La Casa Vieja

I pass this everyday on my way to work, and everyday I admire the shadows. (by America standards, this place is really, really old).

Here's some history: Monti's La Casa Vieja is located in Tempe, Arizona, in the city's original pioneer home and the oldest continuously occupied structure in the Phoenix metropolitan area. The original adobe hacienda was built as a home by Charles Trumbull Hayden in 1871. Hayden settled in the area to establish a flourmill and a ferry service for crossing the Salt River, which flowed year-round at that time.

In 1876, Hayden married Sallie Davis, and the couple turned their residence into a hotel, blacksmith shop, post office and general store. The community became known as Hayden's Ferry. The following year, the Hayden's son Carl was born in the hacienda. Carl would go on to become a sheriff, cavalry soldier and congressman, serving more than 57 years in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate. In [year?], the Arizona Republic ranked Carl Hayden first on a list of the most important people in Arizona history.

In the late 1880s, a traveling English nobleman named Darrell Duppa suggested that the small settlement resembled an area in Greece called the Vale of Tempe. A few years later, the town's name was officially changed to Tempe.

When the Hayden family moved to a new home in the 1890s, they began referring to the original structure by the nickname La Casa Vieja -- Spanish for "The Old House." Sanborn's Insurance Company documents from this period show that a restaurant of some sort was operated at La Casa Vieja as early as the 1890s, most likely as a convenience to those who had traveled a great distance to use the flourmill or ferry service. The Hayden daughters ran the restaurant until financial difficulties forced the sale of the property in the 1930s.