaining many original elements. And the lodge’s namesake cactus garden? It remains next to where the gas station once stood, even more impressive with its decades of added growth, an enduring legacy of a vintage roadside business.Douglas C. Towne is the editor of Arizona Contractor & Community magazine, http://www.arizcc.com/, the 2022 Arizona Historical Society’s Al Merito Award winner. …
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