Ever since I had put this website up, on the “Frequently Asked Page” under the Tonopah Understanding Center, there was a Google street view north from West Indian School Road, of the clean concrete pad and the round houses. The pad and round houses made up at one time, Understanding’s Tonopah Cultural Understanding Center donated to Understanding by Enid Smith.
Back in 2022, as Google street view updated with their latest pictures of West Indian School Road, the view of the round buildings was blocked by new construction, so I went back and found satellite pictures going back to 2004. Any pictures before 2003 are of very low quality but by December of 2004, the image quality jumped by orders of magnitude. There are clearly people still living in the remaining old round buildings in Tonopah but being close to 75 years old at this point, could be torn down at any moment. The area is also starting to be subdivided and more modern homes built.
The old concrete pad where the buildings had burnt down, 35804 W Indian School Road, was removed sometime in 2021 and is now a four building housing development. There are no street views from the side road, N 359th Ave, unfortunately.
Another interesting change is that it looks like up until 2004 someone was living in the second round house farther back on the property at 4129 N 359th Ave. By 2006 the second round house, 4211 N 359th Ave, was abandoned.
Here are screen shots showing the evolution of 4219 and 4211 N 359th street from 2006 to 2017:
Around 2014, someone had obviously moved into 4211 (property at the top) and they immediately redid the roof in white and built a fence. By 2017, the 4211 round house had it’s roof redone and they added a pool, covered in alga shortly afterwards and it didn’t last to the end of 2017. 2017 was also a very wet year and significant changes were made to the 4211 property going forward including added more shingles to the round house as of the latest 2022 pictures.
The 4219 property, between the concrete pad and 4211 N 359th Ave above it, looks to have been occupied for the entire time but they haven’t done any roof repair on the round building and it has suffered mightily.
The house looks to have changed hands some time in 2007 as it starts to pick up a lot more junk in the yard and trees were not being watered. As of the latest picture in 2022, the shingles are a complete mess and the yard is strewn with junk.
I didn’t realize it until now, but there is a third round building farther back, 161190 N 359th Ave and here are pictures from 2004 to 2013 showing the most significant changes:
It was kept in significantly better shape from the start with trees around the main building and roof having been replaced as far back as 1992. The ring of trees were added sometime between 1997 and 2003, but by 2007 the property looks to have been abandoned and by 2012 the trees had all died. Someone new purchased the property by 2013 and has lived there to this day without having changed much. By 2022, as had been done to below the 4219 property with the removed concrete pad, someone had bought the lot below 16119, subdivided it and built four homes. Looks to be a growing subdivision of Tonopah.
1961 Merlin Development Company
For fun, I also went back and looked at the building Fry built for the “Merlin Development Company” at 292 Merlin Ave – the “HDQTRS” building in the middle of the picture below
The latest street view is only from 2012 and it would be neat to see a more recent photo.
Voice of Understanding Radio Building
I think I might have found the radio station building that Fry built, documented in October 1963 Understanding. On the hand drawn map above he called it “radio hill” and the half finished building looked like this back in the 60s:
The building is pretty distinct (google map link)- it was square and had a large round air vent in the top.
50×100 Lots
In the lower section of Fry’s hand drawn map are a bunch of “50×100 lots” and these might be houses built by Fry in the 1960s, 201, 221 and 231 Acorn Street:
The houses were there in the oldest satellite picture available:
I also looked at the 100×100 lots above the “HDQTRS” but besides a run down house at 200 Pleasant Valley Road, it is not clear if anything is original.
Sean.