Hightown, 1930s
- Chandler Museum
Matus family of Yaqui origin in Hightown, or Pueblo Alta. This Hispanic and Yaqui neighborhood at the corner of Chandler Boulevard and McClintock Road has been a unique cultural community since Chandler’s founding
Hightown, or Pueblo Alto, got its name because it sat slightly higher than the surrounding area. 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 owner, W. J. Kingsbury, left the land as natural desert land.
The settlement was originally made up primarily of Mexican and Yaqui Indian laborers who worked on the surrounding farms. Many of the original settlers were squatters who built their homes where they could find space. The two ethnic groups were separated by an irrigation canal. At first, families had no electricity or running water, they needed to travel several miles west to the town of Kyrene to get their drinking water. By the 1930s, residents dug a well for drinking. In the early 1940s, the Salt River Project delivered electricity to the community.
By 1946, more significant change came to Hightown when D.M. and Glena Haws purchased the land and 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 to 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 and was home to approximately twenty families.
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.