Long before Jack Swilling strode in, or likely galloped in on horseback since it was 1867 after all, the area we now refer to as Maricopa County was inhabited by the ancestral Sonoran Desert people. The National Park Service explains that these ancient desert dwellers were our nation’s earliest farmers, cultivating domesticated crops from Mesoamerica, especially the trifecta of corn, beans, and squash.

As their civilization grew and their transition from hunter-gatherer to farmer gained permanence, the need for more water to irrigate their crops became paramount.

The Sonoran Desert people, dubbed Hohokam by archaeologists, began to dig a series of canals to divert water from the Gila and Salt Rivers to ensure that their crops had the water they needed to flourish.

They dug over 100 miles of canals and successfully irrigated this arid area of the southwest before their civilization mysteriously disappeared.

It was these same canals that Jack Swilling, an Arizona settler stumbled upon hundreds of years later, that inspired him to create the Swilling Irrigation Canal Company. This company and the settlement that formed up around it was the incubator of the bustling metropolis that Phoenix, Arizona is today.

As for the rest of the county? Maricopa was established on February 14, 1871, 40 years prior to Arizona’s statehood. Remarkably, the geographic boundaries established in 1881 have not changed since, making it the largest of Arizona’s only 15 counties.

According to the Inter-Tribal Council of Arizona, there are 21 Tribal Nations in the State of Arizona. The Gila River Indian Community (GRIC), traces its roots to the Hohokam, or the ancestral Sonoran Desert peoples, and the GRIC is made up of two members of tribes, the Pima and the Maricopa.

The Maricopa call themselves Piipaash and the county that encompasses their ancestral lands including the Phoenix metro area is named for these people.