Menu
- Home
- Search▼
- List▼
- Add▼
- My Relate▼
- Admin▼
ViewsWatchers |
Gila Bend (; O'odham: Hila Wi:n), founded in 1872, is a town in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States. The town is named for an approximately 90-degree bend in the Gila River, which is close to but not precisely at the community's current location. According to 2006 Census Bureau estimates, the population of the town is 2,055. Just outside the town is the San Lucy district (O'odham: Weco Cekṣanĭ) of the Tohono O'odham Nation, with a tiny settlement, San Lucy (O'odham: Si:l Mek) bordering the town itself. On December 14, 2006, Volkswagen of America, Inc., leased of land at a cost of $55 million for 25 years, ten miles (16 km) west of Gila Bend, on which they plan to develop a new automobile proving ground. Gila Bend enjoys a minor notability among tourists and aficionados of roadside attractions. Besides the quirky welcome sign (shown at right), the town boasts several roadside sculptures and the Space Age Lodge motel and restaurant (opened in 1963), named for its "Space Age" themed architecture and decor. The band Los Lobos wrote a song called "The Road To Gila Bend", which appears on their 2006 release The Town and the City. [edit] Historical Events
The town of Gila Bend is situated near an ancient Hohokam village. When Father Eusebio Francisco Kino visited in 1699, the older site along fertile banks of the Gila River had been abandoned by another early tribe called the Opas, who instead used the river to irrigate their crops at a nearby rancheria. This same rancheria was visited by Juan Bautista de Anza, commander of the Presidio at Tubac and founder of the city of San Francisco, and by Father Francisco Tomas Garces in 1774.[1] From 1857, Gila Ranch was a stagecoach stop on the San Antonio-San Diego Mail Line and the later more famous Butterfield Overland Mail route to California located 17 miles from Murderer's Grave Station to the west and 40 miles east of Maricopa Wells Station. Later other stage and freight routes and the railroad converged here. The nickname the "Crossroads of the Southwest" stems from the area having been part of an important transportation route in the settling, development and growth of the Great Southwest. Gila Bend was the "center of a wheel", with spokes leading in many directions throughout the region.[1] A more recent event in the area was the October 1995 sabotage of the Amtrak Sunset Limited train. In 2010 Abengoa Solar secured a $1.45 BUSD loan guarantee to build a large 280 megawatt Concentrated Solar Power Plant in Gila Bend. It is estimated that the project will employ a peak of 1,500 workers with an operational permanent employment of approximately 85 workers. The Solana Generating Station is scheduled to start providing power for Arizona Public Service in 2013. [edit] Research Tips
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
