Janet Corcoran Oral History audio file |
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Object Description
| TITLE | Oral History Interview with Janet Corcoran. May 06, 2010. |
| INTERVIEWEE | Corcoran, Janet |
| SUBJECT | Sahuaro Ranch; Glendale, AZ |
| Browse Topic |
Agriculture Family and community |
| DESCRIPTION | Oral History Interview with Janet Corcoran where she describes her life and experiences in Glendale, Arizona and at Sahuaro Ranch. |
| INTERVIEWER | Akers, John |
| TYPE |
Sound Text |
| Material Collection | Sahuaro Ranch Park Historic Area |
| RIGHTS MANAGEMENT | Copyright to this image is held by the Sahuaro Ranch Park Historic Area, City of Glendale Parks & Recreation and is provided for educational purposes only. Call 623-930-4200 for additional information. |
| DATE ORIGINAL | 2010-05-06 |
| Time Period |
1940s (1940-1949) 1950s (1950-1959) 1960s (1960-1969) 1970s (1970-1979) |
| ORIGINAL FORMAT | Oral history interview |
| DIGITAL IDENTIFIER | index.cpd |
| Date Digital | 2010 |
| DIGITAL FORMAT |
MP3 (MPEG Audio Layer 3) DOC (Microsoft Word) |
| File Size | 425 Bytes |
| REPOSITORY | Sahuaro Ranch Park Historic Area, City of Glendale Parks & Recreation |
| Full Text | Janet Corcoran May 6, 2010 Interviewer: John Akers Re: Sahuaro Ranch Park Historical Area Glendale Arizona Oral History Project Project director: Diane Neville Transcribed by: Jardee Transcription, Tucson, Arizona AKERS: This is May 6, 2010. My name is John Akers at the Sahuaro Ranch Park Historic Area, City of Glendale. Today I’m in the Fruit Packing Shed with Janet Corcoran. You lived at the ranch, and we’ll talk about that. First, Janet, what’s your background, where are you from? CORCORAN: I was born in Dover, New Jersey, in 1944. While my father was still in the navy, my mother took my twin sister and I and moved to our old hometown of Michigan City, Indiana, which is up on the shores of Lake Michigan. We lived there until my dad came home from the navy, then we went back to New Jersey. I don’t remember any of that, because I was only two years old, but the next thing I knew, I had a baby brother. My mother wasn’t happy in New Jersey, and her father was dying, so she took us back to Indiana, and I lived there until I was thirteen, when we moved to Arizona. I’ve lived in Arizona, except for two years, since 1957. And I spent those two years up in Portland, Oregon, trying to see what another climate was like. By the end of the second year, I’d had enough of the rain, and I missed the desert, so I came back to Arizona, and you won’t see me anywhere else! AKERS: So out of all the places you lived, why did your family move to Arizona? CORCORAN: My father and my sister had really bad infections from sinuses, and they couldn’t recover. And so my mother got the idea that we had to move to Arizona, and what Mom says, goes. And so we came here, and my sister’s much healthier. My dad was healthy until he passed away from a brain tumor. So it’s just been home for us. There’s just so much variety in this state, and so much good stuff to enjoy year round that it’s the place to live. AKERS: And what years were you the caretaker out here at Sahuaro Ranch? CORCORAN: From May of 1979 until … let’s see, my daughter was fifteen, so ’79 plus fifteen. I can’t add right now. AKERS: So is that 1994? CORCORAN: 1994, that sounds good. And we moved into a little house just a mile and a half from Sahuaro Ranch that was built in 1947. So we’re still living in the old houses. AKERS: So tell me, how did you end up becoming the caretaker? CORCORAN: I don’t remember telling my husband that I was going to do it, but he says he came home one day, and he said, “They need a new caretaker at Sahuaro Ranch, and we can do it, but you have to be the caretaker, but I can’t because I���m an employee.” He was the employee, so he signed up for it without really discussing too much. And then he came home a couple of weeks later and he said, “You’re the new caretaker at Sahuaro Ranch.” And so I said, “Okay, what does that mean?” And he said, “Well, you get the house rent free and they pay the utilities and you get a small stipend for what you have to do.” And all I was supposed to do was walk the grounds a couple times a day, make sure nothing was getting broken or stolen, and make sure people weren’t trespassing, because at that time it was a closed park site, and the only way anybody could come in was with permission. And it was hard to get in, because the only way to get in was a dirt road up from the parking lot at Glendale College. There was a lateral along 59th Avenue, where the gates are now, and it was about seven or eight feet down into the ground, and it had running irrigation water in it. AKERS: So the main entrance was always coming from the south, from the college to come in there? CORCORAN: Yes, it always came from the college, always where the double row of palm trees were. But the problem was, it was just dirt, so during the rainy season, it was a little hard to negotiate. But that was it. That was before the college had gates on their parking lots too. It was all pretty primitive. AKERS: But to get into the historic area, you had to go through the college? CORCORAN: You had to go through the college parking lot, because the college is part of Sahuaro Ranch originally. AKERS: What’s your husband’s name? CORCORAN: John. AKERS: What department did he work for? CORCORAN: He was with the Parks Department. He had started out with the City in building maintenance—not building maintenance, but as a janitor/custodian. And then he saw the opening in the Parks Department because he had to work nights. And when our daughter was born, he wanted to work days so he could have time with her. And so he transferred to Parks, and he loved doing that, that was his favorite thing. AKERS: He’s retired from the City? CORCORAN: He’s been retired for almost twenty years, at least twenty years. He retired at sixty-two, and he’s seventy-five. AKERS: You were still on the ranch when he retired, right? CORCORAN: Oh no, we had moved away when he retired. AKERS: Okay. So who did you report to? CORCORAN: Richard Watanabe. He was the head of Parks Department at that time. Or, he wasn’t the overall head, but he was our immediate supervisor. AKERS: Did you interact with him a lot? CORCORAN: Not a whole lot, no. You just check in. If something was going wrong or it needed attention, I would call the girls in the office and say, “Hey, we need something checked up over here.” And I was more alert as to what was going on, than people that just came to work, because I would see things happening. I remember really riding them about getting some security on the buildings, because there were fixtures inside the buildings that were valuable for their age, not for monetary so much, but they were something that if we were going to ever historically preserve everything, would be vital. And so we had people looking for those things out here, coming in and taking things. AKERS: So some things were lost? CORCORAN: Some things were lost in transition, yeah. AKERS: Were you the first caretaker, or was there one before you? CORCORAN: No, there was once before us. I think his name was Fred Betz. I’m not real sure about that, but he was there, and he was a single man. He was a retiree, and he had to go and live with family somewhere else, and that’s what created the opening, and we took it. AKERS: Was that your first time you came out to Sahuaro Ranch, or had you ever been out there before? CORCORAN: My husband brought me out to see what it looked like after he had said we were putting in for the job, and he wanted me to see it. And we came out and we walked around, and it was right at dusk, so it was kind of neat. AKERS: So what were your impressions of the place? CORCORAN: I love old buildings. During the time I was here, I went and took some classes at Glendale College and I became a social studies teacher. History was my major, especially Arizona history—I just love it. So I was so impressed that they built these Michigan-style houses in the desert. (chuckles) So I fell in love with the place. And as soon as I was allowed to go look in the buildings, I was just in seventh heaven, because I couldn’t get over this is the typical Manistee Michigan-style buildings that they built. And that’s where the former—well, it’s not the former owners, but the Smith’s were the last former owners, and they were from Manistee, Michigan. But the Bartletts were also from the Midwest, so it was Midwest-style buildings—in the desert. (chuckles) AKERS: What were the conditions of the grounds? CORCORAN: It was a jungle! Everything was horribly overgrown. There was one area that my son loved to play in. It’s right around where they have the little imitation outhouse. And it was so overgrown with these bushes all together, that it was like being in a jungle, and he loved it. He called it his fort. And it was the trees where a lot of the peacocks and peahens liked to sleep, and we had a guinea hen that slept up there with them. And it was just so neat. His friends couldn’t wait to come and spend the night so they could play and explore. So it was great. AKERS: What did the City tell you were their plans for the park when you first came on? CORCORAN: It was going to be developed into different segments. They followed the major plan very truly. Thank goodness they saved all the buildings, which took a lot of stabilizing, like here in the Packing Shed, and a lot of the old wood buildings out in the back. But they wanted it to be a combination. They wanted it to be a cultural center, they wanted it to be a recreational center. And they wanted to use it to show what agriculture was like back in the late 1800s, early 1900s in Arizona. And I was really thrilled that they wanted to keep a lot of the stuff here—especially the historic area—without…. We’ve incorporated things without destroying buildings. Like instead of building a whole new ugly restroom area, they incorporated it into the four-car garage. And things like that. They’ve kept everything that was original to the ranch, on the ranch. The house I lived in disappeared, because it was not original to the ranch. It had been moved across the road and set in for the honeymoon cottage for Dick and Sharon Smith. AKERS: So that’s the house that used to be here on Mountain View, called the South Lawn. CORCORAN: Yeah, by the gates. AKERS: And so that was moved, it was over on the side of that road? CORCORAN: Yeah, temporarily. It was right in the, if you’re coming up from the college, it was in the southwest corner just before you come into Sahuaro Ranch. And they moved it over, made some changes to it, doubled the size, and then built a little block building behind it. And then when the park went into its historical stage, they just tore it all down, because it didn’t belong there. AKERS: And so that got moved, you said, when Dick and Sharon got married—so the fifties? CORCORAN: Yeah, that was for them, that was their honeymoon cottage, because she wasn’t going to live in the same house with her mother-in-law. She told Dick she needed to have her own house. So her mother-in-law lived in the guest house and the main house up with her helpers. AKERS: And so you lived in this house, is where you and your family…. CORCORAN: The little house, yeah. AKERS: What did you call it? CORCORAN: We just called it the house. We didn’t have a real name for it, because I was in there for a while before I found out it was the honeymoon cottage. I couldn’t understand why everything in the house was so out of proportion for me at five-foot-two. So I asked Sharon Smith about that, and she said, “Oh, well, Dick built it to his specifications, and he was over six foot tall.” So my kitchen counters, I actually had to step on a box to use my kitchen counter, because it was so high. Everything was just geared for a six-foot-tall person. It was really funny. It was fine for my husband, he was six foot tall, but I’m five-two. AKERS: How many bedrooms did that house have? CORCORAN: Well, it had two bedrooms, and it was funny, it was like what we used to call back east a “railroad house,” because you had to go from one room to get to another room, every room. And you could make like a…. We had the front room, which was combination living room, dining area, and then the kitchen was very accessible, and the one front end was the children’s bedroom, and then our bedroom, and you could just walk all the way through. And then the door to the back porch, which was a great big huge covered back porch, was perfect for our dog. She loved living out there. And then there was a little block, like a studio apartment, behind that. Eventually, when my son was old enough, he slept out there, because eventually I couldn’t keep the two children in the same bedroom. AKERS: Sure. And how was living in that house, what kind of condition was it in? CORCORAN: Oh! Well, it had two different finishes on the outside when we first moved in. Part of it was white and part of it was redwood. It had a tin roof, and the good thing about it was the peacocks couldn’t walk on it because they would slide down. We had only a cooler, and we had a wall heater to heat the whole house. So we’d have to sleep with all the doors open so the warm air could circulate. And it was kind of rough, because we didn’t have an air conditioner. There was an air conditioner, but it didn’t work, and the City wasn’t about to get a new one. So we just lived with the evaporative cooler and just sweated out the monsoons. Our yard eventually became a little fenced-off area separate from the rest of the park. We had a chain link fence separating us from the horses. And then the horses were pastured out behind us. And these were Dick Smith’s horses, and he had an arrangement that the horses could stay there so long after he moved out. And so we had three mares, and they were usually in foal. We would be there when the foals were dropped. Sharon Smith would call me up and she’d say, “Well, did you go look at the afterbirth?” And I said, “No, Sharon, that mama horse isn’t going to allow me in that pasture at all. You’re going to have to come out and see it.” But I would call Sharon right away as soon as I’d seen, because all three of those mares would only foal at night, they wouldn’t foal during the day. But I got to know them pretty well, and they were really great mares. They were wonderful horses. AKERS: So you say the pasture—where was that at, the barnyard? CORCORAN: No, the pasture was right behind my house. AKERS: So what we call these lawn areas was the pasture? CORCORAN: The big lawn area. It’s the date grove, and the pasture was right there. It was fed by irrigation ditches and we flood irrigated it. AKERS: So he was keeping horses here when you came on in 1979. CORCORAN: Yeah, he had the horses there for about a year and a half, maybe two years. That was a little side job for us, because he gave us a little allowance for feeding the horses twice a day and keeping an eye on them. And then my daughter was only a year and a half old and she was riding one of the mares. It’s funny to see this little girl just sitting up on top of this retired race horse. She was a beautiful mare. Her name was Allie Shadow. And Mary always said that was her horse. So she was great. One day I couldn’t find her in the house, and I’m looking all over, and I was getting panicky because she’s a two-year-old child. She was out there in the paddock with the mare. She said, “Shadow!” And she loved that horse, so she would go out and visit her whenever she could. Whenever Daddy fed her, she was right there. And Shadow was like babysitting her. She was standing guard until I could grab her and get her back in the house. AKERS: You said there was a master plan. Were they still developing that when you started? CORCORAN: Yeah. I think they had an idea…. And of course if you ever talk to Richard Watanabe or some of the people, or Lee Stanley, they’d know more about that. And they’re retired, so you want to look them up. But there was a master plan, and then when we finally saw it—there’s a model of it somewhere that shows what the future idea was for it. And it was amazing, when they finally got everything done, it was almost true, right down to the last minute. AKERS: When did they finally put the Mountain View Road in, and put a gate and cross the ditch? CORCORAN: That was when they started to do the whole thing. I watched a lot of…. I’m trying to remember what year that was. On the years, I’m foggy. But I remember when they came in and my son’s little haven out there where all the trees were, they thinned that out a lot, and got rid of a lot of the non-native trees. There were a lot of volunteer mulberry trees and stuff that didn’t belong there, so they pulled them out. I also watched them cut down a lot of beautiful olive trees, and I cried a lot because the trees were so old and so gnarled and so pretty. But they were in the way of the road. AKERS: Okay, so were these like an extension…. There’s an olive grove today. Was there a second grove? Or were there just trees growing? CORCORAN: There were trees all over the park, yes. There were some right where the main gate is now. You know, the first gate when you come in Mountain View and then there’s the parking lot, then there’s the green area, and then there’s the nice gate where everybody comes in a lot. Right in that area there were a lot of olive trees. And across the road from there, too. So there was a lot of…. Yeah, there were a lot of olive trees that were cut down. Some of us got chips and pieces of it, and a friend of mine made us two belt buckles out of it, so that we could remember it. AKERS: So one part was to get rid of trees that didn’t belong there? CORCORAN: That were in the way of the master plan. So they cut down a lot of trees. They had to, because they had to put a road in, and they had to put in parking lots. AKERS: Let’s talk a little bit about your experience as a caretaker. What did you enjoy about being a caretaker? CORCORAN: Walking around in the solitude. It gave me time to think and relax and work things out. It was kind of neat to have a little bit of authority and tell people they couldn’t be there, that it was under development, and because of just risk, responsibility, that it was best that they not be there. There were some occasions where people were allowed to come in and would have tours, so they would know what was going to happen. And there were some people that I felt, you know, they would come and just ask, and if I felt that they were really vital to help promote Glendale or anything, then I’d let them see things and see what we had in plan, but that was about it. AKERS: Where were the closest houses or neighborhoods to the park? CORCORAN: Half a mile away. Well, across the road there was…. The development was south of Mountain View and east of 59th, there were houses and the church. There was nothing north of Mountain View at all. It was just a big field with an old dairy shed on it. And behind where the park is now, where the library is, all the way up to Peoria, that was all cotton field. And then at 65th, where Sahuaro Ranch School is now and all that, that hadn’t been developed. On the other side of 65th, it had already been developed, because friends of ours were already living there. And then at Mountain View again, on the other side, by the college, that housing development was already in. And we had a lot of cottonwood trees along the lateral that was running where 65th Avenue is now. And it was all cotton fields, so it was kind of cool. The old pictures of the ranch, of course, show all the way to 67th Avenue, where there was ranch. They called that the golf course. (chuckles) AKERS: So you were kind of isolated, the ranch was isolated. CORCORAN: Yes. No neighbors to argue with! AKERS: What were the challenges of being the caretaker here? CORCORAN: Keeping people from coming on the property. We had a few people that thought it was fun to come in there with bows and arrows and shoot the peacocks. We lost a few birds, and we even had one bird—even after it was being developed, we had one bird was shot. One of the inspectors who was following the construction took that one down to a vet and had the arrow pulled out and brought him back home. He lived in my laundry room until he was healed enough to be turned loose. So we had some problems with people injuring our animals and stuff. AKERS: Did people kind of view it as “here’s a bit of wilderness or remote area” right in the middle of this urban area? CORCORAN: Sometimes. A lot of people respected it, and then we had a few really bad eggs that came in and messed things up for everybody else. AKERS: Did the position or what you had to do change over time? CORCORAN: Yeah. Well, it did in a way, because once the park was developed, I would still remind—you know, like people would come in when the park had already opened, and people would have their children, and they’d be chasing peacocks around. I would stop them and I would say, “Please don’t chase the birds, that’s not good for them,” and they would say, “Well, who are you and who do you think you are, telling me what to do with my kids?!” And I’d tell them, “I’m the caretaker for this place, so I’m the caretaker for those birds, and I want to protect them.” It’s a good thing the birds could get up on the top of the roofs and get away from everybody. AKERS: Tell me about the birds. How many peafowl, about, do you think there were when you started here? CORCORAN: When I started here, there may have been three to four dozen. There were a lot. Our first night in the ranch was a thunderstorm, and it was also mating season, and that’s the only times the peacocks screech and call out. And so every clamp of thunder, they screeched or called out. And during mating season, they’ll make that noise so that they can attract the females, as well as spreading their tails and rustling their tails. But I would say we had three to four dozen then, but some of them disappeared, due to hunters and other things. AKERS: How far was their range? I mean, today there’s just the seventeen acres of the historic area. How far did they go when you were there? CORCORAN: We used to have people across 59th Avenue call us up and tell us to come and get our birds, because they had wandered off. During mating season, the older males chase off the younger males. And so they would go over into the neighborhoods, and they’d say, “Can you come and get your birds?” And I said, �������They’ll come back when they’re ready. Otherwise, there’s no way you can catch them. It’s very hard to catch them.” And they weren’t very tame the first several years. But then they learned, like people have food, and if you go close enough, they’ll feed you. And they learned to beg. That was part of their downfall, because that’s how things happened to them. AKERS: So they really avoided people prior to that? CORCORAN: They would avoid people, yeah. AKERS: You got the sense that Dick Smith didn’t really…. They were there on the ranch, but he didn’t really interact with them, didn’t feed them, they just did their own thing? CORCORAN: No, they kind of fed them. Dick would sell them at Thanksgiving. He would trap them and sell them at Thanksgiving for turkeys. Or he wouldn’t say it was turkeys, but he would say, “Well, it’s as good as a turkey.” Peacocks are pretty much all dark meat, though. AKERS: They’re a pheasant, right? CORCORAN: I’m not sure, I haven’t checked that part out yet. AKERS: About how many were there in the mid nineties when you left? CORCORAN: At one time I thought if we had twenty, that was a blessing, because they really had gone down. And the babies have a hard time surviving. A hen will sit on up to a dozen eggs. That’s what I noticed. Either the eggs would—they liked to nest under the trees, and the irrigation water would come in, and it would wash away some of the eggs. You notice their heads are little, so their brains can’t be really big. So the peahens would lose their babies. First you’d see them with like, “Oh, she’s got six or seven babies.” And then, “Oh, she’s got three or four babies.” Then they’d be down to one or two babies. We had a couple of them that we tried to raise ourselves, but we didn’t have very much luck, because they really need to have their mothers to follow around. We had one that impressed [i.e., imprinted] on us, and it did pretty good, but then somebody took a misstep. AKERS: Were you here when they brought in peacocks from another ranch? CORCORAN: Yeah. And they had a hard time, because the group was already established, and they didn’t want to accept the other ones, so they kind of chased them off. AKERS: Do you know where those other peafowl came from, what the ranch was, or where they were at? CORCORAN: No. People just came and dropped things off at night. AKERS: Oh! I’d heard at some point like the City had—there was some other ranch that had brought some in to augment the population. CORCORAN: Yeah, to augment. Well, then it was okay, but when they first tried bringing one or two in, the resident birds didn’t like them. And then somebody brought in a white one and it was sacrificed by two-legged animals, by people. It had been killed. We found it. AKERS: Was there any other wildlife on the ranch, or other animals? CORCORAN: Well, when we moved in, there were raccoons, there were…. I’m trying to think what else we had here. Possum. We’ve always had the jackrabbits and the cottontails. That was about it. Oh! our first or second night in, there was a skunk, and it sprayed the whole carport of the house we were staying in. Our dog was barking at it, and we didn’t know what was going on, and John and I were standing at the front door, looking out the window to see what was going on there, and our dogs were barking like crazy, and the next thing, we smelled skunk. AKERS: You only saw the skunks during your first year or so there? CORCORAN: Yeah. The skunks and the raccoons disappeared after the first year. AKERS: Never saw raccoons again? CORCORAN: Never saw them again. AKERS: Where do you think the raccoons were living? Were they in the lateral? CORCORAN: They might have been. Anywhere where they like to have a little nest and hide. See, there were cottonwood trees, and those big cottonwood trees are sometimes hollow, and that’s a good place for raccoons to hang out. AKERS: You have two kids? CORCORAN: Uh-huh. AKERS: And is your son older than your daughter? CORCORAN: Yes, he’s seven years older. He went to Peoria elementary schools, and he had to walk down the lane, and the school bus would pick him up at the end of the lane to take him to grade school. AKERS: Where was the nearest school? CORCORAN: Well, at that time, the school that was closest to us said he wasn’t in their district. So he went to … I think it was Heritage, for one year. It’s the school up on…. AKERS: It’s on Mountain View, right? CORCORAN: No, it’s on Cholla. He went to a school up on 55th and Cholla. AKERS: Oh sure. Uh-huh. CORCORAN: And then they opened up…. This is terrible, I don’t remember the names of the schools. Then he went to the school that was north of Peoria, just off of 67th Avenue. And then my daughter started there. And then they built Sahuaro Ranch School, and my son graduated from the school on 67th and Cholla, from eighth grade; and my daughter went to Sahuaro Ranch from fourth grade to eighth grade. AKERS: Where did they go to high school? CORCORAN: Eric went to Peoria High School, and Mary went to Ironwood. AKERS: So tell me a little bit more about raising children on the ranch. You mentioned a little about your daughter. CORCORAN: Well, I thought it was a great situation. My son didn’t like it a whole lot because nobody lived nearby, and he was very social. But his friends loved to come and spend the night with him because he had his own little room outside of the house. You know, they’d just go roam around at night and have fun and stuff—and of course get to bed by a certain time. And all his friends wanted to spend the night with him because they thought this was a great place to be. Mary liked it for a while. When she was about, I think, five years old, Dick Smith gave her a pony, and she loved that. So when she had a birthday party, the kids would come and ride her pony. And he was pretty good, but he died of distemper. I think it was equine distemper. (pause) I lost my train of thought. But Mary enjoyed it for a long time. She had two cousins that just lived about a mile away, and they would love to come and spend the night and just do things with her and have fun and run around out on the ranch and just have a good time. AKERS: You mentioned already that Dick Smith had horses there. How well did you know him, how often did he come around? CORCORAN: He would come by occasionally. He would check on his horses. He had given us the name of the veterinarian so if anything looked wrong we could get the vet out here and he could work with the horses and everything. I had no background for working with large animals. I had lived on a sheep farm in Oregon, and I could handle sheep. But horses were another thing for me. And my husband grew up in Ireland, where horses played a big part of their lives, so he liked being around the horses, and he would go out and work with them a little bit. And of course these were race horses, so he would never get on them and ride them, because he was too big. But our son and our daughter would ride them—not a whole lot, just around the paddock and that would be it. AKERS: Dick just kept the horses here, but he would take them to his ranch in Wickenburg to work with them? CORCORAN: He eventually took them all out to Wickenburg. They were all brood mares, and that was it. So they were just here. We fed them twice a day and talked to them and scratched their foreheads and stuff like that, just to keep them friendly. AKERS: What were your favorite areas of the ranch, or favorite places? CORCORAN: Before everything was developed, the pecan grove. Oh! AKERS: Part of that is still there? CORCORAN: That’s the big picnic area, yeah. AKERS: Tell me about that, before that got developed. CORCORAN: Oh! it was just like lush and overgrown. I must have picked—I used to gather up about a hundred pounds of pecans every fall and bake pecan pies and do all kinds of stuff with pecans. People from the neighborhood would come in and pick a bagful every now and then. And my mother was a real prolific baker, and she used a lot of pecans when she baked, so I just enjoyed doing that. It just was such a tranquil place to be. Even on the hottest summer days, it seemed cool because it was so shady. So that was one of my favorite spots. It was just so relaxing to go out there. Of course I loved the historic buildings. I used to love just the adobe, the little overhang roof under it. That was one of my favorite spots too. And then the place I told you about where we used to have all the trees where the peacocks and the peahens and the guinea hens would always roost over by the now outhouse. That was one of my favorite spots too. It just reminded me of being totally somewhere else. So that was fun. AKERS: You mentioned pecans. Were there lemon trees anywhere when you first came on? CORCORAN: Lemons. AKERS: Where were those at? They’re gone now—I just wondered where they used to be. CORCORAN: Across the street in the college grove mostly. There were a couple of them up here just south of the Packing Shed. There were lemons, and they were some really gnarly-looking trees with some gnarly-looking but wonderful fruit on it. You couldn’t judge this fruit by its outside, because it was really good inside. And then there’s still quite a few blood orange trees, and those are great. When people started picking, we would tell them, “Please don’t pick that, they’re not ripe yet.” Because a blood orange isn’t ripe until the outside skin is red. And people would pick it before it was red. You had to let the outside skin get red so that the inside was red. The blood oranges, to me, were one of the best. I used to juice them up and we’d have red orange juice. AKERS: Was there any other interesting fruit varieties or grapefruit or anything else? CORCORAN: There used to be a nice old fig tree, but that got dug up and disappeared when we had to widen the road. We had—I’m trying to think what else. A lot of date palms at the time—of course this is in the 1970s and the 1980s—we could reach a lot of the dates, the ones right by where our little house was. But those trees are now like twenty feet tall, so you can’t get the dates off of them anymore. We used to have people jump over our back fence and come in the yard and pick up the dates that were on the ground. And I’d go out there, “Excuse me, this is a private residence.” Oh, and we had some lime trees, but they didn’t look like limes. They’re calamander limes and they’re orange and they look like a tangerine. AKERS: Calamander? CORCORAN: Calamander limes. And they’re orange. If you wanted to play a sick joke on somebody, you would offer them one, tell them it’s a tangerine, and they’d bite into it and it would be so sour! AKERS: There used to be an area called the sunken garden? CORCORAN: Uh-huh. AKERS: Was there still that area? Now, my understanding was that was the old, where the lily pond used to be here, just west of the Fruit Packing Shed. CORCORAN: Right, between the Foreman’s House and the Packing Shed. AKERS: Was that still there when you came on board? CORCORAN: No. That went away in the twenties. I wasn’t even born yet! AKERS: Well, I didn’t know if they had filled it in, or if it hadn’t been filled in. CORCORAN: Yeah. There’s some very old pictures of it, but it was probably—it might have even been before the twenties, because the ladies were wearing like 1918-style dresses. AKERS: But there was a field there between those two houses when you came on? CORCORAN: Uh-huh. AKERS: Okay. Let’s see here…. The Glendale Historical Society, were they the first group to have more of a presence on the ranch? CORCORAN: Yes. And they came in and…. They waited pretty much until…. Well, there was one couple that was very involved, and they were Brookwellyn and…. AKERS: The Turners, right? CORCORAN: The Turners. And I’m trying to remember Mr. Turner’s name. And he has passed away. You’ll probably find him in some of the stuff. And their son is Bart Turner who is now back here in the valley. He’d be a good person to interview, too, because his mother wouldn’t remember anything now. But the Turners were the first ones that would really come out and look around. And we would find things just laying out, and we moved them in here, into the Packing Shed, because we thought they should be saved. However, the City cleaned out the Packing Shed and threw everything we moved in here, away. AKERS: Was that like farm equipment? CORCORAN: It was just odd little things like woven baskets, and just stuff that was just laying outside, and we would bring it in here. But the Turners, I wish I could remember Mr. Turner’s first name. I’ll think of it in a couple days. But they were with the historical society at that time. And then I got to know Ruth Byrne, who everybody pretty much in Glendale knows. She and her husband were very involved in everything. They really were really involved in wanting to preserve the ranch, as well as make a good use of it. So that was great. And they started the wedding program here too. AKERS: Now, there weren’t roses when you came, were there? CORCORAN: No, that was just a brush-overgrown area. That was another spot that was all overgrown and just a big mess. AKERS: Were there any hints of rose bushes there? CORCORAN: No. No, nothing. I think there was nothing there at all. It was really sad. It was just horribly messy. And to watch that rose garden grow…. Now, the man that had the designs and everything for the rose garden was named Melvin Taylor. And before I moved to Sahuaro Ranch, I knew him and his wife. They used to live near us in Phoenix. He has passed away, but he gave the general design for the rose garden, because he used to come here as a young boy and work for the Smiths. So he was a very interesting person too. He was great. It was so neat when I found that out, because he was very involved with the rose society. AKERS: Did you get a sense from him that his design was based on something that used to be there? CORCORAN: That he used to know, yes. AKERS: So he was kind of trying to recreate the rose garden? CORCORAN: Yeah. AKERS: When did they put in the rest of the park? The rest of the park was developed before more was done here, is that right, the historic area? CORCORAN: Now that’s where I’m a little hazy too. AKERS: That’s okay. CORCORAN: It was almost like pretty much done within two or three years. And I’m hazy on years. I have diabetes, so it affects my memory a little bit, so I can’t give you exact dates. AKERS: That’s okay. When you started here, you mentioned there were cotton fields on the north of Brown Road. Do you remember who farmed those? CORCORAN: Well, Bob Goldwater owned the property at that time. Bob Edwards, who was a farmer in Peoria, I think had something to do with that. And Bob has since passed away, but you might find out information about Bob from the Peoria Historical Society. AKERS: So your sense was he was in Peoria, but he would come and farm…. CORCORAN: Yeah, because Peoria was right across the road. Sixty-seventh Avenue is the borderline with Peoria. AKERS: Sure. So what brought your time as the caretaker to a close? When did you stop being the caretaker? CORCORAN: When my daughter was fifteen, so that was ’77 and fifteen, ’92. She had convinced her daddy we shouldn’t live here anymore. The caretaker’s cottage was on the list for one of the things that would be demolished anyway. And so we found a nice old house on Olive and 56th Avenue. The lady whose husband built it lived right next door to us. So we moved in there. AKERS: So you basically decided that it had run its time. CORCORAN: Enough is enough. There’s so many people in the park now. It’s just traffic, traffic, traffic, and not much privacy. We had to keep the front door locked or people would walk into the house. It was just getting to the point where it wasn’t fun anymore. Like our daughter wanted her privacy, and she didn’t like it when…. When I graduated from Glendale College, one of my professors was giving the talk, and he said, “And Janet Corcoran lived in Sahuaro Ranch Park while she was going to school here.” And he said, “Can you just see her on the bench, feeding the peacocks?” AKERS: They didn’t replace you as caretaker, did they? CORCORAN: No, they tore the house down. We moved out and they bulldozed the house down, so that was it. AKERS: What’s your impression of Sahuaro Ranch today, the appearance of it? CORCORAN: Good, bad, and sad. I love to see things like the Packing Shed and the things it’s accomplished in here with the art exhibits and everything. I like the fact that the wedding tradition has gone on, because my daughter’s wedding was here. When the historical society was running the weddings, when my daughter was old enough—because Ruth Byrne had known her since she was a little girl, and she said, “Janet, now when Mary’s ready to get married, you tell her to come here and we’ll have her wedding,” and they gave her her wedding. We didn’t have to pay a penny. And it was wonderful. We needed extra chairs, and they only allowed so many chairs. So the head of the Parks and Recreation Department said…. They called and we called him, and he said, “Whatever John Corcoran wants for his daughter’s wedding, he can have.” So we went to the senior center and got extra chairs, because one of the guys that worked at the senior center worked with my daughter in the Recreation Department. So my daughter grew up and worked at the Recreation Department for a while. So we’ve all been intertwined with the City of Glendale. I love seeing it get all the good uses. I love seeing the music festivals out here, especially like the bluegrass stuff. When I can come over here and I see a bunch of antique cars in the parking lot, like a rally, oh my gosh, that��s so neat! And then to have the lovely picnic area that we have, and the group picnic area—I mean, that���s just totally awesome. I don’t like seeing children that are not controlled, chasing after the wildlife. And I don’t like people that abuse the park, and litter the park, and pick the flowers, and abuse the buildings in any way at all, because it’s part of everybody’s past, it’s a historical treasure, and it’s something that we’ve got to pass on and show children, “This is the way it was when there was farming in the valley. The tractor festival weekend, oh my gosh, I think that’s one of the best things that’s here. And I love it that my grandchildren are now enjoying it. They enjoy Farm Day. They come over and see the animals and everything, because they only live half a mile from the park. And so to them, it’s a way of life. Whenever they come here on a field trip from school, my granddaughter who’s in preschool says, “My mommy grew up there.” So it’s always going to be a part of their heredity. So I think that’s neat. It’s fun to say, you know, this. I love to sometimes go on the tours here and not tell them who I am until the tour is over, and see what they know. (laughs) So there’s always going to be a little bit of Sahuaro Ranch in my heart, because it meant a lot to me. When I first moved away, I would come over more often. But now I only come over a couple times a year. But I should be coming more often, because it is nice. I’ll always miss it. AKERS: Is there anything else I should ask you about Sahuaro Ranch, or anything else you want to say about it? CORCORAN: Oh wow. Not really. I think it’s a treasure that Glendale needs to just keep taking care of. It’s great to show…. It’s such an educational tool. That’s the best thing about it. And I love the way, like, the rose society comes and trims the roses. I don’t know if they’re still doing that, but they used to do that. AKERS: They are again, yes. CORCORAN: Good. I love the way the rose society takes part. I mean, it’s something. Everywhere I go, and if I have a chance, like I had met a lady that was publishing a book on historical places in Arizona, and it was up at the ruins up at Cottonwood, Arizona, and she didn’t know about Sahuaro Ranch, and I said, “Well, I was the caretaker there.” And the picture made the front cover of the book about it now. So it’s just telling people what a neat place it is. Now, to see it’s getting coverage in Sunset magazine and all these other places, it’s wonderful. And to think it started out just as a good old working farm. So it’s awesome! AKERS: Well, thank you for your time today. CORCORAN: Okay, you’re welcome. [END OF INTERVIEW] |
| SORT ORDER | 00510 |
Description
| TITLE | Janet Corcoran Oral History audio file |
| INTERVIEWEE | Corcoran, Janet |
| DESCRIPTION | Oral History Interview with Janet Corcoran where she describes her life and experiences in Glendale, Arizona and at Sahuaro Ranch. |
| INTERVIEWER | Akers, John |
| TYPE |
Sound |
| Material Collection | Sahuaro Ranch Park Historic Area |
| RIGHTS MANAGEMENT | Copyright to this image is held by the Sahuaro Ranch Park Historic Area, City of Glendale Parks & Recreation and is provided for educational purposes only. Call 623-930-4200 for additional information. |
| DATE ORIGINAL | 2010-05-06 |
| ORIGINAL FORMAT | Audio interview and text transcript |
| DIGITAL IDENTIFIER | Corcoran Oral History.mp3 |
| Date Digital | 2010 |
| DIGITAL FORMAT |
MP3 (MPEG Audio Layer 3) |
| File Size | 48052224 Bytes |
