Shirley R. Blanton

Tempe (Az) (Images of America) Shirley R. Blanton

Home to 165,000 residents (within a 40 square mile radius), the city of Tempe is surrounded by the booming cities of Mesa, Phoenix, Scottsdale, and Chandler. But the Salt River Valley area was once populated with just a few small farms, when Charles Trumbull Hayden, owner of a mercantile and freighting business in Tucson, homesteaded here in 1870. The community he established--Hayden's Ferry--soon became the trade center for the south side of the valley. Hayden's Ferry became Tempe in 1879 at the suggestion of Englishman Darrell Duppa, who commented that the area reminded him of the Vale of Tempe in Greece, and it was not long before other developments promoted the growth of this new town. In 1885, the Arizona legislature selected Tempe as the site for the Territorial Normal School, the predecessor of Arizona State University. The Maricopa and Phoenix Railroad, which crossed the Salt River at Tempe, was built in 1887, and in 1911, the Roosevelt Dam was completed. World War II, the creation of Tempe Town Lake, and other 20th-century events also influenced the growth and character of Tempe, now Arizona's seventh largest city.