Why he matters
In the early 1960s the Army Corps of Engineers planned a concrete channel about 170 feet wide down Indian Bend Wash, through the middle of Scottsdale. Bill Walton, a landscape architect who had arrived in 1963, was the first person on record to propose something else. His column in the Scottsdale Daily Progress on February 8, 1964 asked the city to buy the wash and build the flood project as a park, and it set off the argument the greenbelt fight page tells.
Where to find his work today
The Indian Bend Wash Greenbelt. Eleven miles of parks, lakes and golf courses that carry the wash’s floods, finished in 1985. He did not design it, but the idea is his.
Eldorado Park. The first green piece of the wash, opened in 1967 on land the city acquired the year after his commission appointment.
The column
Walton did not argue against flood control. He argued for using it. “I would urge city and civic leaders to buy land and begin planning now for recreational purposes,” he wrote, “and, to be specific, to consider buying the complete five miles or so of the Indian Bend Wash in which the flood control project is to be placed and to make it into a unique and outstanding park area for Scottsdale. It could be designed so as not to interfere with flood control.” The channel itself could change: “Planning and foresight could make the Indian Bend Wash flood control project more than just a concrete channel which would divide the city. A turfed channel can be designed so as to serve a variety of purposes.” He ended, “Let’s get bold; let’s plan ahead.” The phrase “Scottsdale-style solution,” sometimes credited to him, is a later historian’s.
On the commission
The city’s new citizen-planning program took up the idea that year. On March 2, 1965 the council appointed Walton to the Parks and Recreation Commission, and he chaired its Indian Bend Wash committee. The committee’s 1965 report, the city’s historic context says, suggested that developers donate wash land to the city in exchange for “zoning or other means to raise the value of their remaining land,” a way to get a park without buying all of it. The context and local historian Joan Fudala both record his role; the committee’s report itself is not online.
In city hall and on the council
Walton went to work for the city. By the account in the city’s 2026 anniversary history he became assistant planning director in 1967 and was planning director until 1973; his obituary calls him “City Planner (1970 to 1973).” Those were the years the council adopted the 60-foot height limit, the Corps came round to the greenbelt, and voters approved the 1973 bond that paid for it.
He came back as a volunteer and then an elected official. City board records show him on the Airport Advisory Commission from October 16, 1979 to April 15, 1980 and the Planning Commission from March 18, 1980 to March 18, 1983. He was elected to the city council and served two four-year terms, from April 3, 1984 to April 7, 1992, under Mayor Herb Drinkwater; his obituary says he was vice mayor in 1986 and 1992 and worked to bring the Tournament Players Club and the Phoenix Open to Scottsdale.
He died in November 2025, at 96. The city’s history newsletter, summarizing his obituary, credited his 1964 column with “proposing a green belt concept.” His family is not named here.
What the record doesn’t show
- The Parks and Recreation Commission’s 1965 wash committee report, and how long he stayed on the commission.
- His exact title and start date on the planning staff; the anniversary history and the obituary differ.
- What he did between 1973 and 1979, and any statement of his on the greenbelt after the column.