Upstream, the masonry kept rising. Roosevelt Dam had broken ground the year before, and through 1907 crews laid course after course of stone in the canyon — slow, visible proof that the land the valley’s farmers had pledged in 1903 was buying something real. Down in Scottsdale, the year passed without a milestone the record saw fit to keep.
The texture of the period is well documented even where single years are not. The farms ran alfalfa, barley, dates, and ostriches — plume prices still absurd, the crash in that market a few years off. Health seekers kept stepping off the trains, tuberculosis patients prescribed dry air, filling tent cottages and sleeping porches around the settlement; some recovered, stayed, and became prominent citizens. Winfield Scott, now in his seventies, went on preaching and boosting. The village was quietly accumulating the pieces — water, people, reputation — that would cash out in the banner year of 1909.