Ten things worth knowing about Gilbert

Gilbert moves fast, and most of the people living here arrived in the last few decades. That makes the town's older stories easy to miss, even though plenty of them are still standing in plain sight. Here are ten worth knowing, each one good for a dinner-table conversation or a drive with visiting relatives.

How a rail siding became a town

1. The town is named after a man who sold a strip of his land. In 1902 William "Bobby" Gilbert sold a right-of-way across his property to the Phoenix and Eastern Railroad, which was building a line from Phoenix toward Kelvin. A rail siding went in on his land, and the spur and the settlement that grew around it both took his name. The depot, built in 1905 just north of the tracks and west of Gilbert Road, was torn down in 1969.

2. It became a town in 1920, and stayed one. Gilbert incorporated on July 6, 1920, and it still carries the title Town of Gilbert today. Early Gilbert was tiny: the first store, Ayer's Grocery, opened in 1910 and took in the first post office two years later. Mail carriers did not deliver to homes in town until a new main post office opened on Elliot Road in 1979.

3. It once fed the Army's horses. Canals and Roosevelt Dam brought reliable water by 1911, and alfalfa, cotton and dairy farms surrounded the square mile of town. During World War I Gilbert farmers shipped hay to the U.S. Army, which earned the town its nickname, the Hay Shipping Capital of the World. Farmers here also grew and shipped watermelons, and HD SOUTH's farming exhibit notes there was even an ostrich farm. The farm streak survives in odd ways: Arizona Goat Yoga holds most of its classes, often around a hundred people at a time, at Welcome Home Ranch near Val Vista Drive and Hunt Highway.

Buildings with a past

4. The old schoolhouse was nicknamed the Alamo. Gilbert Elementary School opened in 1913 at Gilbert and Elliot roads, and the same year the Gilbert School District was formed. Generations of locals have known the building affectionately as the Alamo. Classes ended there in 1977; the Gilbert Historical Society opened its museum inside in 1982. Today, as HD SOUTH, it is the town's oldest standing building and its only listing on the National Register of Historic Places.

5. Gilbert had its own airport. From 1946 to 1959 a hard-packed dirt runway sat just south of the old school, with a hangar, repair shop and pilots' lounge. By the mid-1950s crop-dusting was its main business. The school district bought part of the land in 1959, and the site of the runway now sits under the Mesquite Junior High pool.

6. The water tower's pump house was the first jail. The town council, then serving a community of roughly 500, ordered the tower built in 1925; it was finished in 1927 and held water until 1985. The adobe pump house beside it served as Gilbert's first jail. Residents can apply to have the tower lit for a cause, and a few steps away sits a granite kugel ball weighing several tons, balanced on a film of water so that one person can turn it by hand.

7. For decades the tallest thing in town was a set of grain tanks. The silver tanks at Morrison Ranch, near Higley and Elliot roads, were built around 1960 to hold grain for the Morrison family's feedlot and later its dairy cows. The family calls them grain tanks, not silos. The tops of the tanks reach about 80 feet, the elevator about 110, and the family has written that they will stay as a reminder of the farm.

Heat, water and stars

8. The heat sets the calendar. At Phoenix Sky Harbor, the Valley's benchmark weather station, a normal year brings about 111 days at or above 100 degrees and just over seven inches of rain. The monsoon, June 15 to September 30 by the National Weather Service's count, brings most of the drama. That is why Gilbert's canals matter: the town's trail system follows them, and in summer locals ride them early.

9. The town's favorite nature spot is also part of its water system. The Riparian Preserve at Water Ranch on Guadalupe Road covers 110 acres, and its basins let treated water seep back into the aquifer while herons and egrets work the shallows. Next to it stands the Gilbert Rotary Centennial Observatory, a project the Gilbert Rotary Club took on for Rotary International's 100th anniversary in 2005. It was built with private donations, given to the town and opened on October 21, 2006, and more than 90,000 visitors have looked through its telescope since.

A family thread

10. One farm family's name runs through Gilbert's food scene. In 1960 Jim and Virginia Johnston bought the farm at what is now Higley and Ray and raised three sons there, including Joe. When growth reached the farm in the late 1990s, the family planned Agritopia around a permanent urban farm. Their 1966 ranch house became Joe's Farm Grill, which harvests produce from the farm and marked its 20th anniversary in fall 2026. Downtown, Joe and Cindy Johnston are among the owners of Liberty Market, opened in 2008 in a 1935-era building, and the Johnston and Peelen families have run Joe's Real BBQ since 1998 in a grocery store building that dates to 1929, when Gilbert had about 700 residents.

Most of these places are open to visit, and nearly all of them sit within a short drive of the water tower. Take a visitor, and let them guess which ones are true.