Within the last 100 years, Glendale’s economic progress could be summed up by two words, water and transportation.
Water is actually what created Glendale’s industry. Two water sources assured a stable water supply and freedom from the effects of droughts and floods, the Arizona Canal and the Roosevelt Dam. Because of these water sources Glendale became an agricultural mecca. They specialized in lettuce, melons, sugar beets and cotton.
Because of Jack Swilling, who was the Phoenix’s founder, a saloon brawler and drug addict, he re-excavated the prehistoric Hohokam Indian canals that irrigated thousands of acres of farmland along the Salt River. His efforts also helped give birth to Southeast Valley Settlements that became the cities of Tempe and Mesa.
Regrettably, for the northern and western portions of the Salt River Valley, the Indian Canals were not restored. The lands that made up Northwest Phoenix, Glendale and Peoria today remained raw desert more than 15 years after the East Valley cities had already been settled. In order to restore life to the barren Northwest Valley it, too, needed to have that all-powerful resource, water.
The Arizona Canal Company, which was incorporated on December 20, 1882, had the idea to build a canal 44 miles long from the Salt River westward across the northern part of the valley on the Agua Fria River. During the process, gigantic engineering problems were overcome and by May 1885 the first water flowed through the newly constructed Arizona Canal. |
