Phoenix was founded in 1867, when a man named Jack Swilling came to the area from Wickenburg. Swilling, an adventurer, gold prospector, and member of the "Gila Rangers" militia, saw the potential for agriculture in the abandoned Ho Ho Kam irrigation canals in the Salt River Valley.Many people had commented on the canals before, but Jack was the first to do something about it. He had formed the Swilling Irrigating and Canal Company in Wickenburg, and he and a small party of men moved to the valley to create an up to date system of canals. Within a year, the first crops of wheat, barley, and corn appeared, and this small farming community was started. There were mining camps nearby, and Fort McDowell(built in 1865 as an outpost to combat the Apache from the nearby mountains) , but no permanent town existed prior to this.
Crops thrived, trade was established with Fort McDowell and the mining camps, and the town grew; by 1870, there were 235 citizens. It was time to have a name. The names Pumpkinville and Stonewall were proposed, but the assemblage chose Phoenix as the new name. Proposed by a Cambridge educated Englishman named Darrell Duppa, Phoenix was the mythical bird of Egypt which flew into its funeral pyre every millennium, only to reemerge, reinvigorated for another 1000 years..Duppa had originally come to the area with his friend Jack Swilling, and stayed until his death in 1892, naming the towns of Tempe and New River as well.
This was the beginning of one of the major metropolitan areas in the country…