Mid-decade, and the five-year sprint of institution-building was mostly done. Since 1921 the town had acquired a department store, a bank, a newspaper, a high school, a pool hall, a polo club, and a second church — the full equipment of an actual town, assembled in the shadow of the cotton crash. In 1925 Scottsdale was living inside that new architecture: fields back in alfalfa, grain, citrus, and dairy; Saba’s and the merchant row trading on Main Street; the Bulletin recording it all.
The next reinvention was a year away. Jessie Benton Evans and her artist circle were already wintering at the foot of Camelback Mountain, and in 1926 her adobe guest house would open as the Jokake Inn and give the town its second industry. The population curve tells the quiet story best: despite the crash, 1,047 people in 1920 were on their way to 2,761 by 1930. The farm town was filling in.