Imagine you have untold wealth, enough wealth that it enables you to not only build a town out of the arid Arizona desert, it also allows you to purchase a decaying bridge from London, England and have it shipped, piece by piece, to your new Arizona desert town. Robert Paxton McCulloch, Sr. (1911-1977) didn't only imagine it, he made it happen.
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| Re-building London Bridge in its new desert location. |
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| Stock photo of the finished product. |
California Dreamin' implies that we have landed in California and this blog posting will feature California. Well.......no. Our first sighting of California was, at best, disappointing. Instead of staying another night in Arizona at Lake Havasu City (right on the border with California) we opted to stay in a little town on the California side called Needles. Well, let me tell you about Needles. The RV Resort that we booked for a three night stay was on the banks of the Colorado River and advertised plenty to do. Our original parking spot was right there on the river but the wind was so strong that the image of our entire Fifth-wheel being encased in and filled with sand had the potential of becoming a reality. We changed our spot and ended up in what can only be described as an unattractive parking lot with hookups for RVs. However, the Park was about a half an hour from Lake Havasu, AZ, and that's what we are going to talk about today. Dogs in tow we spent the day in this amazing desert oasis, had an incredible lunch at yet another dog friendly patio restaurant, and drove across London Bridge.
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| Looking down on Lake Havasu from Lake Havasu City. |
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| It's kind of incredible to see this lake (really an extension of the Colorado River) in this desert. |
Getting back to Lake Havasu City, here is how this town of nearly 53,000 people came to be. It did not naturally rise out of the sand, Lake Havasu City was planned and built by Robert McCulloch. McCulloch's grandfather on his mother's side was a good friend, backer and stockholder of Thomas Edison. He also founded the public utility system in Milwaukee. Upon his death he left most of his substantial wealth to his three grandchildren, of whom Robert was one.
Robert, himself, was no slouch. He graduated in engineering from Stanford University and his inheritance allowed him to pursue both his interest in boat racing and his education. Over the years he founded several manufacturing companies; one was McCulloch Engineering Company in Milwaukee that produced racing engines and superchargers. He sold the company for $1,000,000 when he was only 32 years old.
He then founded McCulloch Aviation and moved his company to Los Angeles where he changed the name to McCulloch Motors Corporation. Prior to the move to LA he and a friend, Ralph Evinrude, had been tinkering with outboard boat motors. As a result Ralph started manufacturing Johnson-Evinrude boat motors. A three-way competition between Evinrude, McCulloch and his in laws, the Briggs of Briggs and Stratton, developed. McCulloch became dominate in the manufacture of chainsaws.
At a land auction in the town of Kingman, AZ in 1963, McCulloch purchased 26 square miles of barren, desolate land for $73.47 per acre that would become a city in the desert. In the 1950's McCulloch had teamed up with C.V. "Woody" Wood Jr with whom he went into the oil business and McCulloch Oil was formed. A subsidiary of this oil company actually developed Lake Havasu City. Woody had been the first employee of Roy and Walt Disney at the start of their theme park concept and was the planner and general manager of Disneyland.
How could it fail right? Credentials, money and backing, experience and fortitude, Lake Havasu City, a vision of a desert city was made into a reality. The lake, Lake Havasu, is a large reservoir behind Parker Dam on the Colorado River, on
the border between California and Arizona. The lake has a capacity of 648,000 acres and is where the testing of the outboard motors that McCulloch and his cronies manufactured took place. Building a new city in the remote desert can't be easy and as C.V. Wood remarked - there is no handbook on how to build a city with step-by-step instructions.
Meanwhile in London, England the world famous London Bridge was showing signs of age. It really was falling down!! It was sinking at the rate of one inch every eight years. In order to preserve the history of the bridge the City of London offered the bridge to the highest bidder
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| Lions, of course, in the English Village. |
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| Looking under the bridge to some faux Tudor shops. |
and Robert P. McCulloch, looking for a centerpiece for his new city, bid $2,460,000. His bid was accepted on 18th April 1968 and, it was noted, that he had bought a bridge he didn't need for a river he didn't have.
It took three years to dismantle the bridge piece by piece. Twenty-two million pounds of stones were each numbered for reassembly and stacked ready for the 7,000 mile trip to Lake Havasu City via the Panama Canal to Long Beach, Ca. The cargo was then trucked 300 miles inland to the lower Colorado River. The bridge was reconstructed on dry land with giant sand hills pushed up to support the bridge arches during the building process. Then a mile-long channel was dredged so that water flows under the antique bridge from the main body of Lake Havasu. The man made channel created an island from a peninsula. The bridge was dedicated on 10th October 1971 at its new home in the American desert.
And now Lake Havasu City has morphed from an industrial town (McCulloch brought some of his manufacturing plants to the city) to a thriving and lively city that is one of the most popular vacation destinations in Arizona with world class golfing, water sports, museums, galleries, shopping and, of course, London Bridge.
As a place to visit I would certainly recommend it. Most desert cities tend to be flat with few high rise buildings (a few exceptions would include Phoenix) and pretty spread out. Lake Havasu City is the same. From certain vantage points you can actually see the boundaries of the city very clearly; there is nothing to obstruct your view of the rolling desert hills. The information centre at the English Village is very informative with lots of good information about the bridge, about McCulloch and, of course, brochures of other attractions in the area that you may be interested in. London Bridge kind of sits there quietly in the glaring desert sun, the very blue sky above it and, believe it or not, actually blends in with its surroundings. For most of its life London Bridge would have been slick with rain, now it is slick with the reflection of the ever present sun beating down on it.
London Bridge is in full use, not just an attraction. We drove over it and while it's not very spectacular it is a piece of history that is worth having a look at. As intended by McCulloch, it certainly put his little city on the map.
The Colorado River is a natural border between the states of Arizona and California and is one of the most controlled and litigated rivers in the world. with every drop of water allocated. The Colorado River is the source of drinking water and water for agriculture in the southwestern desert areas like Nevada, Arizona, California and other western states. Intensive water consumption has dried the lower 100 miles (160 km) of
the river such that it has not consistently reached the sea since the
1960s. Water restrictions and even water bans occur in this area when there just hasn't been any rain for many years in a row.
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| Crossing the Colorado River near Lake Havasu City, AZ into California. |
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| Colorado River, again. |
I lived in southern California, San Diego County to be precise, from 1997 - 2007 so driving westward across the California desert and into familiar territory, where we will stay for at least a month, is very exciting indeed. Next stop Escondido, CA, smack in the middle of San Diego County and a twenty minute drive to old friends, my old tennis club, and some music for Erik.
