Arizona’s War Town: Flagstaff, Navajo Ordnance Depot, and World War II
During World War II, the federal government forever changed the lives of many northern Arizona citizens with the construction of a U.S. Army ordnance depot ten miles west of Flagstaff. John Westerlund now tells how this linchpin in the war effort marked a turning point in Flagstaff’s history, contributing to the city’s rapid growth and bringing social, cultural, and economic change to the region.
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Don R. Lago says:
lots of bombs, but this book isn’t one of them,
When this book showed up in the stores I ignored it for a long time, assuming that it was just the history of one army ammunitions depot–and how interesting could this be? But it turns out that this is a first-rate social history, taking place at the intersection of some major subjects of great interest to many, such as Native American culture and World War Two. The Navajo Depot was built near Flagstaff because it had to be on a major railroad line and able to serve West Coast ports, but be safely far from Japanese bombers. By chance this placed it near the heartland of the most vibrant Native American cultures. Thousands of Native Americans worked on the base, including a noticable percentage of the Hopi tribe. Most Native workers were Navajos, and they even built their own hogan village, and they continued some very traditional ways. Many white workers walked straight out of a cowboy movie. The mixing and mixups of white American and Native American cultures on the base are rich in cultural lessons and colorful characters and stories. (For example, R. C. Gorman–the future artist–grew up on the base). Then add a large group of Austrian POWS, and you have all the makings of a ‘ship of fools’ sort of journey with all its unlikely passengers interacting in unlikely ways. Some of the book’s stories are quite entertaining. Portions of the book take place in nearby Flagstaff, but you don’t have to know Flagstaff to enjoy this part too, for Flagstaff is typcial of Old West frontier towns and Rt. 66 towns and railroad towns, and some of the social pressures felt in Flagstaff, such as housng shortages and labor unrest, were typical of much of America in the years of World War Two. But there’s much that makes this book unique.
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