By about 1869, William H. Kirkland and James B. McKinney were directing the construction of the first irrigation ditch on the south side of the Salt River. In late 1870, the Tempe Irrigating Canal Company was formed to develop the Kirkland-McKinney Ditch into a network of canals to bring thousands of acres to the south under cultivation. About the same time, Mexican farmers a few miles to the west completed the San Francisco Canal and began irrigating lands to the south and west, toward the Salt River Mountains (South Mountain). By 1871, this southside area, which included several small settlements, was known as Tempe or Rio Salado.
The Sotelo family was one of the first to settle in the Tempe area. Tiburcio Sotelo and his sons, José and Feliciano, worked on the Kirkland-McKinney Ditch in 1870, and settled on 160 acres in section 23. All three died within a few years: Tiburcio had apparently been ill, and both of his sons were killed by Apaches. Tiburcio's widow, Manuela Sánchez Sotelo, then came up from Tucson and settled on the land with her six daughters and youngest son. In what was virtually a wilderness, the family grew corn, beans, squash, and herbs.
Manuel Gonzales, of a prominent ranching family in central Sonora, had heard of the development in the Salt River Valley. He headed north for Arizona in 1869 and worked on the Kirkland-McKinney Ditch while his family stayed in Tucson. Eventually several of his brothers joined him, bringing cattle and peach saplings into the Tempe area.
Charles T. Hayden, a Tucson merchant and freighter, is usually credited with being the founder of Tempe. In 1870, he and four associates filed a claim to 10,000 miner's inches of water from the Salt River for the Hayden Milling and Farm Ditch Company. Hayden also filed a homestead claim on land in section 15 (which is now downtown Tempe), and had an adobe store built. By 1875, he had built a store, a flour mill, and a cable-operated ferry on the river, and had moved his freighting operations to this settlement, which became known as Hayden's Ferry. Hayden employed dozens of Hispanic workers at the mill and freight yard, and as teamsters. Most of these employees lived in adobe rowhouses by the river.
In 1872, a new community was established just east of Hayden's Ferry by Mexican laborers who had worked on the Kirkland-McKinney Ditch. William Kirkland donated the 80-acre townsite. The Arizona Citizen reported: The Tempe people, not satisfied with Hayden's Ferry, have laid out a new town just along side named San Pablo and the proceeds of the sale of the town lots is to be devoted to the building of a Catholic church. Two Catholic priests from Florence were invited to a meeting of the San Pablo Town Association, and Father Andrés Eschallier, pastor of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church, celebrated the first Mass in Tempe on Sunday, April 12, 1872. An adobe church was finally built in San Pablo, and dedicated to Our Lady of Mount Carmel in 1881.
One of the first resident of San Pablo was Juan Soza, who arrived in Tempe in 1871. Soza was born in Tucson in 1851. He worked as an Indian scout, mail carrier, and stage coach driver. He and his brother, Placido, worked for Charles Hayden extending the Hayden Canal, building the flour mill, and clearing farm land. Soza went back to Tucson for a while, where he married Jesús María Sotelo, daughter of Tiburcio and Manuela Sotelo, and returned to Tempe in 1873. He had rights to free irrigation water for the work he had done on the Tempe Canal, and started a farm on eighty acres west of Hayden's Ferry. Soza later moved to his mother-in-law's land to the east and became an influential leader in the Hispanic community, serving three terms as deputy sheriff
By the late 19th century, Tempe was probably the largest Latino community in the Salt River Valley. The population of Tempe was predominantly Hispanic until 1900. Many of the towns most influential Anglo leaders, such as Winchester Miller and James T. Priest, married into the local Mexican families. Other Early settlers in Tempe included Jesús E. Gómez, Alejandro Moraga, Manuel Escalante, José Francisco Ruiz, Samuel Brown, and Antonio A. Celaya.
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