FEBRUARY 18, 2015
Cave Creek Museum presents The Sweet Family Collection
The Sweet Family only resided in Cave Creek from 1945 through 1949, but in those four years, George Sr. and his wife Mary, daughter, Lyn and son George Jr., better known as Skipper, became an integral part of the dusty little town built beside the creek.
Initially leasing the Black Mountain Store (built in 1928 and the oldest existing commercial building in Cave Creek; now housing Oregano’s Pizza Bistro), the Sweets happily participated in Cave Creek life, as captured in snatches from Cave Creek’s weekly newsletter, CaveCreek Chronicle. George and Mary became part of the lively social circle at Harold’s Corral, spending evenings with Rancho Mañana partners Romy and Jean Lowdermilk and Ted and China Loring, as well as Colonel Goodheart, and Red and Rhonda Mattingly, and other well-remembered citizens of the era.
As proprietor of the Black Mountain Store, which sold groceries, dry goods, gas and oil and Indian jewelry and serving as the outpost for the Maricopa County Free Library, George Sr. was appointed a Maricopa County Deputy Sheriff in 1947. He was also a founding member of the Cave Creek American Legion Post, still located on Cave Creek Road.
Mary Sweet was an avid horsewoman, a lively member of the American Legion’s Ladies Auxiliary and evidently a renowned cook and dancer.
Just as social was Miss Lyn Sweet, who was fourteen when her family moved to Cave Creek and a high schooler in Phoenix.
Youngest child, son George Jr. “Skippy”, was a typical boy, often riding his bike out to Spur Cross Ranch.
Their oldest daughter Jane was a nursing student in Phoenix; her visits always occasioned a welcome in the pages of the Chronicle.
The departure of the Sweet Family in 1949 to move down in Phoenix must have left behind many wistful friends and quite a hole in Cave Creek’s social calendar.
The photos and items displayed as this month’s Artifacts of the Month were donated by both George Jr. and Lyn (Sweet) Haynes. Share a little of the Sweet Family’s Cave Creek lives in these excerpts from the CaveCreek Chronicle, as carefully copied and clipped from original copies of the newsletter and donated by Lyn (Sweet) Haynes to the Cave Creek Museum.
Cave Creek Museum is a 501(3)c organization. Through your generosity and that of others, the museum is able to fulfill its mission.
Call 480.488.2764, email [email protected] or donate online at www.cavecreekmuseum.org/donate-2.
Located at the corner of Basin & Skyline off Cave Creek Rd. in Cave Creek.
