Why he matters
Modern Scottsdale’s long, northward shape starts with the land grabs of the early 1960s, and Bill Schrader was the mayor who made the first big ones. He took office in April 1962, the first mayor elected under the charter voters had approved the previous October, and he spent his two years annexing county land in every direction before Phoenix could. The city’s airport and the foothills of the McDowell Mountains came in on his watch.
He was also as local as a mayor could be: a farm kid from Indian School and Hayden roads, a 4-H leader, the first chairman of the Parada del Sol rodeo. After city hall he spent four decades at the Salt River Project and ended up running it.
Where to find his mark today
Thunderbird Field II. The old training field, now Scottsdale Airport with the Airpark around it, is inside the city limits because of the annexations of 1962 and 1963.
The Little Red Schoolhouse. The city moved its public library into the old school in 1963, during his term.
The Parada del Sol. He chaired the rodeo and parade in its early years; it still rides through Old Town every winter.
Two years, a charter and a map
Schrader’s term is the first chapter of charter government, and the 1962 page covers its opening move: the new council banned billboards, a rule the city has kept ever since. The same year Scottsdale Baptist Hospital opened, the town’s first. Then read the 1960s chapter on the annexation race, which is the story of his whole term.
The numbers his obituaries give are striking: in two years the city grew from about 30,000 to 44,000 people and from 20 to 75 square miles. The census figures bracket that run, 10,026 in 1960 and 54,504 at the 1965 special census.
The full story
William Perry “Bill” Schrader moved with his family to rural, unincorporated Scottsdale in 1941, and the Schraders farmed at Indian School and Hayden roads. He was active in the Methodist youth group and 4-H at Scottsdale High School, studied agriculture at Arizona State College, and was elected superintendent of the state 4-H fair while he was there. His father served on the Salt River Project’s board, which turned out to be a preview.
He was a young booster in a young town. He was the first chairman of the Scottsdale rodeo and the Parada del Sol, the western celebration the Jaycees started in 1953, and he served as president of the Scottsdale Jaycees and the Charros. In 1958, at 29, he won a council seat and took office on June 12, the same day the council named Mort Kimsey mayor.
Voters approved the home-rule charter on October 31, 1961, and on April 3, 1962, Schrader became the first mayor elected under it. His two years were defined by what locals called the annexation wars. Phoenix wanted to hem Scottsdale in; Schrader’s council annexed unincorporated county land in all directions, with the owners’ approval, and in 1962 and 1963 took in the former Thunderbird airfield and much of the McDowell foothills. The airfield became the Scottsdale Airport and Airpark, and the foothills gave the city its first real foothold toward the McDowells.
His term also brought the billboard and sign ordinance, the first hospital, the library’s move into the Little Red Schoolhouse in 1963, the first Scottsdale Indian Arts Exhibition, and continued spring training with the Boston Red Sox. The 1962–64 sewer push that finally reached the southern neighborhoods ran across his whole term.
He left office on April 7, 1964, and John Woudenberg was elected to succeed him. That year Schrader joined the Salt River Project board. In 1967 he became the first president of the city’s Municipal Property Corporation, the body that finances city projects from fire stations to TPC Scottsdale. At SRP he became vice president in 1990 and president from 1994 to 2006, overseeing expansions at the Kyrene and Santan plants and the added storage at Roosevelt Dam. He and his wife Bondena also farmed cotton and alfalfa in the East Valley until 2021.
He died on May 17, 2023, at 93. Mayor Jim Lane had already renamed the city’s annual volunteer honor the Bill Schrader Volunteer Impact Award, and the Chamber put him in its History Hall of Fame in 1994. The wider era is in the boomtown chapter.