Scottsdale, AZ news and local guide

In the early to mid-1880s the Army chaplain Winfield Scott visited the Salt River Valley and saw its farming potential. He returned in 1888 with his wife, Helen, and bought 640 acres, where Old Town now stands, for $3.50 an acre. Albert G. Utley, who owned land to the south, filed plans for a town called Orangedale, but the Arizona Republican mistakenly called it Scottsdale, and the publicity persuaded Utley to change the name. The first schoolhouse opened in 1896, and J.L. Davis's general store, with the first post office, opened in 1897. In the early 1900s the community drew artists and writers. The Ingleside Inn, the region's first resort, opened in 1909, the year Cavalliere's Blacksmith Shop opened and the Little Red Schoolhouse, which still stands, replaced the first school. The building of Granite Reef Dam in 1908 and Roosevelt Dam in 1911 brought steady growth, and Scottsdale became a small market town for farm families. During World War I the Department of Agriculture's long-staple Egyptian cotton set off a cotton boom, which ended with the war. In 1920 the Jokake Inn, "mud house," opened on land owned by the artist Jessie Benton Evans. Sources Wikipedia: Scottsdale, Arizona