Scottsdale Arizona Homes For Sale - It's A Wonderful Life!

Well, the first settlers to the area certainly wouldn't have been looking for Scottsdale Arizona homes for sale. The Hohokam Indians came to the area centuries before the white man ever set foot on the continent. To seek out a living in the harsh Sonoran desert, they dug over two hundred miles of canals by hand. What kinds of tools were used for this remarkable engineering feat? It was all done with pointed sticks, hoes made from thin pieces of rock, and shovels made from broken pottery.

Even with the advent of the white man, signs advertising Scottsdale Arizona homes for sale would have been few and far between. In 1888 U.S. Army chaplain Winfield Scott paid two dollars and fifty cents an acre for the land that would eventually be named for him and his brother, the first white resident of the area. It wasn't until 1894 that the name of the growing little town was changed from Orangedale to Scottsdale.

One property that would never have shown up on the general listings of Scottsdale Arizona homes for sale is the world famous Taliesin West. Designed by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and built in 1937, this compound served as an architectural school and winter retreat. Not even the most elegant of Scottsdale Arizona homes for sale today could compete with Taliesin West in terms of fame, but some of them owe their design to concepts pioneered at the school.

Even when Scottsdale was incorporated as a city in 1951, Scottsdale Arizona homes for sale would still have been in short supply. At that time, the city measured just one square mile, and had a population of only two thousand people. Compared to today's Scottsdale, which covers 184.2 square miles, and has over 230,000 residents, it hardly seems possible that they are one and the same. Scottsdale is currently the second largest Arizona city in area and the fifth largest in population.