The Wagon Wheel: A Creekerhood Legend
CAVE CREEK — Good morning, Creekers. We’re On the Creek, where today’s news collides with yesterday’s history.
A familiar Cave Creek landmark is raising questions after Town sign-code enforcement reportedly reached the Wagon Wheel, the longtime breakfast-and-lunch spot on Cave Creek Road. The issue involves its OPEN signage and Cave Creek’s sign and right-of-way regulations.
But before anybody treats the Wagon Wheel like just another commercial address with another sign, there’s some Cave Creek history worth remembering.
The Wagon Wheel isn’t simply an old building where people stop for breakfast.
It’s part of the Creekerhood.
And today I learned something that puts that history on a much bigger screen.
Watch the opening eight minutes and four seconds of the 1993 Charlie Sheen film Beyond the Law, and you’ll begin to understand why this little piece of Cave Creek deserves some respect. The movie was filmed in Arizona and used the Cave Creek area to create its biker-world setting. The Wagon Wheel is part of that visual history.
That makes the Wagon Wheel something unusual: a neighborhood restaurant, a piece of Cave Creek’s built history, a gathering place, and part of the landscape captured by Hollywood.
For Creekers who remember Cave Creek before today’s development, that’s important.
This isn’t Scottsdale.
This isn’t a manufactured Western shopping district.
This is Cave Creek — a community whose roadside buildings, restaurants, saloons, horse properties, businesses and handmade signs helped create the character people now come here looking for.
And that’s why today’s OPEN-sign controversy deserves more than a shrug.
Cave Creek certainly has the authority to regulate signs within its jurisdiction. The Town substantially revised Chapter 9 of its zoning ordinance through Ordinance O2019-02, adopted January 21, 2020. The Town’s guidance distinguishes signs located on private commercial property from signs placed within a public right-of-way.
The maps we’ve examined from the Maricopa County Assessor also show an unusually broad mapped corridor along this portion of Cave Creek Road. But assessor GIS is not itself a boundary survey, so the exact location of a particular sign matters before anybody can responsibly say whether it was on private property or within the Town right-of-way.
And there is another question:
If a sign violates the ordinance, what is the proper enforcement procedure?
If the Cave Creek Marshal ordered or physically removed the Wagon Wheel’s OPEN sign, residents deserve to know the specific ordinance provision involved, where the Town says the right-of-way boundary lies, whether a permit was required, what notice was provided, and what process exists for the business to comply or challenge that determination.
That’s not an accusation against the Marshal.
That’s reporting.
Because enforcing today’s code and respecting yesterday’s Cave Creek don’t have to be opposing ideas.
The Wagon Wheel survived the Cave Creek of decades ago. It fed people. It became recognizable enough to become part of the scenery associated with Hollywood’s portrayal of this place. Generations of Creekers and visitors have driven past it.
And now we’re arguing about an OPEN sign.
Maybe that little sign is an opportunity for Cave Creek to ask a much bigger question:
What exactly are we trying to preserve when we say we want to preserve the character of Cave Creek?
Because character isn’t created by an ordinance.
Character is created by people and places that stick around long enough to become stories.
The Wagon Wheel has.
From Cave Creek, Arizona, this is On the Creek.
Know the code. Know the boundary. But know the history, too.
And show an old Creekerhood legend a little respect.
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