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Era • 1910–1929

Statehood & the Farm Town: Cotton, Commerce, and the First Tourists

The dam delivers, Arizona joins the union, cotton makes and breaks fortunes — and a town of a thousand quietly discovers tourists.

Water and statehood
Roosevelt Dam dedicated 1911; Arizona becomes the 48th state on February 14, 1912
The cotton whipsaw
WWI Pima cotton boom (1917–1920) and the crash that followed — and the Mexican-American families who stayed and built
Main Street & first tourists
Saba's, the bank, the Bulletin, the high school — and the Jokake Inn's winter guests (1926)
Illustration of Pima cotton fields at harvest in 1910s Scottsdale
Pima cotton at harvest: the crop that tripled the town and then broke it. Illustration: Scottsdale.tips.

Between 1910 and 1929 Scottsdale went from frontier colony to functioning small town — twice, because the first economy blew up in the middle.

Roosevelt Dam (1911) guaranteed the water; statehood (February 14, 1912) put Arizona on the flag; and World War I turned the surrounding fields into a monoculture of strategic Pima cotton, tripling the town and drawing the Mexican and Mexican-American families who became permanent builders of the community. The 1920–21 crash wiped out the cotton fortunes but not the town: the twenties built a genuine Main Street — Saba’s (1921), the Farmer’s State Bank (1921), the Scottsdale Bulletin (1922), Scottsdale High School (1923) — and, decisively, the first tourists arrived. Polo grounds (1924) and Jessie Benton Evans’ Jokake Inn (1926) established the winter-visitor economy that would carry every era after.

The decades of this era

Decade chapters in this era

Illustration of Pima cotton fields at harvest in 1910s Scottsdale, with pickers, cotton sacks, and a gin building on the horizon
1910s • Pop. ~500 (est.)

Statehood & Cotton

A president dedicates the dam, Arizona joins the union, and a war-driven cotton frenzy triples the town — with new families who would build much of what Scottsdale became.
Saba's Department Store, opened in 1921 on Scottsdale's Main Street
1920s • Pop. 1,047 (1920)

Merchants & First Tourists

The cotton economy detonates on schedule — and a town of 1,000 quietly reinvents itself with storefronts, a high school, polo grounds, and paying winter guests.