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Boomtown: The West’s Most Western Town • The 1950s

Scottsdale in 1952

1952 in Scottsdale: The new town rents its first Town Hall in the Rural Fire station; the Bank of Douglas opens, the first bank since 1933; the Chamber's cowboy sign goes up at Scottsdale and Main; nine businessmen plan Pima Plaza; the Arabian Horse Association of Arizona is founded.

Illustrated plaque for Scottsdale in 1952, Boomtown: The West’s Most Western Town SALOON TRADING POST MOTEL 1952 BOOMTOWN

What happened in 1952

  1. The first Town Hall

    The year-old town leases rooms in the Rural Fire station at Brown Avenue and Second Street, in January by the city's historic context.

  2. The Bank of Douglas opens

    At the southeast corner of Main and Brown — Scottsdale's first new bank since the Farmer's State Bank failed in 1933.

  3. The cowboy sign and Pima Plaza

    The Chamber erects the wooden cowboy at the northeast corner of Scottsdale Road and Main welcoming visitors to 'The West's Most Western Town'; nine businessmen plan a 'dignified Western' shopping square on First Avenue; downtown businesses nearly double, from 70 to 134, in a year.

  4. The Arabian Horse Association of Arizona is founded

    The breeders' group whose first show, in 1955, becomes the Scottsdale Arabian Horse Show — the largest in the world.

The first full year of municipal life was spent finding somewhere to put the municipality. The Town of Scottsdale rented rooms in the Rural Fire station at Brown Avenue and Second Street as its first Town Hall — the subscription fire brigade and the government sharing a building was about right for a town of two thousand. Nineteen years after the Farmer’s State Bank failed, the Bank of Douglas opened at the southeast corner of Main and Brown, and Scottsdale had a place to keep money again.

The brand went up on a post. The Chamber of Commerce erected a wooden cowboy at the northeast corner of Scottsdale Road and Main Street welcoming visitors to “The West’s Most Western Town,” and nine local businessmen — Bill Weirich, the Feltmans, O’Malley Investment, and on the north side Herberger, Darlington, Norton, Beattie and K.T. Palmer — laid out a “dignified Western” shopping square on First Avenue between Scottsdale Road and Brown: Pima Plaza, the first purpose-built stretch of the western stage set. It worked. Downtown businesses went from 70 to 134 between 1952 and 1953.

And the horses organized. The Arabian Horse Association of Arizona was founded in 1952; its first All-Arabian show, at the Biltmore in 1955, moved to Anne and Fowler McCormick’s ranch the next year and grew into the largest Arabian show in the world. The Jaycees would give the brand its annual ritual with the first Parada del Sol the following November; within a few years the Valley Ho and Motorola would give it a modern wing. The 1950s chapter tells the decade in full.