A Brief History of Mesa, Arizona

Mesa City - 1878 to Depression

On July 17 1878, Theodore Sirrine went to Florence to register Section 22, now called the Town Center: the square mile from Mesa Drive to Country Club and University to Broadway. There is some confusion about early names for Mesa because of Post Office designations; however, the town itself was always called Mesa City. Postal authorities considered the name Mesa unacceptable at first, as it was thought it would be confused with Mesaville on the San Pedro River. The first Post Office name was Hayden's Ferry (not to be confused with Tempe), operated by Fannie Macdonald in 1881. In 1886, the Post Office name was changed to Zenos. In 1889, the Post Office Department finally allowed the name Mesa City.

After shelters were built and crops prepared, the Mesa settlers built a school. Zulu Pomeroy taught the first classes there in 1879.

Five years after the founding, in 1883, the 300 residents incorporated Mesa City and chose Alexander F. Macdonald as the first mayor. Early buildings included a pest-house adobe structure to control smallpox, a city hall, and saloons for Roosevelt Dam workers.

The Mesa Free Press newspaper began in 1892; it has run continuously since then under various names, currently The East Valley Tribune. The City of Mesa Library has most of the local newspapers on microfilm from mid 1893, with the exception of the years 1901-1914, which were lost in a fire at the newspaper office. (If anyone knows where these issues are, please ask them to contact the Mesa Room at 480-644-3730.) The library contracted indexing of all issues of the Tribune microfilm held by the library covering the years 1893 to 1921.

Dr. A.J. Chandler, who later started the city bearing his name south of Mesa, built a retail/office complex in Mesa before 1911. This building was located on the northwest corner of Main and Macdonald. It used the first evaporative air-cooling system in Arizona.

Dr. Chandler enlarged the Mesa Canal with heavy machinery in 1895 to allow enough water flow to start an electric power plant. The City of Mesa purchased the utility company in 1917, becoming one of the few cities in Arizona to own utilities. Utility earnings enabled Mesa to pay for capital expenditures without bonds until the 1960s.

Utility earnings provided the shared funds that allowed construction and service projects to be implemented during the Works Progress Administration during the Depression. Some of the improvements were paved streets, sidewalks and curbs in the Town Center, the first hospital not converted from a residence, a recreation department and park facilities, and a modern city hall/library with expanded library hours.