The History of Scottsdale, Arizona — Decade by Decade
From a chaplain's 640-acre homestead beside a hand-dug canal to a city of a quarter-million people, Scottsdale's story spans less than 140 years — and almost none of it went the way anyone planned. This is the full record, one decade at a time.
Scottsdale sits on land that was farmed for a thousand years before any American saw it. The Hohokam engineered hundreds of miles of irrigation canals through the Salt River Valley between roughly 450 and 1450 CE, then vanished from the archaeological record — leaving ditches so well-graded that nineteenth-century settlers simply dug them out and used them again. When U.S. Army chaplain Winfield Scott paid the first $80 on a 640-acre claim east of Phoenix in 1888, he was planting citrus and figs in soil the desert had already been taught to water.
What followed was a series of reinventions, each improbable: a temperance farm colony, a health-seeker's tent city, a cotton boomtown, a playground of dude ranches and polo fields, a WWII pilot-training and POW-camp neighbor, a postwar boomtown that grew its population roughly tenfold in a single decade, an arts-and-resort capital styled "The West's Most Western Town," and finally a desert metropolis that voted — twice — to tax itself to keep a third of its land wild. Each decade below is a full long-form chapter with a timeline, key facts, historic images, and the questions people actually ask.
How this archive works: the story is told at four depths — seven eras for the sweep, fifteen decade chapters for the narrative, a page for every year since 1888 for the record, and landmark day pages for the moments that changed everything. Start anywhere; every page links up and down the chain.
The seven eras
The largest chapters of the story — from the Hohokam canals to the current argument about what comes next.
- Before 1888 1
The Ancient Desert
For a thousand years before any land filing, this valley was one of the most intensively farmed places in ancient North America.
Enter the era → - 1888–1909 2
Founding & Pioneer Years
Twenty-one years from a $2.50-an-acre land filing to a brick schoolhouse, a resort, and a dam rising upstream.
Enter the era → - 1910–1929 3
Statehood & the Farm Town
The dam delivers, Arizona joins the union, cotton makes and breaks fortunes — and a town of a thousand quietly discovers tourists.
Enter the era → - 1930–1949 4
Dude Ranches & the War Years
The bank fails, the guest ranches fill, the world's most famous architect moves in — and then the war drops an airfield on the alfalfa.
Enter the era → - 1950–1979 5
Boomtown: The West's Most Western Town
From 2,000 people to 88,000 in three decades — while inventing a brand, banning billboards, and beating the Army Corps with grass.
Enter the era → - 1980–2009 6
The Resort Metropolis
Three decades of scale: resorts the size of villages, a world-class clinic, a preserve bought at retail — and a crash to end the run.
Enter the era → - 2010–present 7
The New West
A diversified desert metropolis with locked-away mountains — arguing, loudly and productively, about height, water, and identity.
Enter the era →
140 years at a glance
- 1880s The Founding Era
- 1890s The Settlement Takes a Name
- 1900s Water, Lungers & Brick
- 1910s Statehood & Cotton
- 1920s Merchants & First Tourists
- 1930s Dude Ranches & Wright
- 1940s War Comes to the Desert
- 1950s The West's Most Western Town
- 1960s The Boom Decade
- 1970s The Greenbelt Gamble
- 1980s Resorts & the Push North
- 1990s Buying the Mountains
- 2000s Condos, Canals & the Crash
- 2010s Recovery & the New West
- 2020s Growth on Trial
Read the decade chapters
The Founding Era
A thousand years of Hohokam engineering, a brand-new canal, and an Army chaplain with $80 in earnest money — the unlikely ingredients that started a city.
Read the chapter →
The Settlement Takes a Name
A dozen families, a fire, a drought — and somewhere in between, a Chicago banker's subdivision gets renamed for the chaplain next door.
Read the chapter →
Water, Lungers & Brick
The decade opens with the canals nearly dry and closes with a federal dam rising, a resort taking reservations, and a $4,500 brick schoolhouse that still stands today.
Read the chapter →
Statehood & Cotton
A president dedicates the dam, Arizona joins the union, and a war-driven cotton frenzy triples the town — with new families who would build much of what Scottsdale became.
Read the chapter →
Merchants & First Tourists
The cotton economy detonates on schedule — and a town of 1,000 quietly reinvents itself with storefronts, a high school, polo grounds, and paying winter guests.
Read the chapter →
Dude Ranches & Wright
The Depression closes the bank but fills the guest ranches — and by decade's end the world's most famous architect is camped in the McDowell foothills.
Read the chapter →
War Comes to the Desert
Stearman biplanes over the alfalfa, a POW escape on Christmas Eve, and a craft colony in an old barn — the decade that armed Scottsdale for takeoff.
Read the chapter →
The West's Most Western Town
A town of 2,000 incorporates, brands itself with a rodeo and a slogan — and ends the decade five times bigger, with a Hollywood hotel and a payroll from Motorola.
Read the chapter →
The Boom Decade
From 10,000 people to nearly 68,000 in ten years — while the town bans billboards, builds an adobe-soft Civic Center, and annexes everything Phoenix can't grab first.
Read the chapter →
The Greenbelt Gamble
The Army Corps wanted a concrete ditch through the middle of town. Scottsdale wanted parks. The parks won — and changed how America does flood control.
Read the chapter →
Resorts & the Push North
A dog-loving wine merchant becomes the most popular mayor in Arizona, and the city he runs doubles down on everything: resorts, golf, medicine, horses, and forty square miles of new desert.
Read the chapter →
Buying the Mountains
Faced with rooftops climbing the McDowells, Scottsdale's citizens did something almost un-American: they voted to tax themselves to buy the view — permanently.
Read the chapter →
Condos, Canals & the Crash
The decade Scottsdale went vertical — canal-front condo towers, a resurrected Valley Ho, a nightlife district with velvet ropes — until 2008 turned off the music.
Read the chapter →
Recovery & the New West
The recovery decade: a Soleri bridge, a western museum, a tech-filled Airpark — and one more landslide vote proving the mountains are still sacred.
Read the chapter →
Growth on Trial
A pandemic, a water cutoff that made global headlines, a referendum war over a billion-dollar headquarters — the decade Scottsdale argues, out loud, about its own future.
Read the chapter →Landmark days
The single dates that changed the city's course — each with its own page.
- July 1, 1888
Winfield Scott Puts 50 Cents an Acre Down
Eighty dollars down on a square mile of creosote — the single transaction every other page in this archive descends from.
- October 19, 1910
The Death of Winfield Scott
Scottsdale's founder dies at 73 — a wounded Union chaplain who bet $2.50 an acre on the desert and lived just long enough to see the bet assured.
- March 18, 1911
Roosevelt Dedicates the Dam
The former president dedicates the world's tallest masonry dam, ending the water gamble that had nearly killed the settlement.
- February 14, 1912
Arizona Becomes the 48th State
Statehood on Valentine's Day: Arizona completes the continental map while Scottsdale is still a dirt-street farm village of a few hundred.
- January 20, 1937
Four Inches of Snow on the Saguaros
The desert turns white: one of the heaviest snowfalls in Valley history blankets the guest ranches and citrus groves.
- June 22, 1942
Thunderbird Field II Opens
Ninety days from alfalfa to airfield: the Army's newest primary flight school opens on the land that will become Scottsdale Airport.
- December 23, 1944
The Great Papago Escape
Twenty-five German prisoners, led by U-boat ace Jürgen Wattenberg, crawl through a 178-foot tunnel into the desert night — and into Arizona legend.
- January 28, 1945
The Last Escapee Is Recaptured
Thirty-six days after the tunnel, the escape's ringleader walks into Phoenix for food and is recognized — the Great Papago Escape is over.
- July 2, 1951
Incorporation Day
Sixty-three years after the land filing, Scottsdale finally becomes a town: one square mile, 2,000 people, and a booster for a mayor.
- November 7, 1953
The First Parada del Sol
The Jaycees rename the Sunshine Festival, saddle up, and invent the town's defining ritual — one of the largest horse-drawn parades in the world, still running seventy-plus years later.
- March 10, 1956
Big-League Baseball Comes to Scottsdale
A town of a few thousand gets a big-league address: the Orioles christen the new Scottsdale Stadium and start a spring tradition that never really stopped.
- December 20, 1956
The Hotel Valley Ho Opens
Glass, concrete, and desert light: the Valley Ho opens downtown and the gossip columns start doing Scottsdale's advertising for free.
- December 28, 1957
Natalie Wood Marries Robert Wagner in Scottsdale
Hollywood's golden couple picks the little western town for their wedding — and Scottsdale's celebrity era gets its defining photograph.
- October 9, 1961
Scottsdale Fashion Square Opens Its Doors
An open-air shopping court opens at Scottsdale and Camelback — nobody suspects it will grow into the luxury retail capital of the Southwest.
- October 31, 1961
Scottsdale Votes Itself a Charter
Halloween, 1961: the ten-year-old town votes itself home rule — and the charter city that banned billboards and built the Civic Center is born.
- September 5, 1970
The Labor Day Flood
A tropical storm turns the dry wash into a mile-wide river, splits the city in two, and settles the flood-control argument forever.
- June 29, 1987
The Mayo Clinic Opens in Scottsdale
The most famous name in American medicine opens its first-ever branch — and chooses Scottsdale to do it.
- October 3, 1994
The McDowell Sonoran Preserve Is Established
With one resolution, the city commits to buying its own mountains — the paper birth certificate of America's largest urban preserve.
- May 23, 1995
Voters Fund the Preserve
A tax-averse boomtown votes to tax itself for thirty years — to buy a mountain range at retail.
- December 28, 1997
Herb Drinkwater Dies
'Mr. Scottsdale' dies at 61 — the handshake mayor who ran a boomtown like a small town, mourned by the city he greeted one person at a time.
- December 11, 2010
The Soleri Bridge Is Dedicated
At 91, Paolo Soleri finally gets a bridge built — a solar instrument spanning the canal that started the whole city.
- January 15, 2015
The Museum of the West Opens
Four decades after the gallery district began, Old Town gets its institution — a serious museum of the American West, two blocks from the hitching posts.
- September 3, 2016
OdySea Aquarium Opens
Two million gallons of ocean open in the desert — on Salt River Pima-Maricopa land, welded into Scottsdale's visitor economy.
- November 6, 2018
Prop 420 Locks the Preserve
Seventy-one percent of voters give the mountains a constitution: no development in the Preserve, ever, without the people's consent.
- March 12, 2020
Spring Training Stops Mid-Season
The Cactus League goes silent mid-game week — the visible first domino of Scottsdale's pandemic year.
- January 1, 2023
The Rio Verde Water Cutoff
New Year's Day: the standpipe closes to non-residents, 500-plus homes lose their hauled water, and Scottsdale becomes the world's shorthand for the Colorado River reckoning.
- November 5, 2024
Borowsky Unseats Ortega
The growth argument picks a winner: a slow-growth challenger takes the mayor's office with 54%, as the Axon fight rages in the background.
Every year since the claim
A page for each year from 1888 to today. marks years with recorded milestones; the rest hold the period's context while research continues.