DESCRIPTION: Very rare unrecorded, hand-drawn road map, issued as a blueprint, of central Arizona and California, west of Phoenix by humorist, publisher, columnist and entrepreneur Dick Wick Hall. Inset note for aviation landing fields, rare on road maps of this era. Hall's initials D.W.H. at bottom right corner.
Dick Wick Hall founded Salome, Arizona in 1904 as part of a speculative desert development venture along a proposed railroad route in western Arizona. He soon became the town’s most visible booster, operating a roadside service station, promoting travel through the desert, and cultivating a larger-than-life persona that blended entrepreneurship with humor.
Dated to 1920 based on a very similar blueprint map published by Hall in his Salome Sun mimeographed newspaper he published between 1920 and 1926. " ... the paper was likely intended to be supplied to service stations, such as the one Hall owned in Salome, or other road stops for the traveler passing through, as each issue contains short quips written by Hall about road trips, Yuma County, stories about the desert and driving in the southwest. The paper also often contains cartoonish illustrations of common southwest wildlife, from snakes to scorpions and cacti, as well as regularly featuring a cartoon frog by the name of the Salome Frog who regularly declares that he cannot swim." (Reference: State of Arizona Research Library. Online. https://azmemory.azlibrary.gov/nodes/view/328579).
 Salome Sun. State of Arizona Research Library. 1920.
Dick Wick Hall
( 1877 - 1926 )
Born DeForest Hall in Creston, Iowa, in 1877, Dick Wick Hall came of age during the closing years of the American frontier. He attended the University of Nebraska briefly before abandoning formal study in favor of travel and experience, drifting to the Southwest in the late 1890s. He spent time working in a variety of occupations including railroad labor, ranching, and small-scale business ventures.
Hall’s restless temperament led him through a series of speculative enterprises typical of the early twentieth-century West. He was involved at different times in mining promotion, irrigation schemes, land development, and local journalism, rarely remaining long in one pursuit before moving to the next opportunity. This pattern of ambition, improvisation, and persistence shaped his public persona and placed him squarely within the culture of boosterism that characterized many western towns during the territorial and early statehood years.
By the final decade of his life Hall had become a distinctive figure in Arizona cultural history, known for his ability to translate regional experience into narrative. His humor drew on understatement rather than exaggeration, relying on dry observation and carefully paced absurdity. Though his career was cut short by illness in 1926, Hall left behind a body of work and a public image that captured a transitional moment in the Southwest, when isolation, modern transportation, and popular media briefly intersected on the desert highways.
PUBLICATION DATE: 1920
GEOGRAPHIC AREA: United States
BODY OF WATER: Pacific Ocean
CONDITION: Good.
No holes or tears. Some edge wear.
COLORING:
ENGRAVER:
SIZE: 21
" x
11 "
ITEM PHYSICAL LOCATION: 89
PRICE: $1450
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