With the Great Depression at full force and before air-conditioning changed the lifestyle of Valley dwellers, Marjorie Suggs, a Phoenix local since 1932, reminisces of the changes the capitol city has undergone as Arizona celebrates its bicentennial.

“I had just graduated from high school and came to Prescott to spend the summer,” Suggs says. “My family and I were there to be with my oldest brother who was there for his health.” Suggs was just shy of turning 17 years old before leaving her home state of Alabama for the dry weather of Arizona. Her intention of staying in Arizona only expanded to the end of the summer, but with her family’s decision for one member to stay with her brother, she opted to stay longer. “I would be starting Phoenix junior college (now known as Phoenix College) instead of the school I was intending to go to back in Alabama,” Suggs recalled. Although she was not accustomed to many aspects of Valley life, such as the bare mountain scenery, after a few months, Suggs listed Arizona as her new home. “I was becoming very much a Phoenician without realizing it.”

In 1934, Suggs married and settled into the Valley, where she still resides. She has an atlas from the year she moved to Phoenix and notes the population, “about 48,500 at that time,” she says.

Some of her first memories of Phoenix were the many places to dance. “You could dance for $.10 a dance or your date could buy you an evening ticket for $1 and you could dance all evening,” Suggs says. “One dance place was called the ‘Citrus Grove’ and it was an outdoor sort-of place in the orange grove.”