Phoenix Risen - Another Great Trip to the Arid Zone

Is this a state flag or what?

I was back in Arizona again, visiting my good friend Michelle and exploring more of the fast-growing and increasingly cool (and I don't mean air-conditioning - that's a given) area around Phoenix. There's a lot to the place, and this is the high season (roughly October to June). The biggest revelation to me was the prevalence of agriculture in what first appeared to be scrub and cacti.

White Tank Mtn. petroglyph uploaded by Roger inkart/Wikipedia Commons

Phoenix, named for a bird who's the symbol of rebirth, is the most reinvented and reawakened area in Arizona. Nomadic paleo-Indians roamed the Salt River Valley about 9,000 years ago, following their primary prey, mammoths. Around 1,000 BC, introduction of maize by groups coming north from Mexico brought farming and a more settled way of life. The Hohokam – a cultural group from northern Mexico -  first settled the area around 1 AD, establishing roughly 135 miles (217 km) of irrigation canals (which would later become  the basis for modern canals and aquaduct projects). The water these canals transported enabled the Hohokam culture to thrive throughout the Phoenix Basin, and by 1300 AD, the Hohokam were the largest population in the prehistoric Southwest, and the most populous native community north of Mexico City. The Phoenix aquaduct system was the largest single body of land irrigated in prehistoric times in North or South America, perhaps the world. Hohokam mounds (sometimes referred to as ballcourts) around which cities grew, can be viewed in Greater Phoenix (Pueblo Grande), Mesa (Mesa Grande), Florence (Casa Grande Ruin) and elsewhere. A Hohokam-era petroglyph in the White Tank Mountain Regional Park west of Phoenix may have been a record of a 1006 AD supernova visible in the area.

Our bad boy, Jack Swilling

The Hokokam civilization disappeared from the area by 1450 – drought and intermittent flooding are cited as possible reasons. By the time the first Europeans arrived at the beginning of the 16th century, the two main groups of natives who inhabited the area were the O'odham (Pima) and Sobaipuri tribes, who were reluctant to share the area with American invaders. The first non-native settlement in the area was military: in 1865, the US Army established a fort nearby to quell the “uprisings,” and built a hay camp on the south side of the Salt River in 1866 to supply their horses.
After the Civil War, Confederate veteran Jack Swilling saw the potential in the area and, enlisting the labor and investment of nearby miners, began developing an agricultural venture based on the Hohokam canals.

Swilling suggested naming the town "Stonewall,” after Stonewall Jackson; another proposed name was Salina, which had been an early name for the Salt River. However, in light of the continual rebirth of the area from the Hohokam civilization onward, the name Phoenix stuck. Prescient as he was, Jack Swilling was never able to overcome his addiction to drugs, liquor, and highway robbery, and died in jail while awaiting trial.
Phoenix was incorporated in 1881, and has continued to be an agricultural area that depends on large-scale irrigation projects. Arizona's economy has been traditionally based on the "Five C's": cotton, citrus, cattle, climate (thanks, snowbirds!), and copper.  More about the place (and cotton and climate) to come....

Cactus in the White Tank Mountains By John Menard, Phoenix, USA