One hundred thirty-eight years after Winfield Scott filed on his square mile of creosote and mesquite, the city built on it counts roughly a quarter-million people and is still arguing — productively, out loud — about what “the West’s Most Western Town” should mean. That is the state of 2026: no single crisis, but every question of the decade still open. A slow-growth mayor is a year into her term; the Axon campus proceeds under state law rather than a local vote; the water commitments hold; and each new proposal in Old Town or along Loop 101 re-fights the standing question of western character versus urban future.
The record suggests the arguing is the system working. This is the city that taxed itself to buy mountains, locked them behind a permanent public vote, cut its own water use to keep its commitments, and changes mayors when it wants the growth dial moved. Scott — chaplain, promoter, owner of the best land deal in Arizona history — would recognize the energy immediately.
The year is still underway, and this page will grow as it earns entries. For the story to date, read the 2020s chapter — or start at 1888, where the whole improbable thing began.