Marana Heritage

Marana is home to a rich heritage rooted in indigenous cultures, farming traditions, and a resilient cowboy spirit that sets the foundation for the vibrant town we are today. Our goal is to honor Marana’s past while embracing the future, fostering a strong cultural identity that enriches the town and brings lasting tourism and economic benefits.

Quick Links

Help keep Marana's past alive!

Do you have photos, documents, or memorabilia that help to tell the story of Marana? We’re calling on community members to help us preserve our town’s unique history. By donating your historical materials, you ensure that Marana’s heritage is celebrated and remembered. Your contribution can help us create vibrant exhibits, support educational programs, and protect our shared legacy.

Contact our Cultural Heritage Specialist

Marana Moments Throughout History

Excerpts from “Pioneering People on a Corridor of Change - Marana’s Cultural Heritage”(PDF, 4MB)

1200 B.C — First Residents Arrive in Season

The people who lived here around 1200 B.C. were among the first farmers and first villagers of the American Southwest. The villages in what is now Marana shared social and cultural ties with other communities along Santa Cruz, and trade connections with distant cultures of the Southwest, especially California and northern Mexico. They acquired volcanic glass (obsidian), for making projectile points, and sea shells for making jewelry.

Resourceful and capable, these early farmers developed a complex system of canals to irrigate their crops. In fact, early people along the Santa Cruz River used several crop-watering techniques. They dug irrigation canals along perennial streams. They used flood water from summer rainstorms, called “ak:chin” irrigation, to capture and control rainwater in more arid basins. They also practiced dry farming, sowing in keeping with rainy seasons and relying on rainfall to water their crops, as well as planting fields in appropriate soils and areas with naturally high water tables that the roots of their crops could reach. Their only known cultivation tools were a sharp wooden digging stick and a thin, handheld hoe made from a rock slab.

1775 — Anza Expedition Cuts a Swath Across History

In late October 1775, Juan Bautista de Anza, captain of the Spanish presidio in Tubac, led an expedition north along the Santa Cruz River heading toward California. The expedition included 30 soldiers and their families, mostly women and children, making up the 200 colonists. An additional 100 in the group included cowboys, translators, muleteers, guides, priests, and escort soldiers. With them, they drove herds of livestock—horses, mules, burros, and cattle—totaling 1,000 head.

Their first campsite in southern Marana was on a flat called Llano del Azotado near Pointer Mountain. From this camp the expedition headed northwest through a pass they called Puerto del Azotado. Today, it is called Rattlesnake Pass and can be accessed on Silverbell Road.

1800s — Westward Expansion

In 1857, James E. Birch’s San Antonio and San Diego Mail Line began using the same foot- and wagon-worn route of the Mormon Battalion. Called “the Jackass Mail,” this pioneering mule-driven enterprise wasn’t the first to carry mail overland between southern California and the East, but it was the first to provide scheduled mail service under contract from the U.S. Postmaster General. The Butterfield Overland Stage Company arrived in 1858 and eventually established the Pointer Mountain, Nelson’s Desert Ranch and Picacho Pass remount stations. The company carried both transcontinental mail and passengers but was discontinued in 1861 after the outbreak of the Civil War. The route the stage rumbled over through Marana closely follows Interstate 10.

The Southern Pacific Railroad arrived in Marana from the north in 1880. To provide steam power, wood water towers were built every 10 to 15 miles along the track. These were later replaced with steel water tanks. Two water towers remain at Rillito and Red Rock Stations—the two frequent stops for passengers and shipping goods between Tucson and Picacho. An exhibit celebrating the history of the Southern Pacific is located at the Southern Arizona Transportation Museum in downtown Tucson.

1860s — Civil War

During the Civil War, after Union troops withdrew from southern Arizona to fight in the East, Confederate troops from Texas moved to occupy Tucson. Then, in early 1862, Union troops were sent east from Yuma via Picacho Pass to take back southern Arizona. On April 15, an advance party of 14 soldiers engaged a patrol of 10 Confederate Calvary at the Picacho Pass Butterfield Stage Station.

This is the site of the westernmost fatal conflict of the Civil War. During the hour-and-a-half battle, the Union lost three soldiers, but they prevailed. The victorious troops rode south to retake Tucson. The Union troops replanted the American flag in May 1862. Monuments dedicated to this Civil War battle and to the Mormon Battalion are located on the west side of Interstate 10 in Picacho Peak State Park.

Picacho Peak, on the west side of Picacho Pass, is also known as “the ship of the desert.” Picacho, however, means “peak” in Spanish. The distinctive peak was used as a landmark by early travelers. In 1863, Arizona became an official Territory of the United States.

1919 — Farming Yields Diverse Crops and Communities

When World War I created a need for cotton in the manufacture of cord, airplane fabric, and other war-related materials, Marana reinvigorated its agricultural roots and began growing more cotton and other crops.

The organization that later became the Cortaro Marana Irrigation District was established in 1919. In 1920 Edwin Post, a land developer from Iowa, drilled wells, installed a pumping plant, and constructed an extensive irrigation system. Pumps were numbered and commonly used as reference points to locate houses and farms.

Between 1920 and 1924, many families migrated to the area to grow cotton. Wheat, barley, alfalfa, garden produce, and citrus have been cultivated since the 1940s, but the majority of Marana’s agricultural fields have always been devoted to cotton, which farmers called “desert snow.”

1920s — Marana Gets a Name

Maraña is a rural Mexican word meaning dense brush, a tangle, or a thicket. It is believed that railroad workers dubbed the site “marana” as they hacked their way through thick mesquite stands along the rail line. In the early 1920, the area was called Postvale, after land developer Edwin R. Post; but the tag “Postvale” didn’t stick. In the 1925, the town petitioned to have the post office name changed to Marana. 

1930s — Rise of the Ranchers

The oldest ranching family known in the Marana area, and for that matter in Arizona, has been the Aguirre family, whose ancestors are of Spanish Basque heritage. Early ranchers like the Aguirre family used few fences. Land was regarded as “open range,” and ranchers ran cattle from Red Rock to Oro Valley, cattle that undoubtedly ranged into the Tortolitas. Later, in the 1930s, several Anglo families took advantage of the revised “Homestead Act” of 1862 to start their own ranching operations. With 640 deeded acres they each received from the government, and some leased state land, the families settled right in the Tortolitas. These homesteaders raised primarily cattle (Brahma cross, whiteface, and longhorn-Corriente cross), but some had Angora goats.

Ranching was the economic backbone of the Marana community. In fact, ranching has a 300-year history in the Santa Cruz Valley, with the oldest cattle ranch in the United States at Guevavi in Nogales, its southern end.

1940s — Military Presence During World War II

Marana’s expansive skies and crystal clear visibility brought significant economic advantage to the town in 1942. The federal government bought three-and-a-half square miles of the old Aguirre Ranch and began construction of an air base and emergency landing fields throughout the area. From 1942 to 1945, the skies above Marana buzzed with the sound of flight training for some 10,000 aviators. At that time, the Marana Army Air Training Base was one of the largest pilot-training centers in the United States.

To serve the military, the highway from Tucson to Casa Grande was improved. It became the major road through Marana. But military presence brought not only a spot on the highway map, it also brought electric lines, which arrived in 1945. By the end of World War II, Marana had taken a giant leap in accessibility. It would remain a rural community, but the cities of Tucson and Phoenix were getting easier to reach.

1977 — Incorporation

Water always has been a valuable commodity in the arid Southwest. In March 1977, it was so important that the town’s civic leaders incorporated all 10-square miles of Marana in order to retain water rights for current and future residents. In August 1977, the 1,500 townspeople elected their first town council. In early 1979, the town began to grow through a very active annexation policy. Marana continues to aggressively pursue opportunities for the rights to own and deliver water.

Since the 1980s, the number of local farms has declined as land has been converted to housing developments. The area, however, still has six large farms operated by the Cortaro Users Co-op and owned by the Clark, Chu/Ong, Kai, Pacheco, and Payson families and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The farms primarily raise long-staple cotton, although durum wheat, which is exported to Italy to make pasta, is increasingly important as a primary crop.

In 1992, Marana began receiving Colorado River water from the Central Arizona Project (CAP), a federal program authorized by Congress in 1968. The water is delivered from Lake Havasu on a 336-mile-long route along a series of canals and lift stations. Prior to the arrival of CAP water, residents of modern Marana were dependent entirely upon groundwater, while earlier people depended on surface water and/or shallow wells.