(Editor’s Note: The following is the first in a series of historical columns written by TheTimes President and founder and River of Time Museum founder Alan Cruikshank. It is about the history of Fountain Hills. Reporter Bob Burns will be writing an additional story each month on one aspect of our town’s history. They are a part of the Town’s 30-50 celebration of the Fountain being turned on for the first time 50 years ago and the 30th anniversary of the incorporation of the town.)

This is the story about a man who was a friend to many in our community.

Bob Martin was a Department of Public Safety Officer who regularly patrolled the Beeline Highway from Shea Boulevard to the Saguaro Lake turnoff. He patrolled that route for 23 years.

He became a regular visitor to our office whenever there was an accident on the Beeline. Reporter Bob Burns wrote a story on Martin that appeared in our June 21, 1995, edition.

Martin grew up in this area long before there was a Fountain Hills or a Beeline Highway.

His dad worked for Salt River Project at Stewart Mountain Dam. The family lived at Saguaro Lake.

Martin said at that time there were a couple of ruts running across the Indian Reservations through the Verde River.

If you wanted to get to Payson from the Valley, you used the Bush Highway out of Mesa.

Martin joined the Arizona DPS in 1968. He was pleased to learn in 1972 he was assigned to patrol the Beeline, which was then two lanes between Payson and Mesa. He said it was like coming home again.

In those early years, there was little traffic. But as Fountain Hills and north Scottsdale grew, so did the traffic on the Beeline. When the casino was built on the Fort McDowell Indian Reservation, its 24-hour operation made the two lane roadway a very busy, yet dangerous roadway.

Head-on crashes, speeders and drivers driving under the influence made the Beeline the second most dangerous roadway in the state. Only Highway 93 between Wickenburg and Kingman was considered more dangerous. But Martin did not share that point of view.

“I’ve been asked in court if I believe this is a deadly stretch of highway,” Martin said. “I’ve never seen the highway rise up and kill anyone.”

He did add that drinking, sleepiness, speeding and impatience were the biggest factors causing most accidents.

He was particularly tough on speeders and DUIs.

On Tuesday, August 15, just two months after we did that story on Martin, I coincidentally was in talking to Bob Burns when we heard a call come in over our police radio, saying an officer was down on the Beeline Highway.

I said to Bob, “I hope that’s not Bob Martin.”

But it was.

Martin had been shot and left to die on the pavement of the Beeline Highway about five miles north of Fountain Hills.

More than 1,000 law enforcement officers attended his funeral service in Chandler and the interment ceremony at East Resthaven Park Cemetery in Phoenix.

Officers came from Indio, Calif., the New Mexico Highway Patrol and nearly every agency in between.

Arizona Governor Fife Symington spoke at the funeral service and said Martin gave his life in the latest war being waged against this country.

“For many years, men have laid down their lives to protect this country from the threat of foreign aggression,” Symington said.

“Today the enemy comes from within our own borders.”

A family member who spoke, Ray Metcalf, described Martin as totally devoted to his wife, Sandie, and grandson, Travis. He also had five children and several more grandchildren.

No one is sure why Martin stopped a blue Monte Carlo that day in August 1995, but it cost him his life.

Based on information volunteered by motorists traveling along the Beeline that day and information obtained from a Globe car dealer who had sold a car fitting the description of the vehicle driven by the individual, Edward C. Martinez was spotted in Indio, Calif., the next evening. When officers approached him, he fled into a nearby mobile home. After a three-hour standoff, Martinez finally surrendered to officers. A search of his car turned up two weapons, one of which was Martin’s.

Today, the section of highway between Shea Boulevard and Payson is named for Martin and another DPS officer Gilbert Duthie, 39, who lost his life on Sept. 5, 1970, when his patrol car was swept away by flood waters as he crossed a bridge over Sycamore Creek near Sunflower.

A monument for the Duthie-Martin Highway sits at the site of the shooting at Mile Post 195, about five miles north of Shea Boulevard.