The history of Phoenix, Arizona, goes back millennia, beginning with nomadic paleo-Indians who existed in the Americas in general, and the Salt River Valley in particular, about 7,000 BC until about 6,000 BC. Mammoths were the primary prey of hunters. As that prey moved eastward, they followed, vacating the area. Other nomadic tribes (archaic Indians) moved into the area, mostly from Mexico to the south and California to the west. Around approximately 1,000 BC, the nomadic began to be accompanied by two other types of cultures, commonly called the farmers and the villagers, prompted by the introduction of maize into their culture. Out of these archaic Indians, the Hohokam civilization arose. The Hohokam first settled the area around 1 AD, and in about 500 years, they had begun to establish the canal system which enabled agriculture to flourish in the area. They suddenly disappeared by 1450, for unknown reasons. By the time the first Europeans arrived at the beginning of the 16th century, the two main groups of native Indians who inhabited the area were the O'odham and Sobaipuri tribes.
While the first explorers were Spanish, their attempts at settlement were confined to Tucson and the south before 1800. Central Arizona was first settled during the early 19th century by American settlers. The city of Phoenix's story begins as people from those settlements expanded south, in conjunction with the establishment of a military outpost to the east of current day Phoenix.
The town of Phoenix was settled in 1867, and incorporated in 1881 as the City of Phoenix. Phoenix served as an agricultural area that depended on large-scale irrigation projects. Until World War II, the economy was based on the "Five C's": cotton, citrus, cattle, climate, and copper. The city provided retail, wholesale, banking, and governmental services for central Arizona, and was gaining a national reputation among winter tourists. The post World War II years saw the city beginning to grow more rapidly, as many men who had trained in the military installations in the valley, returned, bringing their families. The population growth was further stimulated in the 1950s, in part because of the availability of air conditioning, which made the very hot dry summer heat tolerable, as well as an influx of industry, led by high tech companies. The population growth rate of the Phoenix metro area has been nearly 4% per year for the past 40 years. That growth rate slowed during the Great Recession but the U.S. Census Bureau predicted it would resume as the nation's economy recovered, and it already has begun to do so. It is currently the fifth most populous city in the United States. However, on June 1, 2023, the State of Arizona announced the historic decision to halt new housing development in the Phoenix metropolitan area that relies solely on groundwater, due to a predicted water shortfall to support continued unregulated growth, in conjunction with climate change.
Native American period Paleo and archaic Indian period
The first inhabitants of the desert southwest, including what would become Phoenix, called Paleo-Indians, were hunters and gatherers. The term "paleo", is derived from the Greek word "palaios," meaning ancient. They hunted Pleistocene animals, such as mammoths, mastodons, giant bison, ancient horses, camels, and giant sloths, remains of which have been discovered in the Salt River Valley. Inhabiting the southwestern United States and northern Mexico for tens of thousands of years, when the prey they depended on left the area, they followed in approximately 9,000 BC.
After the departure of the paleo-Indians, archaic Indians moved into the American Southwest. This period lasted from roughly about 7,000 BC until the onset of the Christian era. Consisting of small bands of hunters and gatherers, these nomads traveled throughout the area for millennia, until about 3,000 years ago when their culture began to become an agricultural lifestyle. At about this time, the introduction of the cultivation of maize further contributed to the agrarian culture. As time went on and farming became more established, groups began developing differences in their material culture. Through these differences, cultures of the Southwest became more visibly distinct from one another, which would be broken down into the farmers, the villagers, and the nomads. From the farmers culture would emerge a tribe known as the Hohokam.
Hohokam period
At some point in the centuries before the Common Era, a group of archaic Indians migrated north from Mexico, bringing with them an agrarian society, different from the hunter-gatherer cultures of most of the archaic Indian tribes. Evidence of this culture has been uncovered in the Tucson area, consisting of slab-lined storage pits, and "sleeping circles". This archaic Indian culture would give rise to the Hohokam peoples, who, right around the beginning of the Common Era, moved further north and settled in the Salt River basin.
For more than 2,000 years, the Hohokam peoples occupied the land that would become Phoenix. Hohokam is a present-day name given to the occupants of central and southern Arizona who lived here between about the year 1 and 1450 CE (current era). It is derived from the Pima Indian (Akimel O'odham) word for "those who have gone" or "all used up".
The Hohokam inhabitation of the valley is broken up by paleontologists into five periods. The earliest period is known as the Pioneer Period, which lasted roughly from 1–700 AD, and was categorized by groups of shallow pit houses, and by its end the first canals were being used for irrigation, and the first decorated ceramics were appearing. This was followed by the Colonial Period (c. 700 – 900 AD), during which time the irrigation system was expanded and the community sizes grew, as did the size of the dwellings. Rock art and ballcourts began to appear, and cremations became the usual form of burial. 900 to 1150 AD, referred to as the Sedentary Period, again saw the expansion of the settlements and the canal system. Platform mounds began to be built, and plazas and the ballcourts which began to appear in the last period, became more prevalent in the larger settlements. The final period, the Classic Period, lasted approximately from 1150 AD until 1450 AD. The number of villages declined during this period, but the size of the remaining settlements increased.
During their inhabitation of the valley, the Hohokam created roughly 135 miles (217 km) of irrigation canals, making the desert land arable. Paths of these canals would later become used for the modern Arizona Canal, Central Arizona Project Canal, and the Hayden-Rhodes Aqueduct. The irrigation provided by these canals enabled the Hohokam culture to spread throughout the valley, and by 1300 AD, the Hohokam were the largest population in the prehistoric Southwest, and the largest native population north of Mexico City. This was the largest single body of land irrigated in prehistoric times in North or South America, perhaps in the world. The Hohokam also carried out extensive trade with the nearby Anasazi, Mogollon and Sinagua, as well as with the more distant Mesoamerican civilizations like the Aztecs. It is believed that a Hohokam witness of the supernova that occurred in 1006 CE created a representation of the event in the form of a petroglyph that can be found in the White Tank Mountain Regional Park west of Phoenix. If confirmed, this is the only known Native American representation of the supernova.
At some point in the mid-15th century, the Hohokam culture simply disappeared from the area, speculation as to why has focused on periods of drought and severe floods during this period.Trimble 1988, p. 105.
Modern Indian period After the departure of the Hohokam, groups of Akimel O'odham (commonly known as Pima), Tohono O'odham and Maricopa tribes began to use the area, as well as segments of the Yavapai and Apache.
The O'odham were offshoots of the Sobaipuri tribe, who in turn were thought to be the descendants of the formerly urbanized Hohokam. The two O'odham peoples were split between the Akimel (river people) and Tohono (desert people). The Akimel O'odham were the major Indian group in the area, and lived in small villages, with well-defined irrigation systems, which spread over the entire Gila River Valley, from Florence in the east to the Estrellas in the west. Their crops included corn, beans and squash for food, while cotton and tobacco were also cultivated. Mostly a peaceful group, they did band together with the Maricopa for their mutual protection against incursions by both the Yuma and Apache tribes.
The Tohono O'odham lived in the region as well, but their main concentration was further south of the Pima, and stretched all the way to the Mexican border. Originally known to the European settlers as the Papago (which literally means "tepary-bean eater"), in recent times the tribe has dropped usage of that name. Living in small settlements, the O'odham were seasonal farmers who took advantage of the rains, rather than the large-scale irrigation of the Akimel. They grew crops such as sweet Indian corn, tepary beans, squash, lentils, sugar cane, and melons, as well as taking advantage of native plants, such as saguaro fruits, cholla buds, mesquite tree beans, and mesquite candy (sap from the mesquite tree). They also hunted local game such as deer, rabbit and javalina for meat.
The Maricopa are part of the larger Yuma people, however they migrated east from the lower Colorado and Gila Rivers in the early 1800s, when they began to be enemies with their Yuma brethren, settling amongst the existing communities of the Akimel O'odham.
The Salt River's irregular supply of water and lack of navigability appears to have otherwise prevented stable communities from being established nearby until the modern period of US control.
European arrival Spanish explorers most likely traveled through the area in the 16th century. They left accounts of their travels, and also left behind European diseases that ravaged Indian tribes with no immunity, especially smallpox, measles and influenza. The Spanish opened a mission in the Tucson area, but made no settlements anywhere near Phoenix.
When the Mexican–American War ended in 1848, most of Mexico's northern zone passed to United States control, and a portion of it was made the New Mexico Territory (including what is now Phoenix) shortly afterward. Then In the Gadsden Purchase of 1853 the U.S. promised to honor all land rights of the area, including those of the O'odham. The O'odham gained full constitutional rights.
During the American Civil War, the Salt River and Gila River Valleys, which comprise much of the territory which makes up Phoenix today, were claimed by both sides in the conflict. Confederate Arizona was officially claimed by The South, and formally created by a proclamation by Jefferson Davis on February 14, 1862. Its capital was at Mesilla, in New Mexico. The North claimed the Salt River Valley as part of the Arizona Territory, formed by Congress in 1863 with its capital at Fort Whipple, before it was moved the following year to Prescott. While laying claim to the area, the Confederates made no move to enforce that claim, while one of the reasons for the establishment of Fort McDowell was to support the North's possession of the territory. However, since the Phoenix area had no military value, it was not contested ground during the war.
The founding of Phoenix In 1863 the mining community of Wickenburg was the first to be established in what is now Maricopa County, to the north-west of modern Phoenix. At the time Maricopa County had not yet been incorporated: the land was within Yavapai County, which included the major town of Prescott to the north of Wickenburg.