This first town of Phoenix was one mile long, a half-mile wide and contained 96 blocks. Hancock was also a surveyor, and he made the first survey of the townsite and laid out the lots and the town. Perry were selected by majority vote to be the townsite commissioners. To administer this new townsite, the Salt River Valley Town Association was formed with its articles carrying the following signatures: Today, it would encompass the downtown business section, bounded on the north by Van Buren Street, on the south by Jackson Street, on the east by Seventh Street and on the west by Seventh Avenue. The official designation of this new townsite was the North Half of Section 8, Township 1 North, Range 3 East. This well-known farmer offered 40 acres to the cause, but 320 were purchased by a popular subscription that raised $50. 20, 1870, a meeting was held to select such a site in the home of John Moore. The rapid influx of pioneers continued, and by 1870, it was clear that a townsite had to be selected. Selecting a Townsite Washington Street in the 1870s. It advertised the Richard Flour Mills, built in 1869, where the Luhrs Tower now stands. The sharp whistle of the first steam mill in the Valley added a brisk note to the sound of emerging industry. Phoenix officially was recognized on May 4, 1868, when the Yavapai County Board of Supervisors, the county of which we were then a part, formed an election precinct here.Ī post office was established in Phoenix on June 15, 1868, with Jack Swilling as postmaster. That is the accepted derivation of our name. It was Darrell Duppa who suggested the name Phoenix, inasmuch as the new town would spring from the ruins of a former civilization. Others suggested the name Salina, but neither name suited the inhabitants. Swilling, having been a confederate soldier, wanted to name the new settlement Stonewall after Stonewall Jackson. It was then changed to Helling Mill, after which it became Mill City, and years later, East Phoenix. Swilling's Mill became the new name of the area. Phoenix Is Bornīy 1868, a small colony had formed approximately four miles east of the present city. By March 1868, water flowed through the canal, and a few members of the company raised meager crops that summer. The same year, the company began digging a canal to divert some of the water of the Salt River onto the lands of the Valley. Returning to Wickenburg, he organized the Swilling Irrigation Canal Company, and moved into the Valley.
He saw farm land, predominately free of rocks, and in a place beyond the reach of heavy frost or snow.
He looked down and across the expansive Salt River Valley and his eyes caught the rich gleam of the brown, dry soil turned up by the horse's hooves. In 1867, Jack Swilling of Wickenburg stopped to rest his horse at the foot of the north slopes of the White Tank Mountains. Phoenix's modern history begins in the second half of the 19th century. Roving Indians, observing the Pueblo Grande ruins and the vast canal system these people left behind, gave them the name "Ho Ho Kam" - the people who have gone.
The accepted belief is that it was destroyed by a prolonged drought. The ultimate fate of this ancient society, however, is a mystery. They built an irrigation system, consisting mostly of some 135 miles of canals, and the land became fertile. Those former residents were industrious, enterprising and imaginative. The wide Salt River ran through the Valley of the Sun, but there was little rain and no melting snow to moisten the brown earth from river to mountain range on either side. and 1400 A.D., testify to our city's ancient roots. The Pueblo Grande ruins, which were occupied between 700 A.D. Hundreds of years before any of the cities in the eastern part of our country were so much as clearings in the wilderness, a well established, civilized community occupied the land we know as Phoenix. Early Life along the Salt River Jack Swilling, one of the founders of Phoenix.
You may also download a version in PDF format. Find out about our city's early history on this page, the text of which is excerpted from the Communication Office's Out of the Ashes publication.