What it means
The 101 is the freeway. In Scottsdale it is the only one, a long curve that comes in from Phoenix along the north side of the Airpark, swings south past the Princess and WestWorld, and runs down the city’s eastern edge to the Loop 202 in Tempe. Its official name is Loop 101, and the Scottsdale stretch is officially the Pima Freeway, but you will almost never hear either. “Take the 101 to Shea.” “Traffic on the 101 was a mess.” The article is not optional.
The freeway changed what the city was. Before it, Scottsdale was a place you reached on surface streets, and the north end was a long drive from anything. After it, the Airpark and the Shea corridor were a straight shot to the rest of the Valley, and the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community’s freeway frontage became the casino, ballpark and shopping district now called Talking Stick. For directions and alternatives, see getting around Scottsdale.
Where you’ll meet it
On every set of directions north of Indian Bend Road, on the traffic report, on the freeway signs during Phoenix Open week and spring training, and in every real-estate listing that promises “easy 101 access.”
Where the word came from
The road was planned in pieces and named in pieces. ADOT first assigned the Loop 101 number on December 18, 1987; before that the western part was State Route 417 and the eastern part State Route 117. The money came from Proposition 300, the half-cent Maricopa County sales tax voters approved on October 8, 1985 for a regional freeway system. The first stretch of Loop 101, the Agua Fria Freeway between Northern and Peoria avenues, opened on June 18, 1988.
The loop has three official names. The Agua Fria Freeway runs from I-10 to I-17 and is named for a West Valley river. The Pima Freeway runs from I-17 east and south to the Red Mountain Loop 202. The Price Freeway carries on to the Santan Loop 202 in Chandler. ADOT says the Pima name comes from Pima Road, which was named for the nearby Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community. Pima is an older outside name; the Community’s own words for its peoples are Akimel O’odham and Piipaash.
Scottsdale’s leg was the slowest. The freeway’s eastern alignment ran along the Community’s western boundary, and the parties could not agree on a route until 1990, when the state paid the Community $247 million for the right-of-way and the Community kept control of its interchange corners. The Pima Freeway then opened in stages until one gap remained: two miles between Scottsdale Road and Pima Road in the north. That link opened on April 7, 2002, and the loop was done.
“The 101,” with the article, came along with it. It is the Southern California way of naming freeways, and the whole Valley talks that way; nobody has claimed the habit or traced when it arrived.
What it is not
It is not US 101, the California coast highway, and it is not a beltway around Scottsdale. It is a loop around the Valley that happens to make Scottsdale’s eastern edge. The stretch south of the 202 Red Mountain is the Price Freeway, which no Scottsdale local will call the 101 in conversation without adding “down in Chandler.”
The fine print
The interchange corners are the part most visitors miss. From about Via de Ventura south, the land east of the freeway belongs to the Community, and the 1990 deal left it in control of what got built there. That is why Casino Arizona, Talking Stick Resort, Salt River Fields and the Pavilions sit on the freeway and why Scottsdale’s sales tax does not reach them. The regional transportation guide explains how later county votes renewed the half cent that built the road.
Scottsdale used its stretch for an experiment. In January 2006 the city installed fixed speed cameras along 7.8 miles of the Pima Freeway, set to ticket drivers at 76 mph or more in a 65 zone. Critics called it a revenue machine; the city called it safety. The program ended in 2010.
Two holes in the record are worth knowing. ADOT’s own history of the Pima Freeway’s cross streets admits it cannot find the origin of Via de Ventura or say for certain where Raintree Drive got its name. And the city’s anniversary timeline lists the freeway as completed through Scottsdale in 2001, a year before the last link actually opened.