Page 18 - Curriculum Visions Dynamic Book

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of Phoenix’s oldest houses. The town was officially recognized in 1868. In 1870 there were 240 people, but no real site for the growing settlement. On October 20, 1870, the residents held a meeting to decide where to locate it. That location is where downtown Phoenix now is.
In February 1871 Maricopa County was created and Phoenix was named the county seat. The first church and store opened in 1871, as did the first store, followed by the first public school in 1872, in the courtroom of the county building by October 1873.
By 1875, the town had a telegraph office, sixteen saloons, and four dance halls, for it was still a ‘wild west’ kind of town, made mainly of miners. By 1878 the first bank opened, and in 1880, Phoenix’s population had reached 2,453. On February 25, 1881, Phoenix was incorporated. It now had a population of 2,500. During the 1880s, a fire department, gas supply, telephone company, mule-drawn streetcar system and electric power all arrived in Phoenix. It was by now a thoroughly modern town.
Until this time, goods had all come in by wagon. The railroad also arrived in the 1880s and Phoenix became a trade center The territorial capital was moved from Prescott to Phoenix in 1889. The Phoenix Street Railway electrified its mule-drawn streetcar lines in 1893. In 1895 a further railroad line came in from the north, making the city a transport hub for the southwest.
By 1900 the population of Phoenix had reached 5,554, and the next year a state Capitol building was opened.
By now, the growth of Phoenix into a sizeble city meant that it was no longer a wild west town, and the dry desert air was a major attraction for tuberculosis patients.
In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt signed the National Reclamation Act, allowing for dams to be built on western streams for reclamation purposes. Theodore Roosevelt Dam was started in 1906, then the largest masonry dam in the world.
On February 14, 1912 Phoenix became the capital of the newly formed state of Arizona.
By 1920 the population had grown to 29,000.