The decade closed on a corner whose future nobody could have priced. In 1959 a shopping center went up at Scottsdale and Camelback Roads — an unremarkable act in a subdivision boom, except that this was the corner that would become Scottsdale Fashion Square. The name arrived in 1961, when the open-air center opened; the retail empire came much later. In 1959 it was simply shops following rooftops.
The year’s other arrival was Messinger’s Mortuary — the sort of institution a real town needs and a crossroads never had. It made a fitting close to a decade spent converting an unincorporated crossroads into a functioning city, fixture by fixture: a government, a slogan, a parade, a stadium, hotels, payrolls, and now a place to be buried.
The scoreboard came due months later, when the 1960 census counted 10,026 residents — up from 2,032, one of the fastest growth rates in postwar America — with the town limits racing outward through annexation. The 1950s built the brand; the 1960s would multiply it nearly seven-fold.