Scottsdale History You Can Still Visit: Landmarks and Traditions

Scottsdale is 75 years old this year as a city, but the story on its ground is far older, and a surprising amount of it is still standing. You can sit at a bar inside a 1921 bank, walk through Frank Lloyd Wright's desert studio, or eat Sonoran food from a family that has cooked in Old Town since 1947. Here is the city's history told through places you can visit and traditions people still keep.

The first people, the canal and the farm town

People lived in and moved through this valley for about 8,000 years before Scottsdale had a name. The city's history timeline names Archaic peoples, the Hohokam and the Yavapai among them. The Hohokam were canal builders, and Experience Scottsdale credits them with first moving water along the route of today's Arizona Canal more than 1,000 years ago.

Modern Scottsdale grew from that same water. When W.J. Murphy finished the Arizona Canal in the 1880s, settlers began farming beside it, especially citrus. In 1888, Army chaplain Winfield Scott and his wife, Helen, bought 640 acres where Old Town now stands. A school district formed in 1896, and in 1897 J.L. Davis opened the first store and post office at Brown Avenue and Main Street. Cotton became the cash crop during World War I, while cattle ranches spread to the north. In 1909 the artist Marjorie Thomas arrived from Boston, and with Jessie Benton Evans she began the art colony that still shapes the city's identity.

Landmarks you can visit

The Little Red Schoolhouse, Scottsdale's grammar school, was built in 1909 for $4,500 and dedicated on February 26, 1910. It has since served as a library, a police station and chamber offices, and today it holds the Scottsdale Historical Museum on Scottsdale Mall. The Scottsdale Historical Society hosts its old-fashioned pancake breakfast there on Saturday, November 21.

A short walk away on Main Street, the Rusty Spur Saloon occupies the 1921 Farmer's State Bank of Scottsdale, a building on the Scottsdale Historic Register. It calls itself the oldest bar in Scottsdale with live country music, and bands play there every day of the week.

Nearby on Second Street, Los Olivos Mexican Patio has been owned and run by the Corral family since 1947, now in its fourth generation, cooking Sonoran food with tortillas and salsas made by hand. It is one of the easiest ways to taste Old Town's long Sonoran tradition.

In 1937, Frank Lloyd Wright bought land in the McDowell foothills and began building Taliesin West, his winter home and architecture school. Wright and his apprentices built most of it, and he kept adding to it until his death in 1959. It is now a World Heritage site, and guided tours run by reservation.

North of Old Town, the Cattle Track complex on Cattle Track Road dates to the late 1930s and 1940s. Today a nonprofit arts and preservation group based there supports artists and craftspeople, hosts gallery talks and can arrange tours.

Traditions that carry the story

The oldest is Parada del Sol. It began in 1951, the year Scottsdale incorporated, when the chamber of commerce and the Scottsdale Riding Club started a Sunshine Festival, and it has been held every year since except during COVID. The 72nd parade came through Historic Old Town on January 31 of this year with about 150 entries, horse-drawn carriages and mounted riders among them, under the theme "A Diamond in the Desert: Celebrating 75 Years of Scottsdale." It now closes Western Week, which also brings the Arizona Indian Festival to the Civic Center with representatives of all 22 Arizona tribes.

Horses run through other traditions too. The Arabian Horse Show came to Anne and Fowler McCormick's Scottsdale ranch in 1956 and is held today at WestWorld. Baseball arrived the same year, when the Baltimore Orioles held the first spring training at Scottsdale Stadium; the San Francisco Giants have trained there since 1982. And every Thursday evening since 1975, Old Town's galleries have opened their doors for ArtWalk, keeping the art colony's spirit going.

Where to learn more

Start at the Scottsdale Historical Museum and the Scottsdale Historical Society, whose online Scottsdale Historic Register lists every protected building and district, from the 1892 Titus House, the city's oldest home still lived in, to the midcentury subdivisions of the south. The library's Scottsdale Heritage Connection gathers local history, and its Heritage Connection Saturdays continue at the Civic Center Library on December 12.

The city's Celebrate 75 program runs history talks at the libraries through the anniversary year, among them one at the Appaloosa Library on the story of Curry's Corner and Rawhide in north Scottsdale. It has also published a history booklet, Honor the Past, Imagine the Future. For the Western story, Western Spirit: Scottsdale's Museum of the West on Marshall Way opened in 2015 as a Smithsonian affiliate.

History here does not sit behind glass. It is a Thursday walk past the galleries, a parade on a January Saturday and lunch on a patio that has been serving Old Town for nearly 80 years.