 |
||
|
|
Welcome to BeDillon's Restaurant Online!
For dining reservations, please call us at (520)
836-2045. A Brief History of our Town Some 110 years ago, Casa Grande was a small cluster of hastily assembled adobe and tent buildings along the railroad tracks. The permanent population of six made their living by moving freight between the train station and nearby mines. Southern Pacific stopped work on the rail line it was building from Yuma across southern Arizona in the summer of 1879. Supplies piled up at this desert stopping point and by the time the railroad moved on, the tiny town stayed. The community took the name "Casa Grande" (meaning "large house") from a five story Hohokan Indian adobe building located 20 miles to the east of the town. Casa Grande was built in the early 1300s, and in the late 1300s the Hohokam Indians began to abandon their villages. Archeologists do not know all the reasons for the decline and end of the Hohokam culture. Recent findings indicate that a series of devastating floods in the 1350s and 1380s may well have played a part in the breakdown of the Hohokam economy and political systems. The early Spanish explorers of the 1600s and 1700s found small farming settlements in what had been Hohokam territory. The early Spanish named the Indians of southern Arizona the Pima and Papago. In their language they are the Akimel O'Odham and the Tohono O'Odham. They may be descendents of the Hohokam Indians. Many Tohono O'Odham (Papago) people live on a large reservation west of Tucson and south of Casa Grande. The largest Pima reservation is the Gila River Indian Reservation to the north between Casa Grande and Phoenix. By 1882, Casa Grande boomed as a railhead to mines, reaching a population of 5000 people, many of Mexican descent. The population also included Chinese workers, Native Americans and Anglos. Between 1884 and 1914, downtown Casa Grande burned three times. With each of the fires the town might have died except that the merchants and business leaders came together each time to rebuild. In the 1890s, a national mining slump almost killed the town, and by 1902, Casa Grande's business district decreased down to a mercantile store, saloon and two smaller stores. Agriculture saved the community from becoming another southwestern mining ghost town. First came small scale agriculture and farm trade, along with livestock and vegetables, crops such as alfalfa, wheat, barley, citrus and cotton becoming important export commodities. The railroad linked farmers from Casa Grande and the surrounding areas to consumers. Casa Grande bustles with activity today. Downtown retailers and factory outlet merchants, cotton farmers and agribusiness leaders, government employees, miners and industry workers all contribute to Pinal County's largest city. Visitors, and even most residents, seldom realize that this striving, energetic city easily could have been just another Arizona ghost town. The staff of BeDillon's welcome you and hope you have a pleasant stay in Casa Grande. |
|
|
|
||