A border between governments
Scottsdale’s eastern edge is not a city limit in the ordinary sense. East of Pima Road and the Loop 101 lies the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, a sovereign tribal nation home to two peoples: the Onk Akimel O’odham (Salt River People, often called Pima) and the Xalychidom Piipaash (Upriver People, often called Maricopa). The O’odham trace their ancestry to the canal-building Huhugam who farmed this valley for centuries; the Piipaash came up the Gila from the Colorado River country generations ago and settled beside them as allies.
The reservation was set aside by executive order on June 14, 1879, a decade before Scottsdale had a name. Today the Community covers more than 52,000 acres between Scottsdale, Tempe, Mesa and Fountain Hills. About 19,000 acres are kept as natural preserve and some 12,000 are farmed. The busy strip you see from the freeway is a small part of it.
Who governs
The Community governs itself under a constitution adopted in 1940. A Community Council of nine, a president, a vice president and seven council members, is elected by enrolled members to four-year terms. As of 2026 the president is Martin Harvier and the vice president is Ricardo Leonard. A hired community manager runs the departments, an arrangement that looks a lot like Scottsdale’s own council-manager charter.
The Community runs what a city would and more: its own police and fire, a Community Court, a tribally controlled school system (Salt River Schools), public works, health and social services, and a regulatory agency that oversees its casinos.
What sits on Community land
Many “Scottsdale” landmarks are on the Community’s side of the line: Talking Stick Resort, Salt River Fields, where the Diamondbacks and Rockies play spring training, the Pavilions, Casino Arizona at McKellips Road, and Scottsdale Community College. The Talking Stick neighborhood guide covers the district as a place to visit. This guide is about the government that built it.
How sovereignty works here
Tribal nations are governments that predate the states, and their relationship runs directly to the federal government, which holds reservation land in trust. That has practical consequences at the Scottsdale line. City zoning, design review, building permits and the city sales tax end at Pima Road. County property taxes don’t apply to trust land. State law reaches in only where Congress or the courts allow it. The Community writes its own land-use rules and taxes, which is how a 15-story casino tower rose next door to a city that had spent decades arguing over building heights.
Law enforcement is a patchwork worth knowing. The Community’s police patrol the reservation. Its courts hear many cases involving tribal members, federal prosecutors take serious felonies under federal law, and state authorities keep a role in some cases involving only non-Native people. The police and courts guide explains how that compares with the city side.
Gaming and compacts
Casinos are the clearest case of sovereignty meeting state law. Under the 1988 federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, tribes can offer casino games only under a compact negotiated with the state. Governor Jane Hull signed the Community’s compact on August 16, 1998, and Casino Arizona opened that month, beginning as a poker room. In 2002 Arizona voters approved Prop 202, which set the modern compact framework and has tribes share a percentage of gaming revenue with the state. Talking Stick Resort followed in 2010.
An older boundary than the city
The Community’s land was once far larger. A January 1879 executive order from President Rutherford B. Hayes set aside a big reserve along the Salt River; a second order on June 14 of the same year cut it to about 46,600 acres, the core of today’s reservation. Upstream diversions by newcomers then dried the Community’s fields through the late nineteenth century, a loss the Huhugam Ki Museum documents in the Community’s own words. The museum itself exists because Vice-President Alfretta Antone pushed the Council for it in the 1980s.
That 1879 line shaped Scottsdale more than any city decision. Blocked on the east, the city grew north, a story the annexation guide follows from the 1950s to the far-north annexations of the 1980s.
The freeway deal
For most of the twentieth century the two governments grew up back to back. The Loop 101 made them partners. Talks among the state, Scottsdale and the Community began in 1982 and stalled for years before a 1990 agreement put the Pima Freeway along the Community’s western edge, with the state paying for the right-of-way and the land around the interchanges staying Community land. The Community had already opened Scottsdale Pavilions in 1989, one of the first big shopping centers on tribal land anywhere, and the freeway turned its frontage into the district of the 2010s: the resort, Salt River Fields in 2011, then the aquarium, Topgolf and Great Wolf Lodge. The transportation guide covers how that freeway was paid for.
The relationship now runs through ordinary regional channels. The Community sits on the Maricopa Association of Governments alongside Scottsdale, and it was a party to the 1988 water rights settlement, ratified by Congress, that Scottsdale and other Valley cities also signed.
The other neighbor
Farther northeast, past Fountain Hills along the Verde River, is the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation, set aside by executive order on September 15, 1903, on about 24,680 acres of the old Fort McDowell military reserve. In the 1970s its members voted against selling land for the proposed Orme Dam, which would have flooded much of the reservation, and in 1981 the federal government dropped the project. Fort McDowell runs its own government and casino and, like Salt River, is a member of the regional planning council.