Polo came to the alfalfa flats in 1924. The Valley Field Riding and Polo Club laid out its grounds east of town, importing the horsey rituals of eastern money to a desert farm settlement that had, until recently, used horses mainly for plowing. Winter visitors could now ride, hunt, and play polo in January sunshine — and January sunshine, it was becoming clear, was the one commodity Scottsdale could sell that never suffered a price crash.
The club was one thread of the decade’s real invention: the winter-visitor economy. Artists were another — painter Jessie Benton Evans had settled at the foot of Camelback Mountain, her circle wintering nearby — and in 1926 her Jokake Inn would tie the threads together into an actual industry. In 1924 the pieces were still just pieces, but the pattern was forming: eastern winters were Scottsdale’s best salesman.
The town’s more sober institutions kept multiplying too. The Methodist Church was established that year, joining the Baptists in a community that took its congregations seriously. A settlement that could field both a polo club and a new church in the same twelve months had range — the earnest dry farm town and the winter playground, coexisting on the same few streets, as they would for decades after.