School construction is the honest census. In 1928 Scottsdale built Loloma School at Second Street and Marshall Way, and the beloved 1909 brick schoolhouse — the town’s proudest building when it went up — was handed a new name, Coronado School, and a supporting role. A district that had run six teachers for 410 pupils in 1920, then added a high school in 1923, now needed a third campus. The arithmetic behind it: the 1,047 residents of 1920 were on their way to 2,761 by 1930, cotton crash and all.
The growth came from everywhere the decade had been recruiting. Farm families worked the diversified fields; merchants filled out the Main Street that Saba’s had anchored since 1921; health seekers came for the dry air; and winter visitors booked rooms at the Jokake Inn, two seasons into its run as the area’s signature resort. None of these people knew they were the last arrivals of the boom years.
Loloma turned out to be the farm town’s closing act of civic construction. The next year brought a changing of the guard downtown and, in October, the crash that ended the decade everywhere — the story of 1929.