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Landmark day • Sunday, April 7, 2002

April 7, 2002: The Last Link of Loop 101 Opens

Sixteen years, seventeen segments and a $247 million deal with the Salt River community later, the last two miles of freeway open in Scottsdale — and the city finally has a spine.

Illustrated plaque for April 7, 2002 in Scottsdale history APRIL 7 2002 THE RESORT METROPOLIS

What happened

The final segment of Loop 101, a two-mile link between Scottsdale Road and Pima Road in north Scottsdale, opened to traffic on April 7, 2002, completing the 61-mile loop. The freeway system had been funded by Proposition 300, the half-cent Maricopa County sales tax approved on October 8, 1985; the first Loop 101 segment opened in Peoria in November 1988; and the eastern leg through Scottsdale had been stalled for eight years until a 1990 agreement paid the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community $247 million for a nine-mile right-of-way.

Why it matters

Loop 101 changed what Scottsdale was. It made the Airpark, Kierland and the northern golf communities twenty minutes from Sky Harbor, moved the city's commercial center of gravity north, and put the Salt River community's interchange corners — Pavilions, Casino Arizona, Talking Stick, Salt River Fields — on the busiest road in the East Valley. The 1990 lease left the community in control of every interchange on its land, a retail spine Scottsdale's sales tax cannot touch. The city's own 2001 timeline says the freeway was 'completed' that year; the last link opened in April 2002.

A freeway paid for with a half cent

Until the 1980s Scottsdale had no freeway at all; the city of 100,000 was reached from Phoenix on surface streets, and the Airpark’s business jets landed in a place their passengers could not drive to quickly. On October 8, 1985 Maricopa County voters approved Proposition 300, a half-cent sales tax for a regional freeway system — the Loops 101, 202 and 303 and State Route 51 — and the Pima-Price corridor was renumbered Loop 101 on December 18, 1987. The first segment opened in Peoria in November 1988. The Scottsdale leg took another fourteen years.

The reason was the line on the map. The freeway’s eastern leg ran nine miles along the Salt River community’s western boundary, on tribal land, and from 1982 to 1990 the community, the state and the city could not agree on an alignment. The deal, in 1990, paid the community $247 million for the right-of-way and left it in control of all four corners at every interchange on its land — the corners that became the Pavilions, Casino Arizona, Talking Stick and Salt River Fields.

April 7, 2002

The Pima Freeway then opened in stages through the late 1990s — the Salt River to Shea, Shea north past the Princess, and the interchange stack with I-17 in 2000–01 — until only one gap remained: the two miles between Scottsdale Road and Pima Road in the north. On Sunday, April 7, 2002 that link opened, and the 61-mile loop was complete at a cost of about $1.25 billion, sixteen and a half years after the tax vote. (The city’s own anniversary timeline lists the freeway as completed “through Scottsdale” in 2001; the last two miles opened this day.)

What it did

The freeway rearranged the city. The Airpark, Kierland Commons (2000) and the Westin Kierland (2002) were suddenly a straight shot from the airport; the golf communities of the annexed north were commutable; the McDowell Road corridor that Los Arcos had anchored was bypassed. Scottsdale ran the country’s first freeway speed cameras on the 101 in 2006, and Prop 400 (2004) and Prop 479 (2024) renewed the half cent that built it. The transportation guide explains how the money still flows; the 2000s chapter has the decade the freeway opened up.