Bryson named 100-plus streets

DAVID LEIGHTON

For the Arizona Daily Star

Quentin Bryson, a former standout athlete in Tucson, went on as a developer to name or be involved in the naming of more than 100 streets in Pima, Cochise and Santa Cruz counties.

Born in 1941 in Detroit, Bryson relocated to Tucson as a boy with his family in 1952.

He attended Blenman Elementary School, where in fifth grade he met his future wife, Kathie Brown. They went on to attend Catalina Junior High School together and then Catalina High School where he was a three-sport letterman, (football, basketball and track and field), captain of the high school football team on which he played offensive tackle and defensive tackle, and was chosen by the school newspaper the Trojan Trumpeteer as Catalina's '1959 Athlete of the Year'. He also played in the Arizona high school All-Star football game in Flagstaff and graduated that same year.

He was offered a football scholarship to the University of Arizona and played linebacker for the UA during 1960-61. In his sophomore year, he had a career-ending injury.

He received his Bachelor of Science degree from the UA with majors in real estate and finance.

The year 1961 was a busy one for Bryson. He married Kathie, who had just graduated from Stephen's College in Missouri. (They went on to have children Deborah Bryson, now chief deputy superintendent, Pima County schools, and Gregory Bryson, senior portfolio manager/advisor for Wealth Management Partners.)

Quentin Bryson, Athlete of the Year, (Catalina High School) The Trojan Trumpeteer, June 3 , 19 59.

In '61 he also obtained his private pilot license, and was involved in his first land development.

Another developer, Horizon Land Corp., was selling thousands of mostly one-acre lots in a development called Arizona Sunsites along present-day Arizona Highway 191, adjacent to the ghost town of Pearce, in Cochise County.

Bryson and others decided to develop about 600 acres of land northwest of Arizona Sunsites and offer land buyers five-acre lots instead of one-acre lots. They called their subdivision Richland Ranchettes, and for street names, they considered two separate Western themes, cowboy horses or Native American historical names.

'We couldn't decide which to use, so we compromised and used one for north and south streets and the other for east and west alignments,' Bryson said. For the north and south alignments, there were Arabian Lane, Painted Pony Lane, Pinto Lane and Quarterhorse Lane and for the east and west streets, there were Papago Lane, Apache Lane, Kaibab Lane, Havasu Lane, Cochise Lane and finally Geronimo Lane.

In the early 1960s, Bryson, being aware of the demand for large parcels of land, formed a partnership and bought a 25,000-acre (40 square miles) operating cattle ranch known as the Silver Creek Ranch, along Arizona State Route 80, near the Pedregosa Mountains, northeast of Douglas, in Cochise County. He renamed it Pedregosa Ranch.

While he managed the ranch, he subdivided the deeded land into hundreds of smaller ranchsize parcels from a hundred-acre parcels all the way up to a thousand- acre parcel. He developed it and named all of the streets.

Bryson recalled, 'Silver Creek Road was named for the Silver Creek which ran through the ranch and filled the cattle water tanks during the wet season; Pedregosa Road (Stony Road) is the pretty Spanish name of the mountain range on the north side of the ranch; Walnut Springs Road was originally named after some wild walnut trees that survived by a faint seep of water that occurred only part of the year; College Peaks Road derives its name from the nearby mountain which can be seen from the road.'

Javelina Road comes from this origin: The ranch was originally bisected by the main east-west railroad line connecting Douglas to Animas, NM. The original railroad line was located north and parallel to Arizona State Route 80. The railroad abandoned the line and removed the steel rails, leaving a perfect, easy, wide path or road for large herds of javelina to cross the area.

Around the same period, another subdivision he was involved with was an 80-acre parcel, north of Old Spanish Trail and just west of Camino Loma Alta, on the southeast side of Tucson. He said, 'I named it 'Rincon Desert Estates' for its breathtaking unobstructed view of the actual Rincon Peak to the northeast. It seemed like you could almost reach out and touch the peak.'

As far as the streets, he shared, he named them after his wife and his wife's family: Avenida Catrina (supposed to be Catarina) (Katherine/ Catherine Avenue) for his wife Katherine/Kathie Brown; Avenida Ana (Ana Avenue) after one of his wife's aunts, Ana Larson, an Iowa 'farmer's wife.' It was said that when she saw the actual street named after her, she remarked it was the worst farm land she had ever seen. Avenida Elena (Elena Avenue) is named after his wife's aunt Elena R. Larson of Sioux City, Iowa. He said, 'She never came to Tucson. I never met her. I was told she spoke excellent Swedish, but not so much English.'

As for Camino Dorotea (Dorothy Road), Bryson said it 'is named after my wife's mother Dorothy Beatrice Larson Brown.'

In 1965, he was licensed by the state of Arizona in the general real estate business. That time was a golden era for vacant land sales. Interest in land was high throughout the state. There were always land speculators, land buyers and land developers available wanting to look at vacant land parcels, big and small, to buy and develop.

In the late 1960s, Bryson began helping Tucson kids and volunteering in the community. He served on the early Board of Directors of what was called the Tucson Boys Club on El Rio Drive (now the Steve Daru Boys & Girls Club). He spent the next six years as a board member as well as chairman. He said it was one of the most rewarding things he has ever done.

In 1970, he struck out on his own, establishing Quentin Bryson Co., which dealt in real estate sales and development.

In 1974, when Raúl H. Castro, a Tucson attorney, became governor of Arizona, he asked Bryson to serve on the first Arizona Health Facilities Authority Board, and he was then confirmed by the Arizona State Senate for a seven-year period. Following this, he was appointed by Gov. Bruce Babbitt to another seven-year term for a total of 14 years of public service.

'Our legal state mandate was to help improve health care for Arizona residents by making available funds for growth for all Arizona hospitals,' Bryson said. 'During my tenure as chairman and board member we made available over one billion dollars for Arizona hospitals. I always felt a special pride when I saw how our hospital system grew.'

Later on, possibly because of his considerable development and business experience, he was appointed by the Tucson mayor and City Council to the Tucson City Planning Commission to serve two four-year terms from 2010 to 2018, He was twice elected chairman, in 2015 and 2018.

In addition to naming streets and developing land throughout Southern Arizona, he continued to buy and sell and broker hundreds of real estate transactions.