You will almost never hear the word now, because the place it named is gone. José María Burruel, born in the Scottsdale area in 1925, wrote of a quarter-mile strip, the “Eskatel Barrio” in a 2007 East Valley Tribune review’s words, where he and other Mexican-American families lived: roughly Main to Second streets east of Brown Avenue, in adobe houses that went down when the city bought and cleared 18.5 acres for the Civic Center expansion between 1969 and 1975. The book’s own description is the best gloss: “Some called it the barrio, but Scottsdale Mexicanos called the area home.” Where the word comes from is unsettled. It reads like “Scottsdale” said with Spanish vowels, and one unsourced wiki line labels it the Yaqui name for the town; we have found no dictionary or tribal source for either claim. The introduction to Burruel’s book, the Pascua Yaqui Tribe’s language program and the descendants’ group that met at Our Lady of Perpetual Help in 2019 could settle it. The full story is in The Barrio Under the Civic Center.
Eskatel: The Name Scottsdale's Mexican-American Families Gave the Barrio Under the Civic Center
Eskatel is the barrio you can't visit: a quarter-mile of adobe homes east of Brown Avenue that the city bought and cleared for the Civic Center expansion between 1969 and 1975. The word survives mainly in José María Burruel's 2007 book Mexicans in Scottsdale. Where it comes from is still unsettled.
In one line
Eskatel: What Scottsdale's Mexican-American families called their home neighborhood east of Brown Avenue, the barrio cleared for the Civic Center expansion in the early 1970s. Its origin is unconfirmed; it may simply be Scottsdale as Spanish speakers said it.
The 30-second version
- Eskatel named the Mexican-American neighborhood roughly between Main and Second streets east of Brown Avenue.
- The city cleared 18.5 acres there for the Civic Center expansion between 1969 and 1975.
- José María Burruel, who grew up there, put the word in print in his 2007 book Mexicans in Scottsdale.
- Its origin is unconfirmed: it may be 'Scottsdale' said with Spanish vowels; a claim that it is the Yaqui name for the town has no source we could find.
Shelf
Status
Faded
Historical; you will read it more than hear it.
On record since
Who said it first
Scottsdale's Mexican-American residents; put in print by José María Burruel, who grew up there, in his 2007 book Mexicans in Scottsdale
Words that go with it
The lexicon entries this one leans on.
Where you'll meet it on this site
The guides that carry the full story.
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Old Town
The Barrio Under the Civic Center: How Scottsdale Cleared Its Mexican Neighborhood, 1968–1975
The lawn with the LOVE sculpture was a neighborhood. Scottsdale's Mexican-American families lived east of Brown Avenue from the cotton years until federal urban renewal money bought, cleared and rebuilt 18.5 acres for the Civic Center expansion. What the city's own history admits, what survived, and the questions only the archives can answer.
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Community & Culture · Arrived 1919
The Corral Family & the Mission Builders
The Corrals came north from Cananea, Sonora, in the cotton boom (the family dates its arrival to September 1919) and stayed when the boom went bust. With their neighbors they hand-made the 14,000 adobe bricks of the Old Adobe Mission, finished in 1933, and in 1928 built the adobe hall that became Los Olivos, which the family still runs. They, and the named builders of the mission beside them, made the Old Town buildings that are actually old.
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Old Town
The Old Adobe Mission (Our Lady of Perpetual Help)
Old Town's oldest standing church, and the most under-visited great building in Scottsdale: a white adobe mission raised through the Depression by the town's Mexican-American families, who hand-made roughly 14,000 bricks at fifty pounds apiece. It is free, it is a block off Scottsdale Road, and almost nobody walking Main Street knows it is there.
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Old Town
Coronado School: The Segregated Classrooms Inside Scottsdale's Little Red Schoolhouse
From 1928 the town's 1909 brick schoolhouse was the Coronado School, where Scottsdale sent its Mexican-American children while the new grammar school down Second Street, later Loloma, took the Anglo children. Three sources describe it three ways. What each one says, when it ended, and which records would settle the rest.
Where this comes from
The record behind the entry.
Facts checked: October 3, 2026 • Curated by the Scottsdale.tips editors • Plain-English explainer. Usage changes faster than the record; corrections are welcome.
More from the same shelf
Places · 2018
Old Town (versus Downtown)
Officially, all of downtown Scottsdale is now 'Old Town.' To longtime locals Old Town is only the few blocks of 1920s storefronts on Main and Brown, and calling the Waterfront or the bar district 'Old Town' marks you as new.
Places · 1994
The Preserve
The McDowell Sonoran Preserve, more than 30,500 acres of city-owned mountain and desert bought with voter-approved sales taxes. On weekends it is where Scottsdale hikes; at City Hall it is the third rail.
Places · 1963
The Airpark
The 2,600-acre business district around Scottsdale Airport, home to more than 2,500 companies and some 48,000 jobs, the third-largest employment center in Greater Phoenix. 'Working in the Airpark' is the standard North Scottsdale commute, and the name covers the offices, hangars and car dealerships alike.