Jack Swilling

Passage One

Phoenix's modern history begins in the second half of the 19th century. In 1867, Jack Swilling of Wickenburg stopped to rest his horse at the foot of the north slopes of the White Tank Mountains. He looked down and across the expansive Salt River Valley and his eyes caught the rich gleam of the brown, dry soil turned up by the horse's hooves. He saw farm land, predominately free of rocks, and in a place beyond the reach of heavy frost or snow. All it needed was water.

Returning to Wickenburg, he organized the Swilling Irrigation Canal Company, and moved into the Valley. The same year, the company began digging a canal to divert some of the water of the Salt River onto the lands of the Valley. By March 1868, water flowed through the canal, and a few members of the company raised meager crops that summer.

^{Source: City of Phoenix . http://phoenix.gov/CITYGOV/history.html#EARLY}

Passage Two

No one made an effort toward restoring the agricultural splendor of the Hohokam until Swilling made his appearance. . . .

While passing through the Salt River Valley in November 1867, Swilling noticed the ruins of the Hohokam irrigation system and sensed the agricultural possibilities of the area. . . . [H]e received enough financial backing from a group of local supporters to organize the Swilling Irrigating and Canal Company. After securing supplies and hiring sixteen workers, most of whom were unemployed miners, the perceptive Swilling in December 1867 moved his business enterprise to the Salt River Valley, where he began to supervise the cultivation of the rich soil. . . . [H]e and his companions cleaned out old irrigation ditches and constructed new ones, planted crops, and negotiated supply contracts with Camp McDowell officials and local interests in Wickenburg and other nearby central Arizona mining towns and camps.

^{Source: Luckingham, Bradford. Phoenix: The History of a Southwestern Metropolis. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1989. 13-14.}