The Tohono O’odham and the Pima peoples are considered direct descendants of this ancient civilization. Some of those canals are still in use today, although now they’re lined with concrete. Not by a long shot.įrom ~300 BCE to ~1450 CE the Hohokam farmed the land, carving canals out of the desert and irrigating up to 110,000 acres. They weren’t the first residents, though. The brothers planted citrus groves and the town became known as Orangedale, but that was changed in 1894 to its current name. The town began when Winfield Scott, his wife, Helen, and his brother, George Washington Scott, set up residence in this desert valley. Since the population of Scottsdale, Arizona, is around a quarter of a million people, it’s a city in its own right. “The West’s Most Western Town” (Scottsdale’s official slogan) may be located next to Phoenix, but don’t call it a suburb. The majority of my stay was hosted by Experience Scottsdale, the city’s tourist organization, but all opinions are my own and not influenced at all by huckleberry margaritas or wild horses. I visited Scottsdale as a mentor for Bloghouse, an application-only conference for travel bloggers. Grab a bottle of water, a heap of sunscreen, and get comfortable, because I’m going to take you with me to experience Scottsdale, Arizona. It is green golf courses and brown lawns ritzy spas and rugged hikes the Old West, ancient cultures, contemporary art, and a heavy metal wine bar. (In the winter…they’re hardy, not gluttons.) The Sonoran summer and the Chicago winter are for hardy folk who adapt to their environments, and it seems there’s a resonance: another item I heard over and over was that Scottsdale is like a mini-Chicago because so many people have moved there from the Windy City. Over the next week, I began to see that they define this desert community in the same way the mercurial weather of the Midwest influences the people who live there. The searing air and constant sun were more than just conversational bumpers. “Normally we’d hit triple digits in May.” “You’re lucky it’s cooler this year,” was the refrain.
And nearly every local I met mentioned how hot it was, and that it wasn’t nearly as hot as it should be. That’s an obligatory phrase in Scottsdale, Arizona, one that’s uttered reflex-like whenever someone mentions the temperature. The cool water evaporated almost the instant my foot hit the shore. I stepped out of the kayak and into the shallows.
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