Gilbert history, landmarks and local traditions

Gilbert's history is short on paper and long on the ground. The town incorporated in 1920, but the canals that made it possible follow a much older idea, and a surprising amount of the farm town still stands within a few blocks of the water tower. This is a guide to that story, told through places you can walk into and traditions people still keep.

Before the town

The land under Gilbert belongs to a story far older than the railroad. HD SOUTH, the town's historical museum, acknowledges it as the land of the Akimel O'odham. The Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community explains that "Hohokam" is an archaeologists' term, not the name of a vanished tribe: the people it describes are ancestors of today's O'odham, and they engineered hundreds of miles of hand-dug canals across the Valley, some of whose courses are still in use.

Farm families arrived in the 1890s. The museum dates the earliest homestead purchase in the Gilbert area to 1891, when land could cost as little as 50 cents an acre. In 1902 William "Bobby" Gilbert sold a right-of-way across his farm to the Phoenix and Eastern Railroad, and the siding built there gave the settlement its name. The Consolidated Canal in 1904 and Roosevelt Dam in 1911 secured the water, and Gilbert incorporated on July 6, 1920. Through World War I its farmers shipped so much hay to the Army that the town became known as the Hay Shipping Capital of the World.

Landmarks you can visit

HD SOUTH, at Gilbert and Elliot roads, is the place to start. The building opened as Gilbert Elementary School in 1913, closed to classes in 1977 and reopened as the Gilbert Historical Museum in 1982. It is Gilbert's oldest standing building and its only listing on the National Register of Historic Places. Inside are seven permanent exhibits on home life, farming, school, the town and military service, plus a 1,500-square-foot HO-scale model railroad, built by the Gilbert Model Railroad Club, that recreates central Arizona's lines in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Water Tower Plaza, a few blocks north on Page Avenue, holds the tower the town council ordered in 1925 for a community of about 500. It was finished in 1927 and held water until 1985. The adobe pump house at its base was Gilbert's first jail. The plaza around it was rebuilt and reopened at the end of 2024, and the tower is still lit for community causes.

Two restaurants keep old buildings in daily use. Liberty Market, on Gilbert Road, has served breakfast through dinner since 2008 in a building that dates to around 1935. A block north and across the road, Joe's Real BBQ occupies a grocery store built in 1929, when about 700 people lived in Gilbert; the families who run it have preserved the building and smoke their meats over Arizona pecan wood.

Farther east, the silver grain tanks at Morrison Ranch, near Higley and Elliot roads, went up around 1960 for the Morrison family's feedlot and dairy. For decades they were the tallest structures in Gilbert, and the family intends them to stay as a reminder of the town's farm years.

Traditions that carry the story

The Gilbert Days Parade began in 1957 to celebrate the paving of Gilbert Road, and families still line that road for it each November. It runs through the Heritage District on a Saturday morning, rain or shine, and the 2026 parade on November 21 has more than 80 floats and entries.

HD SOUTH keeps its own traditions. Its live quilting bee works on traditional wooden frames most Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday mornings, finishing quilt tops by hand for the public to raise money for the museum, and the museum holds an annual Art of Quilting show. The Chamber of Commerce named HD SOUTH its 2026 Non-Profit Business of the Year.

At Agritopia, where the Johnston family began farming in 1960 on land first cleared for alfalfa in 1927, the farm holds Farm Nights on the first and third Wednesday evenings from September through May. They are a small, modern echo of the town's market-day roots.

Where to learn more

HD SOUTH's collections and archives are the deepest well. The museum offers digital collections, historical photographs, oral histories and a research service, and it has posted several of its historical presentations online, including Gilbert A to Z, a century of the fire department and an updated 2026 booklet on Gilbert's mayors. Its Heritage District History Walk is kept as an archived walking guide; some of the businesses in it have changed, but the buildings and stories hold up. The museum also links to Gilbert school yearbooks on the Arizona Memory Project, issues of the historic Tiger newspaper and the town's centennial film, One Foot on the Farm, One Foot in the Future.

The museum's calendar is worth watching, too. Through the cooler months it lists history talks and family history workshops, and many of its presentations end up online.

Spend a morning downtown: the museum first, then the plaza, then lunch in one of those old buildings. You will see Gilbert's history is close at hand.