Lake Elmira

The ever-endearing, oft retold story of Tucson's whimsical Lake Elmira will forever remain one of US 89's all-time top historical vignettes. We've addressed Lake Elmira in various contexts elsewhere in our US 89 online ecosystem. We think it would be a good idea to give Lake Elmira some space here, too.

Photo © 2017 by John D. Grahame, US 89 Team Charter Member.

The plaque above tells the Lake Elmira Story in a nut shell.  The plaque is bolted to the side of the Stone Avenue underpass where ephemeral Lake Elmira is located.

We prepared a fun little presentation on Lake Elmira using Adobe Spark as our story platform.
Here's the link: https://spark.adobe.com/page/LCToUk60p1MWU/  Be sure and click on the button at the very end of the presentation.  That will take you to a lengthy retelling of the Lake Elmira Story.

Apparently, the completion of an underpass in Tucson is a Real Big Deal.  When the Stone Avenue underpass was dedicated, it drew the largest crowd ever seen (to that date) in downtown Tucson.
Naturally, we did a piece of that dedication.  Roy Drachman tells the story and you can read it here:

https://us89stories.blogspot.com/2017/12/dedication-of-stone-ave-subway-tucson.html

We received a couple of fun comments on Lake Elmira after we posted on the Tucson Facebook history group.  One long-time resident claims city engineers urposely pioneered "evaporative drainage" but funneling all rain runoff into major intersections where the water would be left  standing until it all evaporated.  An Tucson Old Timer who was a kid in the 40's said all Tucson intersections and underpasses were considered swimming pools after a rainstorm.

Nevertheless, there is only ONE Lake Elmira.  Many Thanks to John Grahame for taking the photo of the plaque in late December 2017.  It had been painted over by the city and was barely readable.  It's really nice to see someone has painstakingly cleaned the plaque and brought it back to excellent, readable condition.