The Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community is a centrifugal force grounded in Scottsdale’s history that revolves around a canal.
Historical accounts tell about the founder of the “West’s Most Western Town,” U.S. Army Chaplain Winfield Scott, visiting the Salt River Valley in 1888, buying farm land by what is now downtown Scottsdale, settling his original homestead near the new Arizona Canal to use its steady water supply and develop a community.
But long before Mr. Scott arrived, accounts tell how Indigenous residents initially toiled and irrigated the land from an ancient civilization called the Hohokam, who settled in the area first, established the canal system that enabled agriculture and turned the Salt River Valley into a “fertile oasis,” before their sudden disappearance.
