Avondale history, landmarks and local traditions

Avondale's history is easy to drive past. It is in the name of a coffeehouse, the gazebo on a former gas station lot, a quiet cemetery off Santa Fe Trail and a hill beside the racetrack. In its 80th year as a city, here is the story told through places you can still visit and traditions people still keep.

Before Coldwater

Long before there was a town, there were the rivers. The Salt, the Gila and the Agua Fria come together in Avondale, which is why the area is known as Tres Rios. The Gila River Indian Community traces its ancestry to the Huhugam, skilled farmers and traders who built a vast network of irrigation canals. The Akimel O'odham later farmed in villages along the Gila, and the Pee-Posh, or Maricopa, settled among them. In 1859 Congress set aside land along the Gila River for the Community, the first reservation in Arizona. The neighbors still work together: one of Avondale Fire and Medical's water tenders was bought with a grant from the Gila River Indian Community.

A stage stop, a ranch and a city

The town itself begins with William "Billy" Moore, whom the city calls its founding father. He settled beside the Agua Fria in 1880 and named the place Coldwater, after the river and a nearby spring. His stage stop, general store and saloon served travelers on the routes between Tucson, northern Arizona and California, and he later served as postmaster from 1901 to 1905. When the post office moved near Avondale Ranch in the early 1900s, the ranch's name stuck.

Cotton shaped what came next. During World War I, demand for cotton surged, and thousands of workers from Mexico came to farm the fields of Goodyear Farms. Families lived in the company's labor camps; former councilmember A.B. Sernas and his wife Francisca both worked the fields from Camps 50 and 52. Avondale was incorporated on December 16, 1946, with D.W. "Dorsey" Chisum as its first mayor, and the town grew along Western Avenue.

Landmarks you can visit

• Monument Hill and the Base and Meridian Wildlife Area. Beside Phoenix Raceway, Monument Hill holds the initial point of the Gila and Salt River Meridian, the mark Arizona's land surveys are measured from. It became Avondale's first National Register site in 2002. Across the river, the Arizona Game and Fish Department manages about 198 acres of cottonwood and willow habitat on the north bank of the Gila, acquired in 1973, where herons, egrets and quail are common sights.
• Goodyear Farms Historic Cemetery. Goodyear Farms established this cemetery during the 1918 flu pandemic to bury farmworkers and their families. It is still an active cemetery for Goodyear Farms workers and their descendants, and the city cares for it. On October 15, 2026 the city learned it had been added to the National Register of Historic Places, after a nomination by the P.W. Litchfield Heritage Center. Nearby on Santa Fe Trail, the public artwork Memoria Entre Las Flores, made with Ballet Folklórico Esperanza, honors the same story.
• Western Avenue. Old Town still follows the old main street from Central Avenue to Dysart Road. Dessie Lorenz Park, nearby on Main Street, was first built as a rest area for U.S. 80, which ran through town; Doc Rhodes Plaza's gazebo stands where a gas station once did; and A.B. Sernas Plaza beside the Sam Garcia Western Avenue Library remembers the cotton camps. The new Old Town Plaza at Dysart Road is set to add history panels and illuminated art.
• Phoenix Raceway. Racing has been part of Avondale since 1964, and the track still hosts two NASCAR race weekends each year.

Traditions that carry the story

Billy Moore Days is the city's longest-running link to its founder. The Chamber of Commerce started it in 1954, and over the decades the Downtown Association, neighboring cities and now the city's Parks, Recreation and Libraries department have all had a hand in it. This October brought a carnival at Festival Fields Park and the historic parade down Western and Central avenues, led by Grand Marshal Judge Joe "Pep" Guzman. Next year's carnival is set for October 14 to 17, 2027, with the parade on October 16. After the parade, the city encourages people to linger over a meal in Old Town; Don Pancho Mexican Food on North Central Avenue serves breakfast plates such as chilaquiles, huevos rancheros and menudo.

Other traditions honor the families who built the town. The Goodyear Farms cemetery hosts an annual Día de los Muertos celebration. Avondale Fiesta fills Old Town on Western Avenue with music, food and a salsa contest each spring, returning May 1, 2027. The Sam Garcia Western Avenue Library holds its Tu Herencia celebration of Hispanic culture every September, in a city where more than half of residents identify as Hispanic or Latino.

And one tradition is just starting. This year residents wrote letters to their future selves and shared photos for a time capsule to be sealed in the Old Town Plaza and opened at the city's centennial in 2046.

Where to learn more

Start at the Avondale Public Library, with branches at the Civic Center and on Western Avenue; this year it collected historic photos of the city from 1990 and earlier to digitize for the 80th anniversary. The city's Billy Moore Days history page gathers parade photos going back years, plus a 1978 parade video. The P.W. Litchfield Heritage Center researches the Goodyear Farms story and wrote the cemetery's National Register nomination. For a self-guided walk, the city's Art Walk list maps murals and sculptures from Western Avenue to Santa Fe Trail, many of them about the city's past.

Walk Western Avenue with that history in mind and the old stage stop at Coldwater doesn't feel so far away.