A Phoenix man was in Patagonia recently and—I don't say he was a typical Phoenix man—commented in a superior tone on the size of the town.
"Why," he said, as if it clinched the argument, "Phoenix would make ten Patagonias."
"And then some," I assented, "but, sonny, I built the third house in Phoenix. Did you know that? And I burnt Indian grain fields in the Salt River Valley long before anyone ever thought of building a city there. Even a big city has had some time to be a small one."
That settled it; the Phoenix gentleman said no more.
I told him only the exact truth when I said that I built the third house in Phoenix.
After I had started the Wickenburg restaurant came rumors that a new city was to be started in the fertile Salt River Valley, between Sacaton and Prescott, some forty or fifty miles north of the former place. Stories came that men had tilled the land of the valley and had found that it would grow almost anything, as, indeed, it has since been found that any land in Arizona will do, providing the water is obtained to irrigate it. One of Arizona's most wonderful phenomena is the sudden greening of the sandy stretches after a heavy rain. One day everything is a sun-dried brown, as far as the eye can see. Every arroyo is dry, the very cactus seems shriveled and the deep blue of the sky gives no promise of any relief. Then, in the night, thunder-clouds roll up from the painted hills, a tropical deluge resembling a cloud-burst falls, and in the morning—lo! where was yellow sand parched from months of drought, is now sprouting green grass! It is a marvelous transformation—a miracle never to be forgotten by one who has seen it.
However, irrigation is absolutely necessary to till the soil in most districts of Arizona, though in some sections of the State dry farming has been successfully resorted to. It has been said that Arizona has more rivers and less water than any state in the Union, and this is true. Many of these are rivers only in the rainy season, which in the desert generally comes about the middle of July and lasts until early fall. Others are what is known as "sinking rivers," flowing above ground for parts of their courses, and as frequently sinking below the sand, to reappear further along. The Sonoita, upon which Patagonia is situated, is one of these "disappearing rivers," the water coming up out of the sand about half a mile from the main street. The big rivers, the Colorado, the Salt, the upper Gila and the San Pedro, run the year around, and there are several smaller streams in the more fertile districts that do the same thing.
The larger part of the Arizona "desert" is not barren sand, but fertile silt and adobe, needing only water to make of it the best possible soil for farming purposes. Favored by a mild winter climate the Salt River Valley can be made to produce crops of some kind each month in the year—fruits in the fall, vegetables in the winter season, grains in spring and alfalfa, the principal crop, throughout the summer. A succession of crops may oftentimes be grown during the year on one farm, so that irrigated lands in Arizona yield several times the produce obtainable in the Eastern states. Alfalfa may be cut six or seven times a year with a yield of as much as ten tons to the acre. The finest Egyptian cotton, free from the boll weevil scourge, may also be grown successfully and is fast becoming one of the staple products of the State. Potatoes, strawberries, pears, peaches and melons, from temperate climates; and citrus fruits, sorghum grains and date palms from subtropical regions, give some idea of the range of crops possible here. Many farmers from the Eastern and Southern states and from California, finding this out, began to take up land, dig irrigating ditches and make homes in Arizona.
Fifteen or twenty pioneers had gone to the Salt River Valley while I was at Wickenburg and there had taken up quarter sections on which they raised, chiefly, barley, wheat, corn and hay. A little fruit was also experimented in. Some of the men who were on the ground at the beginning I remember to have been Dennis and Murphy, Tom Gray, Jack Walters, Johnny George, George Monroe, Joe Fugit, Jack Swilling, Patterson, the Parkers, the Sorrels, the Fenters and a few others whose names I do not recall. A townsite had been laid out, streets surveyed, and before long it became known that the Territory had a new city, the name of which was Phoenix.
The story of the way in which the name "Phoenix" was given to the city that in future days was to become the metropolis of the State, is interesting. When the Miner excitement was over I decided to move to the new Salt River townsite, and soon after my arrival there attended a meeting of citizens gathered together to name the new city. Practically every settler in the Valley was at this meeting, which was destined to become historic.