The short version
Scottsdale incorporated in 1951 on about six-tenths of a square mile. Phoenix was many times larger and annexing hard: its boosters wanted 500,000 people by 1960, and by March of that year the city covered 185 square miles, according to the city’s 2012 historic context. A town that stood still could be surrounded.
So both governments went after the same unincorporated county land. Under Arizona law an annexation started with a petition signed by owners of half the property value in the area, and through the late 1950s both cities sometimes circulated petitions in the same neighborhoods. The record of the fight is mostly a court record, and in court Scottsdale usually lost. It got its shape at the table instead, in a truce signed on January 30, 1964.
1956: two mayors, two streets
The city’s historic context records the moment the fight became open. In 1956 Mayor Malcolm White told Phoenix Mayor Jack Williams that Scottsdale meant to annex as far west as 40th Street. Williams answered that Phoenix wanted to go east to 56th Street. Neither moved. That April the council passed Ordinance No. 29 to annex four square miles west to 40th Street between Thomas and Indian School roads. The same source says Phoenix challenged it and the courts voided it. No appellate opinion on Ordinance 29 was found, so that ruling, if it happened, was in the county court.
The one 1950s case that did reach the Arizona Supreme Court shows how the race worked. In McCune v. City of Phoenix (November 5, 1957), Phoenix had annexed land part of which was already covered by a Scottsdale petition. Scottsdale’s petition had been filed first, but the town council had never acted on it. The court held that filing alone gave Scottsdale nothing, and that “the city of Phoenix acquired jurisdiction first.”
1961: Paradise Valley and Arcadia
By 1961 the people in between were organizing. Homeowners south of Camelback Mountain petitioned the county to incorporate 2.85 square miles as the Town of Paradise Valley, with no commerce and large lots. The supervisors declared the town incorporated on May 24, 1961. The incorporation was contested: opponents said too few owners had signed, and the state’s challenge reached the Arizona Supreme Court in 1967.
The same year Scottsdale tried to annex Arcadia, north of the Arizona Canal and west of 68th Street. The city’s historic context says the attempt fell short of owners of half the property value, a court voided it, and Phoenix annexed Arcadia soon after. Fudala agrees that “Phoenix won.” The court record has a likely match: Ordinance 135 of December 5, 1961, “a large area northwest of the city,” which the Arizona Supreme Court set aside in 1965 because utility companies had signed the petition only on conditions. The opinion does not name Arcadia.
1962–1964: the north, and the truce
Arcadia was lost under Mayor Mort Kimsey. His successor, Bill Schrader, took office in April 1962, and the town turned north. Three ordinances passed between late 1962 and early 1963 (Nos. 165, 168 and 169) took in about 41 square miles of desert to the McDowell foothills, including the old Thunderbird II airfield. The city’s context says the Legislature severed part of this land in 1963. Joan Fudala writes that Phoenix sued over the airfield annexation, calling the published map inaccurate, and lost. The court record shows a different fight in the same months: the attorney general sued over Ordinance 160 of November 10, 1962, the trial court found the petitions had no accurate map and the meeting that passed it was illegally called, and the Arizona Supreme Court voided the ordinance in 1965.
By then both councils could see where it led. On January 30, 1964, still under Schrader, Scottsdale adopted Resolution 308 and Phoenix a matching resolution. According to the city’s context, they made Scottsdale Road the boundary for nine miles from Cactus Road north to Jomax Road. Both cities dropped annexations and lawsuits that crossed the line, and the Legislature approved the terms. “Unlike the lack of resolution by the mayors in 1956,” the context says, “this agreement took.”
What it cost, and what it locked in
The war had a casualty inside city hall. Scottsdale’s first charter, approved by voters on February 23, 1960, was challenged along with two annexation ordinances. The trial court found the vote had been held 33 days after the charter’s last publication, three days too late under the state constitution, and voided it. The Court of Appeals affirmed in 1965, after the city had already adopted a new charter in October 1961. Through the litigation the courts still called the place the “Town of Scottsdale.”
What the truce locked in was a map. Scottsdale could not grow east, where the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community’s land begins, and after 1964 it could not grow west. It grew north, from 3.8 square miles at the end of 1959 to 48.5 by December 1964 and about 182 by 1985, by the city’s annexation chart. The Airpark and Kierland sit on its western edge because of the 1964 line, and so does every “Scottsdale” street address whose neighbor across the road is in Phoenix. The annexation guide explains how the machinery works today.
The two sides, as far as the record lets them speak
The Scottsdale side’s own words survive mostly in paraphrase. John Knudsen, a councilman from 1960 to 1962, wrote to the city in 2011: “We had a lot of annexation problems with the City of Phoenix. They wanted to limit the size of Scottsdale and they were strongly backed by the Arizona Republic.” He remembered Mayor Sam Mardian “telling me that Scottsdale should not annex north of Indian Bend Road.” That is one man’s memory fifty years on, and no Phoenix account was found to set beside it. The Phoenix case is clearer in its actions: it filed in the same places, won in court, and took Arcadia.
The 1950s politics chapter sets this fight beside the other arguments of the town’s first decade.