10
THE NEW PIONEERS
A,. new Dixie was struggling for birth after World War II, but the delivery took twenty years. From the return of soldiers in 1945 until the opening of the first golf course in Dixie twenty years passed. They were the same years that saw Palm Springs, California; Scottsdale, Mesa and Phoenix, Arizona; and Las Vegas, Nevada create a Southwest mecca, a magnet to the "sunshine lifestyle." Those twenty years were the time in Dixie for creating a new vision, one that would produce much more than a golf course, one that would create Dixie as a destination point for retirees and sun worshippers. Southern California had been the American glamour spot in the 1930s and 1940s. Many southern Utahns moved there to seek their fortunes, especially in the war industries. It continued to be a place of ranch-style homes, automobiles, ocean breezes, sunshine, and flourishing industry. After the war, the dry southwestern desert became highly attractive because air conditioning, entrepreneurs, and real-estate speculators came to extend the California-style developments. The Phoenix-Mesa area became a haven for retirees who moved there from the Midwest and Pacific Northwest. (Florida was 301
