Lake Havasu State Park is on this best U.S. beaches list. Mayor says he's not surprised

Big change and rapid growth are nothing new in Lake Havasu City. Situated on the western edge of the state, along the Colorado River, it was founded in the early 1960s and quickly built a reputation in Arizona as a beautiful place to go boating and hiking.

But it was in 1971, when the town purchased the old London Bridge and relocated it to Lake Havasu, that people around
the country — and the world — began to take notice.

A clip from a CBS news broadcast in 1978 talked about the city's growth: "In 1964, only five people lived here. Today, 14,000. Tomorrow — who knows? The hot desert air and bountiful lakeside advantages are drawing people in record numbers. At least fifty new single-family homes are being built here each month."

The population of Lake Havasu City has grown to about 60,000 since then.

And thanks to a recent round of publicity, more may be coming.

Last November, the LA Times wrote about the surge of Californians relocating to the town.

In December, Condé Nast Traveler listed Lake Havasu State Park among the 15 best beaches in the U.S.

To get a sense of how the town is adapting to all this, The Show recently spoke with the mayor of Lake Havasu City, Cal Sheehy.

He acknowledged that while it’s a bit of a “coup” — his word — for a landlocked state to make the Condé Nast list, he’s not surprised. Sheehy has lived in Lake Havasu City since he was a teenager, and he says new residents are discovering what he’s known for a long time.

Lake Havasu City

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Handout

Full conversation

MAYOR CAL SHEEHY: There's white sandy beaches that adore the bridgewater channel overlooking beautiful landscape of mountains and the lake. It's also where the river and Lake Havasu converge. So it's a really great ecosystem, as well as next to wildlife refuge area. So it has great natural wildlife. It has great recreation.

A great opportunity for people to get on a paddle board or a kayak or if they want to jump on a jet ski or a powerboat or even go out fishing. There's just so many opportunities to do so many things from the shoreline and from the beaches at Lake Havasu State Park.

SAM DINGMAN: You moved, if I'm not mistaken, to Lake Havasu from Michigan, right?

SHEEHY: Yes, I did.

DINGMAN: What were your impressions when you first arrived? You were a sophomore in high school, right?

SHEEHY: Yeah. So we were driving. We drove crosscountry from Michigan, and, you know, it took several days. And as we were making our final drive into Lake Havasu, if you're coming in from the northern part of the community, it's up on a bluff, and as you're coming along Highway 95, it opens and expands to the beautiful landscape of the Colorado River, like Havasu in the mountains in the background.

And it's really just breathtaking when you first see it. It still takes my breath away each day that I come back from somewhere in the northern part of the state or the county and be able to see that view of Lake Havasu. And that was the first view that welcomed us when my family moved here.

DINGMAN: Yeah. Did you have any inkling at that time that you wanted to run for elected office, say, or that Arizona would be the place where you would make your home as an adult? 

SHEEHY: You know, at that time, no. I was born and raised in Michigan until I was 15 years old and obviously moved out here when I was 15. And so I didn't really know anything different. And so, you know, I just experienced it all and took it all in.

And I was fortunate enough to start working at a local resort in Lake Havasu at that time and found my passion very quickly of service and service from the heart, which, you know, is a great segue and pathway into elected office at the local level. And those that serve it with heart are most effective, in my opinion.

DINGMAN: Boy, that's very interesting to go right into a service position like that at a resort, because at a moment when you have just moved to a place, you're instantly putting yourself in a position to kind of be an ambassador for the place.

SHEEHY: Very true. Yes. And I was very proud to be able to create memories for our residents that use the resort for different aspects, whether it be a wedding or a birthday party, a baby shower, whatever else that's special is happening in their world that we could be a part of.

It was really great work and meaningful work, and I still enjoy it to this day.

DINGMAN: Yeah. Can I ask, I mean, was there anything from that time where you realized, like, “oh, this is a specifically Lake Havasu moment that I'm having right now, unlike the ones I would have had back home in Michigan?”

SHEEHY: You know, you'd be surprised still to this day. But even all those years ago when I first started, the number of people that come from the UK that have experienced the story of the London Bridge back in its original home and are coming back to discover it here in its new home in America is a sense of wonderment and awe as they walk across the bridge.

Our visitor center, which is located in the English village just adjacent to the London Bridge, gives a certificate to those that have crossed both the London Bridge in the UK and the London Bridge here in Lake Havasu City.

DINGMAN: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm curious to know what you make of this. I mean, since I have moved here, I've been here for about two years at this point, and something that comes up very frequently in the conversations I have with fellow relative newcomers is that Arizona in general, and I would imagine maybe Lake Havasu in particular, given its really natural beauty, is a where people come to make a fresh start, to kind of rediscover themselves and maybe to see themselves in a different way.

SHEEHY: No, it truly is in the fabric of what Lake Havasu City is and what it becomes. One unique thing about Lake Havasu City is that everybody that lives here has chosen to live here. And so we're just now starting to have, you know, first generation born residents that are occurring here.

But we're a fairly young community. But we were incorporated in 1978, founded in the late 1960s by Mr. Robert McCulloch, who is the founder of our city and master planned it with his friend C.V. Wood, who was the planner of Disneyland.

And we're able to create this desert oasis in the middle of nowhere, Arizona. And those residents that are pioneers of our community came and they rolled up their sleeves and they helped build this community one store at a time, one school at a time, you know, one business at a time and one family at a time. And because of that, we still attract people that are looking for a new start.

DINGMAN: So am I hearing you right that you feel like there's a sense of a kind of participatory sense in making a new culture kind of out of almost nothing.

SHEEHY: Yeah, very true. That is exactly what happens every single day in Lake Havasu. The, things that occur here are passion projects of citizens, and other citizens join on to support those causes.

Whether it's, you know, fitness stations in one of our parks, or if it's wayfinding signage along one of the hiking trails, whatever that might be. It's a passion project of a citizen who then engages other citizens to get something done. And you'll see that replicated throughout our community over and over again.

DINGMAN: Have there been any growing pains in that process? Any things you, you're hoping you can do differently or improve in the coming years now that hopefully, you know, through this Condé Nast article, there will be this influx of, of new visitors?

SHEEHY: You know, we have experienced some growing pains, especially over the last five years. You know, traffic is a little bit more congested at a, at a stoplight, which might mean that you have to wait 30 seconds longer than you did before. So still, still the small town feel, but just with a little bit more, more folks around.

DINGMAN: Well, that's an interesting perspective. You know, the idea of like experiencing traffic kind of for the first time and having to remind yourself in the moment, like, OK well, this is a byproduct of the fact that we're building this place that a lot of people want to move to and live. So it's, it's not inherently a bad thing.

SHEEHY: Very true. But it is change. And change is very difficult for people. And so when it comes to those types of change, we want to be very sensitive to the needs of our residents as well as the future of what our community is going to be.

DINGMAN: I have to ask, I'm sure you know that Lake Havasu has had a reputation as a spring break destination. How have you had to confront that over the years and what do you make of that perception?

SHEEHY: Sure, it's unfortunate that we have that perception because we are such an amazing destination for so many visitors over the 52 weeks in a year. And everyone focuses on three weeks a year in the spring that we welcome college-age students to experience our beautiful area. So we're a whole lot more than just a party destination or spring break destination.

We're boating events and we have regattas and fishing tournaments and triathlons and all of the things that really make a destination vibrant and exciting. And we're a whole lot more than just that image of the spring break crowd in the month of March. And those folks that come in March, believe it or not, have, have and make really fantastic memories where they relocate with their families when they're done with school. So they, they finish school and they want to come back to Lake Havasu and they lay down roots.