Buckeye history, landmarks and local traditions

Buckeye's history is easy to miss from the freeway. Most of the city is new, and much of it is still desert. But head south to Monroe Avenue and MC 85 and the older town is still there: an irrigation canal from the 1880s, a main street that was once a cross-country highway, and traditions that have outlasted generations of residents.

Before the town

People lived along this stretch of the Gila River long before any canal was dug. The Buckeye Valley Museum's collection includes pre-Columbian pottery from the area, and at Robbins Butte Wildlife Area, a riparian habitat along the Gila south of downtown, the City of Buckeye notes ruins and petroglyphs visible near the butte. Just outside the city, in Waddell, White Tank Mountain Regional Park interprets the Hohokam who lived in those mountains.

A canal, a post office and a town called Sidney

The modern story begins with water. In May 1885, Malie M. Jackson and his partners, J.L. Spain and Henry Mitchell, laid out an irrigation canal and named it Buckeye after Jackson's home state of Ohio. Thomas Newt Clanton, who had led a party of settlers from Creston, Iowa, in 1877, built the canal's first five miles, finished in 1886, and his family settled nearby in 1887.

In March 1888 a post office opened and took the canal's name. That September, Clanton and O.L. Mahoney filed a plat for a town they called Sidney, with its business district on Centre Avenue between 4th and 6th streets. Nobody called it Sidney. In 1910 the town was replatted as Buckeye.

That same year the Arizona Eastern Railroad arrived, and the business district moved to meet the station. Automobiles followed in 1911, a steam rail line to Phoenix by 1912 and a state highway by 1915. When Buckeye incorporated in 1929, it covered 440 acres, and its first mayor was the banker Hugh M. Watson.

Landmarks you can visit

The Buckeye Valley Museum, at 116 E. MC 85, is the place to start. Run by the Buckeye Public Library, it holds historic photographs, local artifacts and that pre-Columbian pottery, and its online collection adds oral histories and a virtual tour. It is free, open on select weekdays and special Saturdays from fall through spring, and closed June through August.

The Buckeye Canal is still at work. The Buckeye Water Conservation and Drainage District, founded by valley farmers in 1922 to run and repair it, says the canal irrigates more than 17,000 acres. The green fields along the roads south of town are its legacy.

Monroe Avenue itself is a landmark. It was once U.S. Highway 80, the route from Tybee Island, Georgia, to San Diego that went by names like the Dixie Overland Highway until 1926, and the Buckeye Chamber of Commerce says a stretch of the original roadbed is still in use where Monroe dead-ends at Apache. Today the street is lined with locally owned businesses. Barbon Asadero, a Mexican steakhouse cooking over mesquite, occupies the historic Ware Building on Monroe. A block away, Cafe 25:35 serves scratch-made breakfast and lunch from its spot on the same avenue, a fitting stop before or after the museum.

On West Broadway Road, the Louis B. Hazelton Memorial Cemetery has served the town since 1938. The local American Legion post founded it and named it for the first young man from Buckeye who died in World War I, and it passed to the town in 1947.

For a short drive, the 1927 Gillespie Dam Bridge, a steel truss bridge over the Gila River listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is about 30 minutes southwest of Buckeye, between Arlington and Gila Bend, with an interpretive center on Arizona's transportation history.

Traditions that carry the story

In 1935 the Buckeye Chamber of Commerce launched Helzapoppin Days: street dances, a parade, a carnival and a rodeo, with proceeds going to local churches for the needy and for scholarships. Gene Autry was among the celebrities who came. It continues each January as Buckeye Days, with a Cattle Drive Parade on Monroe Avenue, the Helzapoppin' PRCA Rodeo at the Buckeye Equestrian Center that weekend, and, at Town Park, a chuckwagon cookout with the Buckeye Historical Society and a history booth from the museum.

The Halloween Carnival is nearly as old. This October's carnival on Monroe Avenue was the 86th, and its booths are still run by local nonprofit, school and church groups who keep the proceeds.

The holidays carry the farm story too. Cotton Fest, held in late November at the 6th Street Plaza and Monroe Avenue, pays tribute to Buckeye's farming history with a history-of-cotton display alongside a car show and artisans. In December, Glow on Monroe sends vintage vehicles, horse groups and working vehicles covered in lights down the old highway.

Learning more

The museum is run with support from the Buckeye Valley Historical Society, which members join to support its exhibits and education programs. The library's online resources include the genealogy service HeritageQuest, and the city's Discover Buckeye orientations walk new and longtime residents through the city's past and future. Start at the museum on a Wednesday or Friday, then walk Monroe Avenue and look for the town that was almost called Sidney.