Scottsdale’s grand public art stands downtown on lawns, and the jackrabbit and LOVE get the photographs. The most personal art the city owns stands on six concrete pedestals beside the sidewalk on the southern stretch of Scottsdale Road, where almost nobody looks. These are Tad Savinar’s Historical Happenstance Markers, finished in 2013. Each holds a stainless-steel disc etched with the memories, stories and wishes of people who lived or worked along the road, and a few small bronze objects to go with them.
To our knowledge, nobody has published what the discs say. We haven’t either, yet. This page gives you everything the public record does say, tells you how to walk all six, and is honest about the part that still needs someone with a camera.
How six pedestals became art
The markers grew out of the public art master plan for the rebuilding of Scottsdale Road. When the first segment of improvements at the road’s southern end was finished in 2010, the crews poured plain concrete pedestals along with the new bus shelters and mile markers, places reserved for art that hadn’t been commissioned yet. The plan called these future pieces “Historical Happenstance” artworks.
The plan also listed what the works should consider remembering:
- the lateral irrigation ditches and the impact of the canal system
- architectural influences on the neighborhoods
- automobile history
- significant trees and landscape themes over the community’s history
- the past presence of sheep grazing
- historical references to businesses and shopping centers
Scottsdale Public Art hired Tad Savinar (born 1950). According to the city’s description, he wanted works that were “direct and intimate rather than authoritative.” His thought was to reward the people who actually walk Scottsdale Road with something built to their scale, in rich, detailed materials. The words came from his own research, from one-on-one interviews, and from comments gathered at public meetings.
The result was six distinct roadside markers on the existing pedestals. Each has a stainless steel disc etched with text from people who “live/work or have lived/worked along Scottsdale Road and who have borne witness to its floods, its cultures, its parades, its turkey farms and its romance.” Each disc is paired with small cast bronze objects, which Scottsdale Public Art calls “a sub-textual partner for the words.” Every marker has its own theme. The city’s summary of the series: Scottsdale Road “has not been merely a means to get to an end, but rather has been a spine, a backbone, a foundation for all who have come in contact.”
The six markers
These are the themes and locations as Scottsdale Public Art gives them. The collection lists a single nominal address for the series, 1017 N. Scottsdale Rd., but the markers are spread along the corridor between Roosevelt Street/Continental Drive at the south end and Earll Drive at the north.
- Farm to Market. East side of Scottsdale Road, just north of Roosevelt/Continental.
- Better Mousetraps. West side, a quarter block north of Roosevelt/Continental.
- Sand and Snow. East side, at the south corner of Granada Avenue.
- Home. East side, at the south corner of Oak Street.
- How I Came To Be Here. West side, at the transit shelter just south of Virginia Avenue.
- Water Has the Right-of-Way. East side, at the south corner of Earll Drive.
What’s on them: the gap
We can give you the six themes. We can’t yet give you the texts or tell you which bronze objects sit on which marker. The public record doesn’t include them, and no one has transcribed them online. Some of what the discs probably cover can be inferred from the titles and the master plan: farm produce on its way to market, local businesses and inventions, the canals and the floods, and the stories of how people got here. That is only inference, and we’re labeling it that way. The real words are on the steel.
That makes this a photo job, and an easy one. For each marker, it needs:
- a straight-on photograph of the disc, in open shade so the etching reads
- a full transcription, line by line, including any names or dates
- a close-up and short description of each bronze object
- the exact position, and whether anything is damaged or missing
If you walk the route before we do, send us your photos. We’ll credit you and add the texts here, marker by marker.
How to walk them
Do it on foot, not by car. The markers are pedestrian-scale by design and stand at the sidewalk edge of a busy arterial. You can’t read an etched disc from a moving car, and there’s nowhere sensible to stop. Park once and walk.
Use the sides to your advantage. Four markers (Farm to Market, Sand and Snow, Home, Water Has the Right-of-Way) are on the east side of Scottsdale Road. Two (Better Mousetraps and How I Came To Be Here) are on the west side. Walk north on the east side, cross at a signal, and come back down the west side. Cross only at signalized crosswalks. This is a wide, fast road, and the point of the project is that pedestrians are worth designing for, not that they should take chances.
Go in cool weather, in the morning. Stainless steel in full sun is both hard to read and hot to touch. In winter the morning light is low and the etching photographs well. From May through September, go at first light or skip it. Bring water. The shade along this stretch comes mostly from the bus shelters.
Budget an hour or two. Allow a few minutes at each marker if you’re reading carefully, more if you’re photographing, plus the walking between them.
What’s around them
The markers sit in the oldest part of the city’s postwar sprawl, and the road they describe is right in front of you. The corridor runs through South Scottsdale, the blocks of 1950s and ’60s houses that much of the city’s first suburban generation grew up in. At McDowell Road you pass the corner where Papago Plaza, the pueblo-style shopping center, stood until 2019, and across from it the site of Los Arcos Mall, now SkySong. Both are a reminder that “historical references to businesses and shopping centers” was on the master plan’s list for a reason.
Better Mousetraps and Farm to Market near the southern end make a natural pair with the rest of the south Scottsdale art in our public art on the road field guide, which starts a few minutes away. The canal history the planners wanted remembered has its own artworks along the Crosscut and Arizona canals, covered in public art on the water. For the downtown pieces, which are larger, louder and better known, use our walking tour.
Where the rest of the record is
Two documents would fill in this page faster than any walk. The first is the Scottsdale Road public art master plan, which set the Historical Happenstance program and its list of themes. The second is Savinar’s own research file: the interview list and notes behind the discs, which would tell us whose memories are etched there. Both should be with Scottsdale Public Art’s collections staff. Until they’re published, the steel is the primary source.
The short version
Six markers, two sides of one road, one afternoon. The city asked an artist to remember irrigation ditches, sheep, cars, trees and shopping centers, and he answered by asking the neighbors. Go read what they said, then send us a copy.