--- title: Retired Life in 1970: Unpublished Retirement Village Photos description: In 1970, LIFE magazine sent photographer Ralph Crane to capture life in the retirement community at Sun City, Ariz. This is what he found. canonical: https://time.com/4723581/retirement-village-1970/ author: Lily Rothman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-04-12T13:00:37.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T04:50:22.082Z og:title: Retired Life in 1970: Unpublished Retirement Village Photos og:description: In 1970, LIFE magazine sent photographer Ralph Crane to capture life in the retirement community at Sun City, Ariz og:url: https://time.com/4723581/retirement-village-1970/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2ed645b537b6cb26/6988c106656a3f8c65bcf604/170403-retirement-1970-01.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2322 og:image:height: 1306 og:image:alt: Retirement 1970 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Retired Life in 1970: Unpublished Retirement Village Photos twitter:description: In 1970, LIFE magazine sent photographer Ralph Crane to capture life in the retirement community at Sun City, Ariz twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2ed645b537b6cb26/6988c106656a3f8c65bcf604/170403-retirement-1970-01.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # This Is What Retirement Looked Like in 1970 > Sponsored content. 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Its journalism is reported and edited by a professional newsroom led by Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs, with named correspondents on politics, climate, health, technology and culture. It reaches 1 million US print subscribers and 1.15 million globally, plus more than 1.1 million newsletter readers. #### How do I subscribe to TIME magazine? Subscriptions are at time.com/subscribe-agent. Choose digital only at $20 a year, or print and digital from $29 a year or $49 for two years. TIME also publishes seven free email newsletters at time.com/newsletters, which do not require a subscription. #### Can I cancel a TIME subscription? Yes. TIME states that subscriptions can be cancelled at any time. #### Does TIME have free newsletters? Yes. TIME publishes seven free email newsletters reaching more than 1.1 million readers, covering daily news, Washington politics, health, AI, climate and energy, culture, and the newsroom itself. They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-sub-2026q3/newsletters?i=556528e1-5be9-4dfa-8a81-1fd7855d95b4&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) * TIME Subscriptions: [time.com/subscribe-agent](/c/time-sub-2026q3/subscribe?i=556528e1-5be9-4dfa-8a81-1fd7855d95b4&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/) and [Liz Ronk](https://time.com/author/liz-ronk/) Apr 12, 2017 1:00 PM UTC  Sun City, retirement village in Arizona, 1970. Sun City, retirement village in Arizona, 1970. Ralph Crane—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/) and [Liz Ronk](https://time.com/author/liz-ronk/) Apr 12, 2017 1:00 PM UTC The residents of [Youngtown](http://www.youngtownaz.org/), Ariz., took a tongue-in-cheek approach to naming their town when it was founded around 1960: the town was the first American [retirement](http://time.com/money/4713497/guaranteed-retirement-income-annuities/) community, a phrase that LIFE magazine still put within quotation marks in 1970, when the magazine’s Paul O’Neil [examined](https://books.google.com/books?id=mlUEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PA44#v=twopage&q&f=false) life in such towns in the May 15 issue. By that point, Youngtown’s ideas had spread to many other places, especially in the Southwest, also home to Sun City, Ariz.—photographs by Ralph Crane from which, including many that were unpublished, can be seen here. With a population of 14,000 enjoying its three golf courses and “illuminated outdoor shuffleboard courts,” Sun City was thriving.  Aerial view of Sun City, retirement village in Arizona, 1970. Ralph Crane—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images In fact, LIFE reported, seven new houses were completed each day. One of the major draws of Sun City was that, if residents were willing to pack up and move, investing in one of the “low, white-roofed, pastel-tinted” houses in the area, they could then live fully — with access to clubs and activities for every interest under the desert sun — on much less than they might require elsewhere. In 1970, the price of a two-bedroom house there had nearly doubled since the city’s founding to $17,990 ([about](https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=17990&year1=1970&year2=2017) $113,000 today) but some residents told LIFE that they could live there on $100 ($628) a week. As a result, LIFE found that the residents were “surprisingly varied” and included both “people from relatively humble walks of life” and “retired physicians, engineers, lawyers and Army officers.” The article also captured another reason why life in a place like Sun City might be attractive: the attitudes about retirees that could be so prevalent elsewhere were often left behind. The older people there, O’Neil explained, “will engage in an unsentimental rejection of all sorts of attitudes and postures which are generally expected of them when they are in the minority.” In 1970, that rejection could be for better or worse. It was freeing, on the one hand, to be able to abandon “the old homestead” and its responsibilities, and to do the things you actually wanted to do (dancing, light-intensity sports, dating for those who were widowed) rather than what was expected of you. On the other hand, living among only people who felt they had been at their peak decades earlier allowed the resurfacing of views that might not be acceptable in 1970 elsewhere. For example, residents spoke “with candor and satisfaction” of the oasis of a place where there were no hippies, no LSD and no welfare. There was also no “race problem,” LIFE noted, but residents said so having moved to a place that in 1970 had no black residents. [_Click here for more articles_](http://time.com/money/topic/looking-forward/) _from Time Inc.’s Looking Forward series._ The sweet spot, then, would be a place in between, a retirement community where residents were neither isolated nor subsumed by the rest of the world — a vision of the good life that anyone could get behind. And when Sun City worked on that account, it really worked. Thanks to the many activities it offered, it was easy to make new friends, and who you were before you moved — your job, how much money you made — didn’t have to define you. “It doesn’t matter what you used to be;” one resident told LIFE, “all that counts is what you do here.”  Sun City, retirement village in Arizona, 1970. Ralph Crane—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Sun City, retirement village in Arizona, 1970. Ralph Crane—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Sun City, retirement village in Arizona, 1970. Ralph Crane—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Sun City, retirement village in Arizona, 1970. Ralph Crane—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. The mascot of the Pedal Pushers Club travels in style behind its mistress's saddle. Ralph Crane—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Sun City, retirement village in Arizona, 1970. Ralph Crane—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. Emphasis at Sun City is on the not-too-strenuous outdoor life. Ralph Crane—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Sun City, retirement village in Arizona, 1970. Ralph Crane—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Sun City, retirement village in Arizona, 1970. Ralph Crane—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Sun City, retirement village in Arizona, 1970. Ralph Crane—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Sun City, retirement village in Arizona, 1970. Ralph Crane—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Sun City, retirement village in Arizona, 1970. Ralph Crane—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. As darkness steals over Sun City, residents dance away the evening hours. Ralph Crane—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Sun City, retirement village in Arizona, 1970. 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