Welcome to Wittmann: a desert crossroads on Grand Avenue

Drive northwest on US 60 past the edge of the Valley's suburbs and the houses thin out into open desert, horse corrals and long dirt roads. Wittmann sits along that stretch of highway, about 35 miles northwest of central Phoenix. It is an unincorporated community in Maricopa County, a census-designated place of under one square mile that counted 684 residents in the 2020 census, with the town's ZIP code, 85361, stretching across a much wider spread of ranchettes and acreage around it.

It has no city hall and no mayor. What it does have is a school district older than the town's name, a fire station, a growing high school and neighbours who raise fruit trees, horses and alpacas on desert ground.

Where it sits and how it is laid out

US 60, the road the Valley knows as Grand Avenue, runs straight through Wittmann, and the BNSF rail line runs beside it. The railroad came first: before anyone homesteaded here, the siding on the line already had a name, Nadaburg. The land was opened to homesteading for stock raising by a 1916 act of the Interior Department, and William Hovey Griffin, a Texas-born homesteader, filed his claim in September 1920. That same year he laid out a town site on his land and gave a block to the county for a school. The town site was formally surveyed and recorded in July 1924, and several of the old streets still carry Griffin family names, among them Hovey and Myers.

Today the small grid of the original town site sits on the north side of the highway, around Center Street, where the Nadaburg Unified School District has its office. Beyond it, county roads such as Crozier Road and Patton Road lead out to homes on larger lots, the high school and the fire station.

The name changed in honor of Joseph Wittmann, who was given lots and acreage in 1926 in return for a promise to bring irrigation water from a dam on the Hassayampa River. The dam was never built. Residents later went to court and won back about half of the land.

Living by the desert's calendar

Wittmann's year turns on heat. Federal climate normals for the weather station just southeast of town put the average high at about 65 degrees in January and close to 105 in July, with July and August nights that average in the upper 70s. Rain is scarce, about nine and a half inches a year, and it arrives in two seasons: winter storms from December through March, and the summer monsoon in July, August and September.

That rhythm shapes outdoor life. The cool months from November to March are when chores, riding and farm work fill the days. Summer pushes the outdoor hours to early morning and evening.

The places that hold the community together

The Nadaburg Unified School District is Wittmann's oldest institution. Its roots go back to 1921, when the first permanent schoolhouse went up on Griffin's donated land. The district says a fire in 1926 led to a rebuild, and the Little Red School House that came out of it still hosts the governing board's meetings. The district now runs two K-8 schools, an online academy and Mountainside High School, which moved into its new campus on Crozier Road in the fall of 2024 as the area's first high school. Its students are the Wolves.

Fire and emergency medical service comes from the Arizona Fire and Medical Authority's Station 335 on West Patton Road. Wickenburg Community Hospital runs a primary-care clinic day once a month inside the school district office on Center Street, and a mobile clinic on its lot beside US 60 at 211th Avenue on Thursdays and Fridays.

Farms and alpacas

Wittmann's independent businesses are mostly out on the land, and some welcome visitors by arrangement.

• Edge of Nowhere Farm, on West Radford Road, began in 2014 when Duane and Lori Hebert planted fruit trees on just over an acre. It has grown to six acres with more than 200 fruiting trees, vines and shrubs, plus pastured poultry, pigs and goats. The farm takes reservations for seasonal meat programs and plans a spring farm tour.
• Desert Mirage Alpaca Ranch, on West Roadrunner Road, is a family ranch raising Huacaya alpacas in the Sonoran Desert since 2006. Visitors can book a private tour on weekends and holidays, and the ranch store sells alpaca socks, gloves and scarves.

What is changing

Wittmann is no longer quite as far from everything as it was. BNSF is building Logistics Park Phoenix, a rail-served intermodal and logistics center planned for 4,320 acres in northwest Maricopa County, and in January 2026 the railroad bought more Wittmann properties beside its existing land there. In June 2026 Waymo bought the 5,500-acre vehicle proving ground near Wittmann that Apple had used for its car project and that Fiat Chrysler had used before that for hot-weather testing.

Finding your way as a newcomer

Because Wittmann is unincorporated, there is no city website to bookmark. The Nadaburg Unified School District's site is the closest thing to a community bulletin board, with links to the district's and each school's social pages and a NotifyMe email list for district news. Wittmann has no library branch of its own; the Maricopa County Library District lists its branches and card information on its website. For history, the district has published Ellen Griffin Simmons's account of the schoolhouse and the town's founding, the best short introduction to how Nadaburg became Wittmann.