Peoria's history, told through the places you can still visit

Peoria's history is easy to miss from a freeway, but it is all still here: a church that has held services since 1899, a schoolhouse getting a second life, a garage building on Grand Avenue from about 1918, and a calendar of traditions that began when the town had a few hundred people. Here is the story told through places you can visit and customs people still keep.

The people who were here first

Long before the Arizona Canal, people lived along the river now called New River. The largest of their villages was the Palo Verde Ruin, in what is now northeast Peoria near North 73rd Drive and Jomax Road. A city interpretive plan describes it as the largest prehistoric habitation village on the New River, and it was abandoned around A.D. 1070, about the time the Hohokam ballcourt system collapsed. Later Hohokam villages and farmsteads lined the Agua Fria River in northern Peoria; after the Hohokam era, small groups such as the Yavapai lived in the region. The Palo Verde Ruin was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2012.

A canal, a well and a farm town

Modern Peoria began with water. After the Arizona Canal was finished in 1885, canal builder William J. Murphy recruited four families from Peoria, Illinois, who arrived in November 1886 and gave the settlement their hometown's name. Grand Avenue was laid out in 1887, a post office opened in 1888 for a population of 27, and in 1889 settlers dug the town well at Grand Avenue and Washington Street, which soon became a water tower and gathering place. The railroad arrived in 1895.

Farming carried the town for the next half century. By 1919, an Arizona Republican feature called Peoria one of the richest farm districts in the valley, with long-staple cotton its main crop, and cotton gins and seasonal tent camps for pickers rose around it. Peoria incorporated on June 7, 1954, after a close vote, and the first council chose schoolteacher Roland Pomeroy as mayor. The town still had only about 4,800 people in 1970; the city now estimates more than 206,000.

Landmarks you can visit

Start at 83rd Avenue and Madison Street. The 1906 Central School, a Mission Revival schoolhouse used for 70 years and listed on the National Register in 1982, is being restored as an arts and cultural center, with construction that began in April 2026. A short walk south, the red brick First Presbyterian Church of 1899, with its Gothic Revival windows, is still used by its congregation; the city calls it the oldest continuously used church in Arizona.

Next, cross into the Washington Street and Grand Avenue blocks. A fire in July 1917 destroyed the entire business district, and the brick buildings that replaced it still stand. Look for the 1920 Peoria Theater, which became Fire Station No. 1 when the town incorporated and is now an event space, and for Wilhelm's Garage at 8245 W. Grand Ave., built around 1918 and renamed in 1928 by Joseph Wilhelm, whose shop kept local cotton pickers running. The Peoria Woman's Club building of 1919, which once held the town's first movie theater and library, moved from Osuna Park to 84th Avenue in 2009.

Finish in Osuna Park, the city's oldest park. The 1939 jail built by the Works Progress Administration later served as Peoria Town Hall until the current City Hall opened in 1991. Its newest neighbor is a 35-foot digital water tower, dedicated April 7, 2026, that recalls the town's first landmark.

Traditions that carry the story

Peoria's first community Christmas tree went up in 1921, sponsored by the Woman's Club and the Chamber of Commerce, and the holidays are still celebrated downtown: the Peoria Holiday Festival fills Downtown Peoria on the evening of December 12, 2026, alongside that month's 2nd Saturdays festival. The city's signature events also include the Dolly Sanchez Easter Celebration and the Fourth of July All-American Festival, and the Halloween Monster Bash moved to the City Hall campus and Centennial Plaza in October 2026. Each fall, Somos Peoria closes Hispanic Heritage Month; the 2026 finale was a car show and cultural celebration at City Hall.

Sports run deep too. Peoria High School's Horned Toads won the town's first state football title in 1937, and community support for high school athletics has continued ever since. Since 1994, spring training at the Peoria Sports Complex has been a February and March ritual.

Where to learn more

The city's Historic Preservation pages hold two self-guided walking tour maps, one for the 83rd Avenue and Madison Street campus and one for the Old Town commercial blocks, along with a decade-by-decade history and research reports on the Varney Tracts and Weedville. The volunteer Peoria Arizona Historical Society, which ran a museum in the old school buildings for many years, dissolved in 2019, and the West Valley Art Museum at City Hall closed in 2024, so for now the walking tours and the city's online history are the best guides. The Peoria Public Library's Main Library, itself started in 1920 by the Senior Woman's Club, is a few blocks north. And before or after your walk, Driftwood Coffee on Jefferson Street, open every day, is a convenient downtown stop.