Sky Harbor Airport

Sky Harbor Airport is obviously one of the biggest and most known airports here in the United States, with a positive background leaving people with good experiences using sky harbor’s services. Of course Sky Harbor Airport also has plenty of history about it and about the land that it’s on today, which most people have completely forgotten about it, or even worse know nothing about the history at all. Before 1935, which was when Sky Harbor became the airport that it is now, the land used to be mostly an agricultural and farming land hundreds of years ago and for a long time. Back in those days farming and good agriculture were a very important and a big deal to people, especially because they wanted the best for their environment. Mexican Americans had a lot to do with fast production in their environment even though they were of low class and weren’t expected to do as much as the Anglos did before them. Chris Lukinbeal (2010), “Urban colonies in the Salt River Valley formed in one of three ways: as working-class neighborhoods on the fringe that filtered down from Anglos to Mexicans”. Like just stated, Mexican Americans took over most of the land that had been started by Anglos and even though Mexican Americans did work for cheap labor they did a good job and they “took over the valley”. Peter M Smith (1995) also commented that “cotton camps were also important and quite common to have, and were also run by Mexican Americans”. It was very interesting knowing that Mexican Americans back in that century were looked upon to do a good job in providing for their environment. Farming and agriculture kept going on for many years, while production kept getting bigger as well. OV Trujillo (1998) did mention that many years later in 1928 Scenic Airways, which collapsed a year later but was later re-built, did the first runway. In 1935 like stated earlier, Acme Investment Company took over and it became Sky Harbor Airport (Dimas, 1999). Since then Sky Harbor has really become one of the most well known airports and continues to grow.

- Valeria Espinoza and Evelyn Ruiz

Sources

Lukinbeal, Chris. (2003). Mexican urban colonias in the salt river valley of Arizona

Smith, M., Peter. (1995). Proposition 187: Global trend or local narrative? Explaining Anti-
immigrant politics in Arizona. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research,
19, p. 664. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2427.1995.tb003534x

Trujillo, OV. (1998). The Yaqui of Guadalupe, Arizona: A century of cultural survival through trilingualism. American Indian culture and research journal, 22. p. 67.