Ten things worth knowing about Goodyear

Goodyear grew so quickly that plenty of residents have lived here only a few years. Here are ten stories worth passing along the next time someone visits, from a tire company's cotton fields to a sculpture measured in baseball terms. Each one points to a place you can still see.

How a farm became a town

1. Goodyear began as cotton for tires. In 1917 Paul Litchfield, an executive of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, bought 16,000 acres here. Cotton went into the rubber tires of airplanes, and World War I had made it scarce, so the company decided to grow its own. Today's city stands on what were those fields.

2. The residents chose the name themselves. When World War II brought an aircraft plant and new homes, the community around the farm needed a name. In May 1944 the residents and property owners picked Goodyear, and the Goodyear Post Office opened that November.

3. The new town was small enough to count. Goodyear incorporated on November 19, 1946. At the time it had 151 homes, 250 apartments, a grocery store, a drugstore, a barbershop, a beauty shop and a service station. It became a city in 1985, and it now has more than 111,000 residents.

Wings over the West Valley

4. The airport once stored thousands of Navy planes. In 1941 the Navy built a naval air facility here to test and deliver aircraft from the wartime plant. After the war it became a place to preserve and store planes, at one point holding more than 5,000. The City of Phoenix bought the former Navy field in 1968, and it is still a working airport, Phoenix Goodyear Airport, on Litchfield Road.

5. The Blue Angels practiced here. From 1963 to 1966, the Navy's flight demonstration team trained at the Litchfield Naval Air Facility, now Phoenix Goodyear Airport, according to the city's historical timeline. In February 1966 the team flew an air show over the field.

Odd landmarks, old and new

6. A racetrack lasted 23 months. The Phoenix Trotting Park opened near today's Cotton Lane and Interstate 10 in January 1965 as a harness-racing track, with grandstands and a fine-dining restaurant. Getting there meant a narrow, flood-prone Van Buren Street and no freeway, and it closed in December 1966. Its concrete shell stood empty for half a century until 2017. Goodyear High School opened on part of the land in August 2025.

7. The Ziz is exactly as tall as a pitch. Outside the home plate entrance at Goodyear Ballpark stands The Ziz, a fiberglass bird-in-flight sculpture by Donald Lipski that honors Goodyear's aviation history. With its pedestal it is 60 feet 6 inches tall, the distance from the pitching mound to home plate. It sits beside a ballpark that is the spring home of both Ohio teams, the Cleveland Guardians and the Cincinnati Reds.

8. Downtown grew on a scallion farm. Goodyear leaders talked about a true city center as early as 1984, but it took until August 2022 for Goodyear Civic Square to open at McDowell Road and 150th Drive, with City Hall, a park and the Georgia T. Lord Library, which is named for Goodyear's first woman mayor. The family-owned company developing the surrounding GSQ district has owned the land since the 1970s, when it grew scallions. Copper & Sage, a Southern-influenced restaurant with weekend brunch on Globe Drive at GSQ, is one of the places now feeding the people who gather there.

Mountains, weather and a name to remember

9. The Star Mountains were once in Mexico. The Sierra Estrella, the range on view from much of Goodyear, whose name means "Star Mountains," lay within Mexico until the Gadsden Purchase of 1853. Its foothills hold Estrella Mountain Regional Park, which in 1954 became the first park in Maricopa County's regional system and which still has the system's only grass picnic area, 65 acres of it. Café Bebida, inside Estrella's Welcome Center near the community's trails, is an easy coffee stop on the way.

10. Winter nights here can surprise newcomers. The federal weather station in neighboring Litchfield Park averages a January low of about 43 degrees, roughly three degrees cooler than Phoenix Sky Harbor's average. Summer is another story, with July highs averaging about 106 at both stations. Bring a jacket to the square on a December evening, and save the long hikes for the morning in July.

Every one of these stories still has a place attached, from the airfield on Litchfield Road to the sculpture at the ballpark. The best way to share them is in person, on the spot.