Call 1916 the last ordinary year. The war in Europe was two years old and America was still out of it; Scottsdale was still an unincorporated farm village of a few hundred, five years into reliable water, working the spread of alfalfa, grain, orchards and cotton that the drought generation had learned to trust. Its politics that year ran from the schoolhouse: Charles Miller won a school-board seat on April 1, W. E. Kimsey, the Vice President’s father-in-law, lost a run for president of the Water Users’ Association three days later, and in the fall Scottsdale heard the candidate for governor in person and read a full-page appeal to elect Joseph Kibbey to the Senate to save “$21 an acre.” The 1910s politics chapter tells it.
Every piece of the coming boom was already in place, waiting on a trigger — and the first buyer had arrived: Goodyear’s Paul Litchfield organized the Southwest Cotton Company that year to grow long-staple fiber for tire cord on Valley land. The dam guaranteed the water. The USDA farm at Sacaton had perfected its long-staple Pima cotton. And modern war ran on cotton — tires, aircraft fabric, balloon cloth — with most of the world’s long-staple supply imported from Egypt past the U-boats.
The trigger came in April 1917. Within a season, cotton had taken nearly every field. That is the boom that the 1910s chapter says nearly quadrupled the town.