Our History

Maricopa was originally located on the southern banks of the Gila River.  Originally called "Maricopa Wells" it was a haven for thousands of immigrants who followed the southern trail in the 1800s across Arizona to California’s gold fields. It consisted of a series of watering holes that were fed by several Arizona rivers: the Gila, Santa Cruz, and Santa Rosa, which provided this oasis in the desert with an ample water supply.

During the 1850s and 1860s, Maricopa Wells became a major stagecoach relay station for the first organized semi-public transportation in Arizona – the San Antonio and San Diego Mail Line and then the Butterfield Overland Mail Line. During this period, nearly every resident of the Wells was employed by the stagecoach line or the trading center.

Maricopa’s raw desert was cultivated into rows of green plants, offering up snowy white blossoms of cotton between 1948 and the 1960s. Throughout the years, cattle became an important industry and farmers experimented with, and grew, a variety of other crops including alfalfa, peas, melons, citrus, and pecans.  It was during this time the Mr. Fred Enke and Mr. John Smith formed a farming partnership in 1952. Fred and John had become friends while attending the University of Arizona in the mid 1940's. In 1983 the University of Arizona purchased the Smith-Enke Farm and build a 2100-acre experimental farm “Maricopa Agricultural Center”.   

2006 saw the dedication of The Arid Land Agricultural Research Center at the Maricopa Agricultural Center with the aim of developing environmentally friendly agricultural practices for arid climates. The facility combined in one consolidated, multidisciplinary research center the U.S. Water Conservation Research Laboratory and Western Cotton Research Laboratory—two ARS research facilities formerly located in Phoenix. Researchers at the U.S. Water Conservation Laboratory developed improved methods for crop irrigation. Scientists at the ARS Western Cotton Research Laboratory developed integrated management techniques to improve cotton production and control pests like the whitefly and the pink bollworm.