Week 13: Hightown

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As the local economy returns to health in the wake of the Great Recession, new neighborhoods are popping up all over Chandler.  The new neighborhoods join with the older ones to create the modern patchwork that is Chandler today.  Even as roads are widened, retail centers and homes are built, and entire square miles are master planned, some of the oldest neighborhoods retain their unique sense of place.  One such neighborhood at the corner of Chandler Boulevard and McClintock Road is known as Pueblo Alto, or Hightown.

Hightown was so named because at the time of its settlement the land it sat on was slightly higher than the surrounding area.  It is difficult to see that elevation change today due to all of the development which has since occurred.  The higher elevation made it nearly impossible to irrigate.  Consequently all the land around it was cleared and farmed, leaving an ideal place for people to settle.

The land that Hightown sat on was owned by W. J. Kingsbury, a lawyer, who was also the president of Farmers & Merchants Bank in Tempe and the Tempe News.  Whereas he owned the property, the land was left as natural desert land.  In fact, early residents initially called the area El Chamizo, a reference to the type of desert bushes growing throughout the area. The settlement, which was made up primarily of Mexican and Yaqui Indian laborers who worked on the surrounding farms, grew up around a feature known as the “old Indian well.”  It is unknown when the well was originally dug, but it was a central feature of the Hightown community.  Early hand drawn maps of the community show a maze of paths and trails connecting people’s homes to the well.  This community grew in a rather scattered fashion, as many of the original settlers were squatters who built their homes where they could find space.  One organizing principle did exist. The two ethnic groups were separated by an irrigation canal.

At first, families had no electricity or running water. While they could use the nearby irrigation canal for washing, they needed to travel several miles west to the town of Kyrene to get their drinking water. Sometime during the 1930s, residents dug a well and installed a pump for water. The Salt River Project brought electricity to the community during the late 1940s.

More significant change came to Hightown in 1946 when D.M. and Glena Haws purchased the land that the community sat on.  The Haws built a small grid of roads and subdivided the land into lots.  The new owners told the residents that they needed to purchase the lots for $100 apiece. This news made many of the residents unhappy, since they had established their own homesteads in the area and had been paying rent for many years. Now they were forced to relocate to conform with new property lines. Mexican American and Yaqui families integrated as they became next door neighbors, and some of the families intermarried.  It was at this time that the area was officially labeled Hightown. At that time, about 20 families lived in the community. The subdivision of Hightown soon attracted new residents, drawn by relatively low land prices. 

The Hightown neighborhood has retained its sense of uniqueness despite new developments growing up on all sides.  The short streets and small lots remain, and many of the people who live there are descendants of the original settlers.