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Boomtown: The West’s Most Western Town • The 1960s

Scottsdale in 1963

1963 in Scottsdale: Three ordinances add some 41 square miles of desert, the McDowell foothills and the old Thunderbird II airfield; the city hires its first planning director; the Legislature claws part of the annexation back; Arizona v. California guarantees the Colorado River water Scottsdale will drink.

Illustrated plaque for Scottsdale in 1963, Boomtown: The West’s Most Western Town SALOON TRADING POST MOTEL 1963 BOOMTOWN

What happened in 1963

  1. The great northern annexation

    Ordinances 165, 168 and 169, passed between late 1962 and early 1963, add roughly 41 square miles — 26,000 acres including the McDowell foothills and the future airport — the largest single leap in city history; the city's historic context says the Legislature severed part of it.

  2. George Fretz becomes the first planning director

    A city that has just gone from 3.8 to nearly 50 square miles in four years hires someone to plan it, by Joan Fudala's account; the STEP citizen committees follow in November 1964.

  3. June 3

    Arizona v. California is decided

    The U.S. Supreme Court fixes Arizona's Colorado River share at 2.8 million acre-feet a year — the legal foundation of the Central Arizona Project and of two-thirds of the water Scottsdale drinks today.

  4. The Adventists put the airfield up for sale

    The Seventh-day Adventists hire developer George Tewksbury to sell their land beside the old Thunderbird II runway — the first step toward the city's airport purchase in 1966 and the Airpark.

The map made its biggest jump in 1963. Between late 1962 and the first weeks of the new year the council passed three annexation ordinances — Nos. 165, 168 and 169 — that added some 41 square miles, more than 26,000 acres, to a city that had covered 3.8 square miles at the end of 1959. The new territory ran north into the McDowell foothills and took in the old Thunderbird II airfield: the land that would become the Airpark, McCormick Ranch’s neighbors and, decades later, the Preserve’s southern edge. The city’s historic context says the Legislature stripped part of the annexation back, and in 1965 the Arizona Supreme Court voided two earlier Scottsdale annexations, of 1961 and 1962 (see the annexation war). By the end of 1964 the city measured 48.5 square miles, and on January 30 of that year the two cities signed the truce that fixed Scottsdale Road as the boundary north of Cactus.

A city that had grown twelvefold in area in four years needed someone to plan it. In 1963 Scottsdale hired George Fretz as its first planning director; the citizen STEP committees that produced the airport, the Civic Center and the case for a green Indian Bend Wash followed the next year. The Seventh-day Adventists, who had owned the airfield since 1953, hired a Kansas City developer to sell the land beside the runway — the first step toward the city’s taking title to the field in July 1966 and the Airpark. In April city government rented half of Ralph Haver’s Kimsey Building on Indian School Road, designed in 1961 for Butler Homes, for what was meant to be one year; it stayed until 1968. The Camelback Mall opened on Camelback Road, and Mohave School opened for the subdivisions filling the south side.

The year’s most important decision was made in Washington. On June 3 the U.S. Supreme Court decided Arizona v. California, fixing Arizona’s share of the Colorado River at 2.8 million acre-feet a year and clearing the way for the Central Arizona Project — the canal that crosses north Scottsdale and, since 1987, supplies roughly two-thirds of the city’s drinking water. The 1960s chapter follows the annexation race and the boom it fed.