A Brief History of Phoenix, Arizona By Larry Reaves At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

Settlement in the Valley of the Sun (known locally as simply "The Valley") has been documented as far back as 1,200 years when Native Americans known as the Hohokam Indians settled in the area.

The Hohokam were farmers and created the irrigation channels and pathways that the modern city was founded upon but unfortunately, around the 1400's they simply disappeared from the area. It is believed that their water supply dried up due to severe and prolonged drought but whatever the reason, human settlement declined so only the occasional traveler or mountain man lingered temporarily in the area.

So it was that a Civil War soldier seeking a new home after fighting in the service of the Confederates happened across the spot. Jack Swilling saw what the original Hohokam had seen, a basin that would bloom if the water could be delivered and though he had been intending to settle and work in a nearby town, in 1864 he decided to set his vision into motion in The Valley of the Sun. Swilling developed several irrigation canals which largely followed the ancient ruins and channel ways left by the Hohokam; his plan worked and soon a thriving settlement was formed with Swilling acting as general postmaster and leader of the small community.

Things would have remained pretty much as they were with the as yet unnamed settlement continuing as a farming and trading center for the locality and enjoying the occasional mountain man and settler moving further west as guests. In the late 1800's the railroad arrived turning this small rural community into a fast growing trading center which came to dominate the immediate area beyond the basin and the mountains. Swilling wanted to name the new town Jackson after General Stonewall Jackson, but this was not the South and the local residents refused to accept the name until it was agreed that as the town was rising from the ashes of the Hohokam, Phoenix was more appropriate.

The name stuck and now the road was paved for a period of dramatic and profitable growth as goods poured into the railroad hub that Phoenix came to be. Thousands of workers were drafted into the area with the advent of the massive dam projects as a result of President Roosevelt enacting the Land Reclamation Act and no sooner had this period of expansion started to die down, when the First and Second World Wars resulted in yet more expansion to service the military bases springing up in the area as well as the huge military manufacturing enterprises that called Phoenix their home.

The post-war years have seen continued expansion with modern industries benefiting from a well educated work force and a wide range of skills and specialties available in the immediate area. The 1990's have heralded yet another period of massive growth in the city and now the City of Phoenix is the largest Mountain region city as well as being second only to Los Angeles in the West. As capitol of the State of Arizona, Phoenix is the only state capitol with a population in excess of a million people and is one of the fastest growing cities in America today.

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