A Short History of South Phoenix from 1865 to the
early 1930's
South Phoenix’s pastoral and agricultural atmosphere attracted Mexican families who homesteaded and
made their living in farming and ranching. For many, however, their dreams of land ownership were
quashed.
By Christine Marin Ph.D.
Once the Arizona Territory was created, military troops were brought in to stabilize the hostile Indians,
and to protect miners from Indian attacks. Fort McDowell, on the Verde River, was established in 1865 for
this reason. The establishment of Fort McDowell led to the arrival of many Mexicanos drawn northward
from Sonora, who sought opportunities for employment at Fort McDowell and along the Salt River with
John Y.T. Smith. Smith possessed a legal contract to supply Camp McDowell with fodder in order to supply
the needs of cavalry, draft animals, and other livestock at the fort. He established his hay camp along the
Salt River, near south Phoenix, and in the eastern edge of what is known as the Sky Harbor International
Airport. Smith hired the Mexicans who camped along the southern portion of the Salt River to cut the hay,
and he constructed make-shift shelters for them along the natural flow of the river. These Mexicans
served Smith and Camp McDowell as post guides, as translators, laborers, or as interpreters for the
military forces. For example, Paz Salazar served as post guide for Captain James Curtis, Troop 1, 3rd
Cavalry, on missions to make contacts with the roaming Apaches in September, 1871. And post guide
Pedro Lachesuo was hired to help the Mexican civilians, who were hired as adobe makers for the repair
of run-down buildings. These Mexican adobe artisans also built new structures for the garrison of Camp
McDowell in early 1872.  

John W. “Jack” Swilling’s 1867 arrival to the Salt River Valley has to be acknowledged here. The mention
of his name, however, creates conflicting and somewhat mythical accounts of his moral character and of
his activities in early Phoenix. Anglo settlers who homesteaded in the Salt River Valley during the early
1870s were Confederate soldiers and veterans from the deep South. It was common knowledge among
them that Jack Swilling had deserted the Confederate Army in New Mexico. His role in the Civil War was
viewed as a negative one, as rumor had it that he was also a wanted man in Texas, and that he became
a civilian scout for the Union forces. Nevertheless, Swilling’s role in the development of early Phoenix
remains important, as are his ties to the Mexicanos, with whom he forged friendships through his
Mexican born wife, Trinidad Escalante Swilling. As irrigation workers, Mexican laborers helped Swilling
develop the Old Town Ditch, or the “Swilling Ditch”, along Van Buren Street in the south Phoenix townsite
in 1867 by following the network of canals built by the Hohokam Indians from A.D. 300 to 1400.   
Frontiersman Swilling and his Catholic wife, Trinidad, were already living near south Phoenix in an adobe
house not far from 36th Street and Washington. Their home was “the site of the first Mass celebrated in
Phoenix” by Father Andre Eschallier and was also recognized “as the first permanent American dwelling
erected in the Salt River Valley by a White settler,” meaning Swilling. Some Phoenix historians recognize
Jack Swilling as the “father” of Phoenix. If this is so, then Trinidad Escalante Swilling can be considered
the “mother” of Phoenix, which suggests that Phoenix may have also been founded by a Mexican woman.

By 1870, at least 240 residents lived in the Phoenix townsite, and 124 of them were Mexicans. They
became the zanjeros who constructed acequias, or canals, along the Salt River. The construction of these
canals made a controlled and dependable water supply of water available to valley farmers. This water
distribution system constructed by the Mexicans was the early beginning of today’s Salt River Project.
Mexican workers also helped in the first survey directed by William A. Hancock in 1870 and leveled and
maintained the public streets of Phoenix. By 1877, the Phoenix population comprised 500 people, one-
half of whom were Mexicans. At that time, the county of Maricopa was created by legislative enactment
and Phoenix was declared its county seat. Subsequently, Phoenix became an incorporated city in
February, 1881 and John T. Alsap was elected its first mayor. It is clear that the Mexican presence was
firmly established in Phoenix by then. It is known that Mexican families sent their children to the first
public school classroom in September, 1871. This classroom was held in the courtroom of the County
Building on south First Avenue, at that time known as Cortez Street. Among the pupils attending school
were Angel Moreno, Francisco Rodriguez, and Jose Rodriguez.  



In the years 1886 and 1887, Mexicans graded the roadbed and laid the tracks for the Maricopa and
Phoenix Railroad, connecting the city of Phoenix with the Southern Pacific mainline at Maricopa. They also
laid the tracks for the mule-drawn streetcars of the Phoenix Street Railway Company, which brought
public transportation to Phoenix in 1887. In his research on the early history of Phoenix, Geoffrey P.
Mawn suggests that Phoenix had the appearance of a Mexican settlement in the late 1870s and early
1880s. Mexicans made the sun-dried adobe bricks used in business and residential structures in south
and central Phoenix. Adobe buildings dotted Washington Street, the main business thoroughfare of
Phoenix, including Clemente Romo’s store and Jesus L. Otero’s buildings. Thick adobe walls were ideally
suited to the needs of keeping rooms cool during the scorching summers and warm in the winter.  

Occasional heavy flooding and a proximity to unsightly railroad tracks south of the Salt River made the
area undesirable for living and economic development by more arrivals of Anglo speculators,
carpetbaggers, and entrepreneurs to the Phoenix townsite. The 1891 flood that overflowed the southern
Salt and reached Washington Street further discouraged more settlement of Anglos in the south Phoenix
area. As a result, they moved into the north side of the Salt River, leaving the Mexicans to remain south
of Washington Street between Twenty-fourth Street and Twenty-Seventh Avenue.

South Phoenix’s pastoral and agricultural atmosphere attracted Mexican families who homesteaded and
made their living in farming and ranching. For many, however, their dreams of land ownership were
quashed in the 1890s by the enterprising and unscrupulous Michael Wormser, a Jewish merchant from
Prescott. Between 1873 and 1896, Wormser acquired at least 9,000 acres between the Salt River and
what became Central Avenue, 48th Street and Baseline Road. He also obtained the rights to the San
Francisco Canal and convinced the Mexican farmers that he would provide their land with water. When
the Mexicans encountered financial difficulties in maintaining their land and proving their homestead
claims, Wormser began purchasing their lands. He hired the Mexicans to make much-needed repairs on
the canal, and convinced them that he could safeguard their land at the same time. He provided them
with seed grain and supplies on credit, and soon held liens on much of the Mexicans’ farm lands when
they could not pay him what they owed. In the meantime, the Mexicans turned their under-developed
tracts of land into prime agricultural acreage. They still held hopes that they would gain a financial return
for their land and products and pay off their debts to Wormser. But Wormser knew differently. He knew
that he could take away any claims the Mexicans held to their land because he had financial power over
them. He cut off their water supply from the San Francisco Canal and forced them to sell him their land at
his price.   

South Phoenix began coming into its own in 1911, the year in which the Roosevelt Dam was completed.
This meant the reduction of flooding along the Salt River. The irrigation from the dam provided the
impetus for establishing Pima cotton farms. This endeavor brought more Mexican laborers into the cotton
fields and the alfalfa fields nearby. In the early 1920s, Mexicans also herded cattle and maintained the
feed lots for the Bartlett-Heard Land and Cattle Company, a rich 6,500-acre spread. Mexican women like
Mauricia Vega performed house-keeping, cooking and laundry duties for Dwight Heard’s family and the
families of other Anglo homesteaders. Other south Phoenix Mexican families picked oranges and dates
from trees that grew in abundance on Heard’s ranch properties. Heard shipped the fruit by rail to East
Coast markets.   Ostrich farming was also a south Phoenix industry between 1900 and 1916 and
Mexicans helped to raise and care for the birds on ranch sites on 36th Street and Broadway; 16th Street
and Southern; and 19th Avenue and Broadway. Two classes of people dominated south Phoenix in the
mid-1920s: the homesteaders, both Mexicans and Anglos; and the laborers, virtually all of them Mexican.
As the South Phoenix community expanded and more families settled in the area, its infrastructure
continued to grow. By 1911, the Center Street Bridge (later known as the first Central Avenue bridge)
was completed. Roosevelt School opened that same year at Southern Avenue and Seventh Street on
land donated by land baron, Dwight B. Heard. Wirt Standring opened a grocery store near Central and
Broadway. Residents established the Neighborhood House near Central and Southern Avenue, which
became the center of south Phoenix social activities for both the Mexicans and the Anglos, although the
Anglos managed its direction. South Phoenix received electricity in 1924, after the Roosevelt Men’s Club
raised  almost $20,000 to bring it in.



By the 1930s, Mexican barrios formed into distinct sections, as identified in a 1972 study by graduate
students Jon Aumann, Mary Hernandez, Manuel Medina, Cheryl Stewart and Nancy Wherley:  

1) “Golden Gate,” or puerto de oro, bordered by 16th Street on the west, 20th street on the east,
Sherman Street on the north, and Buckeye Road on the south;
2) “Las Milpas”, or “Cuatro Milpas” (“the Cornfields”, or “Four Cornfields” ) bordered by 12th street on
the west, 14th street on the east, by Buckeye Road on the north, and Mohave Street on the south;
3) “El Campito”, (the “little camp”), bordered by 7th Street on the west, 12th Street on the east, by
Tonto Street on the north, and by Buckeye Road on the south;
4) “Los Marcos de Niza” housing project, bordered by 4th Avenue on the west, Central Avenue on the
east, the north end of Yavapai Street on the north and by Mohave Street on the south;
5) “Las Avenidas” (“the Avenues”), bordered by 1st Avenue on the west, by 7th Avenue on the east, by
the old Grant and Lincoln highway on the north, and by the north end of Yavapai Street on the south;
6) “La Sonorita” (“Little Sonora”), bordered by 15th Avenue on the west, 7th avenue on the east, Pima
Street on the north, and by Mohave Street on the south;
7) “La Diez and Nueve” (the Coffeldt Housing Project) bordered by 22nd Avenue on the west, 19th
Avenue on the east, Buckeye Road on the north and Mohave Street on the south;
8) The River-Bottom, bordered by 16th Street on the west, 19th Street on the east, Encinas Lane on the
north, and by Wood Street on the south; and,
9) “La Vente ” (the Duppa Villa housing project), bordered by 16th Street on the west, 20th Street on the
east, by McKinley Street on the north and by Villa Street on the South.    
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Read more articles by Dr. Christine Marin
Dr. Christine Marin Curator/Archivist and Historian of the
Chicano Research Collection, Department of Archives andd
Special Collections, Hayden Library, Arizona State University
E-mail:
Christine.Marin@asu.edu
Christine Marin
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Published by the Hispanic Institute of Social Issues in Phoenix, Arizona
Barriozona Magazine | barriozona.com
HISTORY IS ABOUT
TO CHANGE
Grassroots Journalism
Barriozona Magazine
TODAY  A homeless man walks
south on 16th Street at Washington
Photo by Eduardo Barraza/Barriozona
HISTORY AND PROGRESS  The
Sacred Heart Catholic Church is the
only vestige of what was the Golden
Gate barrio, at 16th Street and
Buckeye Road.
Photo by Eduardo Barraza/Barriozona
[Related Slide Show: Vanishing Phoenix]
[Related Article: A Vanished Phoenix Barrio, Visions of Life on 16th Street]
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