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

Scottsdale in 1964

No individually recorded milestones survive for 1964 in the town record — these were the boomtown decades of incorporation, the western brand, and headlong growth. Events for this year are being researched; the decade chapter carries the period's full story.

A quiet year in the record

No individually dated milestones for 1964 have made it into this archive yet. The 1960s chapter tells the period's full story, and this page will grow as research continues.

The record keeps no individual milestone for 1964, which mostly means the boom had become routine. Scottsdale was somewhere on the steep slope between the 10,026 people of the 1960 census and the 54,504 the special census would count in 1965 — adding neighbors, streets, and classrooms at a pace the town could watch but barely tally. By this year the sewer lines had finally reached the southern neighborhoods, closing out the 1962–64 infrastructure push that growth had forced.

What came next was already forming: in 1965 the city would hire Bennie Gonzales to design its Civic Center and convene the first STEP citizen-planning forums — the moment the boomtown started writing its own spec. 1964 was the last year Scottsdale grew without one. The decade’s full arc is in the 1960s chapter.