The July 24, 1970, Life magazine, which featured Hollywood actress and activist Candice Bergen on the front page, also had two articles about the blighting of the American highway.

The first, small in nature, was labeled, “Nobody we met seemed to care,” and covered a trip made by correspondent Richard Woodbury and photographer Michael Rougier across the nation to see the condition of roads and highways.

Rougier was a former Korean War correspondent, whose heart-wrenching story and photograph of Kang Koo Ri, a war orphan, better known as “The Little Boy Who Wouldn’t Smile,” had won him much acclaim and brought the stark reality of human suffering from a distant land to the American people.

“From one end of the country to the other,” wrote Rougier, “the highways are a mass of billboards, junk heaps and neon lights. Most of the billboards are in bad taste, many are in dire need of repair and for some perverse reason they seem to be concentrated in areas of natural beauty. ... With the exception of landscape architects, nobody we met seemed to care much about the problem.”

Rougier made special note of the Old Pueblo when he shared, “Once, when we were shooting Tucson’s speedway, a patrolman in a cruiser stopped by and took a look through my 1,000 mm lens. ‘My God,’ he said, ‘is that what this street looks like?’”

The magazine’s table of contents lists the second article, penned by Loudon Wainwright Jr. — who later authored the book “The Great American Magazine: An Inside History of Life” — and photographed by Michael Rougier as “Blight Blossoms on the American Highway.”

The first page of the article added a secondary headline, “Look down, look down that loathsome road.” That title is the more commonly used name when people refer to the story.

The main photo, which spanned almost two full pages of the large-format magazine, was of Speedway — Tucson’s monument of shame in 1970 — at Country Club Road.

The compressed photo shows a dark green sign with white lettering that reads “Country Club” in front and a plethora of distasteful business signs such as a red-and-white Saxons Sandwich Shoppes sign, a partially cut off El Rancho Market neon, and an all-white van with the words “Topsy’s” painted on it, parked in visible sight of traffic.

Speedway itself is shown congested with automobiles streaming down its paved surface, and the nearby parking lots filled almost to capacity. The median is overwhelmed with T-shaped lights, “No U Turns Here” signs, and a small amount of plant life.

At the bottom right corner of the picture, the text explains, “The view down ‘The Speedway’ in Tucson supports the mayor’s opinion that it is America’s ugliest street. This garish thicket marks what a dirt trail to the mountains was once.”

The story created some interesting reactions from Tucsonans:

The article brought an immediate denial from Mayor Jim Corbett Jr. He stated, “There are four points I would like to make about that story: A) I did not talk to Life magazine. B) I do not know the two gentlemen mentioned. C) There are many other streets in America that are less beautiful than East Speedway. D) I compliment the Speedway merchants on their efforts in the last five years to improve Speedway’s appearance.”

Corbett apparently didn’t know or was unwilling to say that it was his predecessor, Mayor Lew Davis, who had uttered those words in 1962.

Oddly enough, the Arizona Daily Star published an editorial piece saying: “The heat can be taken off Mayor James N. Corbett in relation to whether he thinks Speedway is the ugliest street in America. ... If anyone wishes to take issue with ‘the ugliest street’ utterance it should be with this newspaper, which repeatedly used such language during the term of Mayor Lew Davis.”

The editorial incorrectly went on to say: “Mayor Davis protested the description. Perhaps he was right. There may be uglier streets in America, but no need to waste gasoline looking for them. Speedway ... is ugly enough.”

It finished with: “Tucson could rename Speedway ‘Life Street’ just for laughs. But it would be better to improve Speedway’s appearance.”

Despite the mea culpa by the paper, some Tucsonans still believed Mayor Corbett was guilty.

One reader in a letter to the editor a few days later said, “If Mayor James Corbett must seek to be quoted at all, he might well consider directing some attention toward the circumstances that have brought about such an uncomplimentary highlighting of Tucson in this issue of Life.”

Another critic shared his irritation with the guiltless mayor by writing: “The Life magazine of July 24 states that ‘the mayor’ regards Speedway as America’s ugliest street. If that is so, why doesn’t he stay in Tucson a while and do something about it?”

The Life magazine article may have even inspired violence. Soon after it came out, two large, clean-cut men pulled up to a man sitting next to his chopper motorcycle on East Speedway and said to him, “It’s time they gave Speedway back to the establishment,” and hit him in the face several times, breaking his jaw.

It was also obvious to some Tucsonans that a telephoto lens was utilized in the capturing of the picture in order to make things look more crowded and uglier along Speedway.

Jim Slone, at the time general manager of the KHOS country radio station, recalls first seeing the Life magazine layout and noticing that the photo appeared zoomed in and the street looked busier and more congested than it was in real life. He remembers with a chuckle that his own station had billboards on Speedway that read, “Are you afraid to say you like country music?”

The Star must have gotten a hold of a copy of the Life magazine before its official publication date because on July 22, 1970, the paper published a two-picture story called “Two Views of Speedway.” The photos were taken from approximately the same spot as the Life magazine photograph but one used a 50 mm lens and the other a 300 mm lens.

They demonstrated the difference between these and the one in the magazine that used a 1,000 mm. lens, designed to emphasize Speedway’s clutter.

Raymond Blonigan, a resident of Tucson, wrote a letter to the editor of Life saying: “Sirs: Speedway Boulevard (not ‘The Speedway’ as you say) may never win any beauty awards, but neither is it as cluttered as your distorted photo indicates. What appears to be a block or two is actually the compressed sins of over one and a quarter miles — condensed by a telephoto lens.”

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David Leighton is a historian and author whose work has been featured on PBS, ABC, the Travel Channel, various radio shows and Arizona Highways. If you have a street to suggest or a story to share, email him at azjournalist21@gmail.com