Cotton is swallowed up by a picker in the field behind John and Mary Lou Smith’s house in the 1980s, when farmers grew about 90,000 acres of cotton in the Maricopa-Stanfield area (black and white photo below).

Now the area has been swallowed up in a different way, by residential housing. The Smith home still stands and can be seen (photo above) driving through The Villages at Rancho El Dorado, along Butterfield Parkway.

 

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