The Last Rehearsal by junge1

Photography • People • posted on Apr 08, 2017

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Description

This young teacher and her charges held one more rehearsal before performing for the audience, mostly parents. Similar scenes could be seen throughout the school grounds where other teachers did likewise. The occasion for these rehearsals and performances by the Litchfield Park Elementary School District students was the 100th anniversary of Litchfield Park, Arizona. Litchfield Park was founded by Paul Weeks Litchfield (1875-1959) who was an executive of the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company who came to the Phoenix. area in 1916 in search of suitable land to farm a long-staple cotton that had previously been available only from the Sea Islands off the coast of Georgia and from Egypt. This cotton was needed to strengthen the rubber in the pneumatic tire, of which Goodyear was the world's largest producer. The east coast cotton supply had been devastated by the boll weevil and the African supply had been greatly reduced by World War I attacks from German U-boats. Litchfield went to the Phoenix area at the suggestion of the United States Department of Agriculture, but he was not successful in motivating local farmers to grow his cotton. Instead he got Goodyear to form the Southwest Cotton Company in Phoenix, with Litchfield as its president, eventually purchasing some 36,000 acres in the general Salt River Valley area including 5,000 acres around the present site of Litchfield Park then known as Litchfield Ranch. Much of the land was bought for as little as $25 per acre. The cotton was cultivated with a workforce of mostly Mexican and Native American men and their families who were housed at Litchfield Ranch beginning in 1917. This picture was taken on 11 February 2017, Sig...