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    Chandler
    Chandler
    Chandler
    Ebook187 pages1 hour

    Chandler

    By Jody A. Crago, Mari Dresner and Nate Meyers

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    About this ebook

    Chandler is located 20 miles southeast of Phoenix and has been the home of innovative, forward-thinking people for many decades. As Phoenix began to grow in the late 19th century, a young veterinarian decided to aquire several acres of the surrounding land. Dr. Alexander J. Chandler took a few business gambles with his new acquisition, and the 18,000 acres known then as Chandler Ranch were soon split into lots and sold as the new town of Chandler. Once the town was established in 1912, Dr. Chandler relied on industrial agriculture and the new, lavish San Marcos Hotel to attract new residents. Later, Dr. Chandler brought Frank Lloyd Wright to redesign downtown and build a new hotel. During World War II, several families and businesses came to the area because of the new Williams Air Force Base. Following the war, high-tech businesses and bioscience firms created a new economy in Chandler, which led to a modern patchwork of people who represent Chandler today.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateJan 30, 2012
    ISBN9781439649916
    Chandler
    Author

    Jody A. Crago

    In this volume, authors Jody A. Crago, Mari Dresner, and Nate Meyers, staff members of the Chandler Museum, gathered more than 200 historic images primarily from the extensive archives of the Chandler Museum to illustrate the unique story of their community.

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      Book preview

      Chandler - Jody A. Crago

      collection.

      INTRODUCTION

      Chandler, Arizona, lies on the high plain between the Salt and Gila Rivers. This area was one of the last in the East Valley to be settled because of the challenges of bringing water. Despite these conditions, Native Americans have called the area home for thousands of years. The Huhugam successfully irrigated the area for at least 1,000 years, growing a multitude of crops including squash, maize, and cotton. When Anglos began traveling through Arizona to California in the 1840s, they encountered the Pima, who were very productive farmers. They were raising wheat, beans, watermelon, and other subsistence crops, which they shared with the travellers. The land was also fertile for other peoples like the Mexican Yaqui, who settled in an area of today’s west Chandler.

      The passage of the Desert Land Act in 1877 opened up broad swaths of land for individuals or families who were willing to settle, irrigate, and farm their property. The legislation allowed people to claim 320 acres as an individual or 640 acres as a married couple at $1.25 per acre. Claimants had to have a witness to prove that they had irrigated the land within three years. While this system encouraged many honest people to make claims, it also encouraged fraudulent ownership and land speculation. A handful of people took advantage of loopholes in the Desert Land Act, and they were able to acquire thousands of acres.

      Into this period of development and land speculation entered Dr. Alexander J. Chandler, a veterinary surgeon from Coaticook, Quebec, by way of Detroit. The story of the city of Chandler begins on August 8, 1887, when 28-year-old Chandler was approached regarding the position of territorial veterinary surgeon for Arizona. Despite taking a pay cut from his successful Detroit veterinary business, he saw an opportunity to make money on the open lands of the arid West. He accepted the job, but after 30 days, Chandler resigned his post to pursue greener options in California. After an arduous two-day stagecoach ride, the monsoon rains arrived in Phoenix at the same time that Chandler did, preventing him from proceeding to California for three weeks. What Chandler saw was that the rain had turned the desert into a veritable garden. He decided then that after visiting California he would return to Arizona, not to care for livestock but to green the desert. Doctor Chandler, following the examples of W.J. Murphy and Benjamin Fowler, utilized loopholes in the Desert Land Act to acquire a ranch of 18,000 acres south of Mesa.

      In addition to farming his land, Chandler started a business consolidating the irrigation system on the south side of the Salt River. He worked to develop new canal systems, made contracts with Tempe and Mesa to deliver water to those communities, created a hydroelectric power plant, and dug wells to deliver water to his 18,000-acre ranch. He raised cattle, sheep, ostriches and other fowl, melons, citrus, peaches, dates, cotton, alfalfa, and other vegetables and fruits.

      In the first decade of the 1900s, after the construction of Roosevelt Dam ensured a steady supply of water, Chandler’s 18,000 acres became more valuable as real estate than as an agricultural operation. Chandler subdivided his land into individualized farm parcels and planned the layout of a new city in the East Valley that would bear his name. To advertise the sale of his land, Doctor Chandler and the Chandler Improvement Company bragged in promotional materials that the semi-tropical climate, the almost continuous sunshine, the deep rich sandy loam soil and an incomparable supply of water from the finest irrigation system in the world makes Chandler Ranch the most attractive location for the fruit raiser and gardener in the United States today. Many people gambled their savings to invest in the sure bet of Chandler farmland. In comparison to the expensive farmlands of Southern California, Washington State, and Oregon, the cheap land and bountiful yields in Chandler seemed to promise the American dream. In planning for the new city of Chandler, Doctor Chandler looked for inspiration from Southern California, in particular Pasadena. Built on a main railroad line, Pasadena sprang up as a resort community surrounded by industrial agriculture near a large thriving city, Los Angeles. Pasadena had a reputation as a luxurious destination, where wealthy Easterners spent their winters. Doctor Chandler envisioned a similar development in the Salt River Valley close to the booming city of Phoenix. He brought irrigation engineers, contractors, architects, investors, and boosters to Arizona from Southern California to plan a community and bring attention to the new town of Chandler. A national advertising campaign proclaimed Chandler to be the Pasadena of the Salt River Valley and promoted the fertile soil and year-round growing season for industrial agriculture interests.

      To ensure that the Pasadena model would work in Chandler, Doctor Chandler planned the ultimate resort hotel for the Salt River Valley that would attract discerning vacationers from across the country. A year after Chandler opened the townsite for settlement in 1912, the San Marcos Hotel opened to great fanfare, with Vice Pres. Thomas Marshall and prominent Eastern and California businessmen in attendance. The hotel promised the most modern amenities, such as 1,500 incandescent lightbulbs, telephones in every room, and more than three miles of copper wiring. As it matured, the San Marcos, with its luxuries, became a favorite vacation spot of businessmen, celebrities, and politicians from across the country. Guests could rent a room or, ultimately, a bungalow for the winter season to take advantage of activities, such as trips to Roosevelt Dam, horseback rides to the mountains, polo, and golf on Arizona’s first grass course. Through subsequent owners like John Quarty, the San Marcos remained a popular tourist destination.

      Though Doctor Chandler left the agriculture industry, the plan for industrial agriculture in Chandler took off. Alfalfa became a profitable crop to feed the growing cattle ranches. Thousands of acres of alfalfa were planted throughout Chandler by many farmers and ultimately led to the construction of an alfalfa mill to process the crops. Chandler’s land at

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