Summerland, the original Stanfield

Summerland was a small settlement located at White and Parker and Barnes Road, and about 10 miles southeast of Maricopa near the Santa Rosa Wash. It was also the first location of Stanfield. 

Summerland’s first school, made of adobe with tall windows that doubled for Sunday school classes and church services, opened in September 1913. The school overlooked a grove of cottonwood trees. Nearby sheds provided shelter for those who rode horses or drove vehicles to school. 

Whenever there was a need in Summerland, someone stepped forward to take care of the problem. In 1916, Summerland School needed a facelift, and local resident, Paul Ashby, plastered the exterior walls. The paint was barely dry before one of its citizens, F. H. Swenson, liked the looks of the plaster job so much that he decided to have the same finish on his home.

Summerland began with a couple of cattle ranches owned by two families: the Eastman family and the Emiliano Robles family. The Eastman Ranch (1904) was located near a grove of cottonwood trees that provided an ideal setting for many community gatherings and parties over the years. The Robles cattle ranch was just south of the Stanfield School and protected from the hot summer sun by a grove of cottonwood trees. Robles dug a well to provide water, not only for his ranch, but also for those who came from miles around to haul it away. The average well was dug about 60 feet before reaching water.
 
Many families took advantage of land claims authorized under the Desert Land Act of 1877 and homesteaded in the Casa Grande Valley. One of the few stipulations for homesteading 640 acres in the early 1900s was to irrigate the land within three years and pay a nominal fee per acre. Government land was available for purchase at $5-$6 per acre. Many of the homesteaders installed pumps.

However, most of the farms, in the beginning, were small and had only a few acres under cultivation with the exception of one farmer who had 53 acres growing kaffir corn ( a species of millet) and another who had 20 acres or so of Sudan grass (a species of grass raised for grain). 

One article from the Casa Grande Dispatch stated that the colonization of Summerland began with about 40 families who migrated from the California area. Two of these families were the F.H. Swensen family and the N. W. Stanfield family.

Even though Summerland was on the map and had recently appointed Nixon H. Stanfield the postmaster, everyone understood that continued mail service depended upon mail circulation. In the beginning, the post office was open only three days a week and given three probationary months by the U.S. government to prove its need.   

A special community meeting was held at the schoolhouse to encourage everyone to write as many letters as possible and have all mail cancelled at the Summerland Post Office during this trial period. Nixon Stanfield became Summerland’s first postmaster on May 6, 1914, when the post office was dedicated. The post office survived until June of 1918 when it closed. It reopened for business in September of 1948 with a new name, Stanfield Post Office, to honor its first postmaster.

In 1915 the Casa Grande Valley Dispatch reported that Summerland was a thriving community with William Birlenbach operating a pump of 35 hp capacity with considerable acreage under cultivation, and Charles Thompson experimenting with Sudan grass that had become famous all over the valley. In fact, the same newspaper declared Thompson as the pioneer and expert on raising capon on his farm at Summerland, stating, “He has selected Rhode Island Reds to experiment with and so far has had success. The capons are much larger than the cocks of the same breed at the same age. The flesh is much more tender, juicy and sweet, and the birds are useful to blood chicks, too.” 

The Director of Agricultural Experiments, Professor Forbes, from the University of Arizona visited farmers at Summerland in 1915 to discuss methods of handling water economically. He discussed and recommended crops that could be grown with a limited supply of water such as Tepary beans, Native corn, Mexican June corn, Milo maize and Fetereta. The professor claimed that Pomegranate was as hardy as a mesquite tree after it has attained some growth. 

In June 1915, Nixon Stanfield completed the harvesting of his wheat and reported getting 400 sacks of wheat from 20 acres, with dry farming that was prevalent with almost all farming in Summerland. He claimed the soil in Summerland was especially suited to that kind of farming being of gray silt that holds the moisture.

What happened to the old Summerland School and community? Sometime in the late 1920s-1930s, farmers left the area for various reasons, and the little school had few students. The Summerland School was bulldozed to make room for a different type of industry…the Arizona Test Center for Automobiles.

Today little remains to bear witness to an earlier time that included a small community of farmers who experimented with growing crops in a land of perpetual sun and children who went to school with tall windows in the midst of a grove of cottonwood trees.  
  
Photo courtesy of Maricopa Historical Society

Editor’s note:  Maricopa factoids are a regular feature on InMaricopa.com. They are provided by the Maricopa Historical Society, a branch of the Friends of the Maricopa Public Library. Most information comes from “Reflections of a Desert Town” by author and historical society chairperson Patricia Brock. 

Gift Cards are available for Brock’s the new book: “Images of America: Maricopa” along with a short story of Maricopa. Contact Brock at 480-821-0604 or [email protected] to purchase a gift card or to reserve a copy of the book.