The bulldozers arrived in 1973, and — this being Scottsdale — they came to build a park. Construction began on the Indian Bend Wash Greenbelt, the grass-and-parks floodway citizens had spent years arguing for against the Army Corps of Engineers’ concrete channel. The Corps’ plan was proven and grim: a Los Angeles-style ditch through seven miles of the city’s midsection. The counter-idea, pushed through the STEP citizen forums and years of redesigns and bond votes, sounded almost unserious — grade the floodway wide and green, line it with turf, lakes, ballfields and golf, let it flood a few days a year and host the city the other 360.
The Labor Day flood of 1970 had settled whether; 1973 settled how. What followed, built in stages through the 1980s, worked beyond anyone’s blueprints: eleven-plus miles of connected parks — Eldorado, Vista del Camino, Chaparral — carrying floods on schedule and everyday life the rest of the year. Engineers still make pilgrimages to see it.
The same year, more quietly, the Senior Center opened — a signal that the boomtown was aging into a full-service city, with residents at every stage of life rather than just newcomers and tourists. Between the flood and the finished Greenbelt lay nearly two decades of patient earthmoving; 1973 is the year the gamble was actually placed.