The next time you think about how easy it is to get water for your daily needs, think about how hard that actually was 150 years ago in Phoenix. Back in the late 1860s, a man named Jack Swilling (see photo below) was responsible for the group that dug canals on top of or near the old Hohokam canals that ran east and west just north of the Salt River. The canals delivered much needed water for irrigation and much needed other uses in the growing desert community.
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Parts of that canal traveled just north of the north runway at Sky Harbor Airport, and some of the canal went right through downtown along what is now Van Buren. There are kiosks on the west and east of side of Second Avenue between Monroe and just north of Van Buren marking the general location of the canal site.
In the 1920s, youngsters from the Phoenix Union High School used to jump in the ditch in the summer to cool off, but by then, thanks to modernization and forward thinking people in the early 1900s, Phoenix was getting water delivered via pipes that was pumped from wells in the area. But it was Jack Swilling in the late 1860s that was responsible for getting that water flowing.
Today, about 1.5 million customers rely on Phoenix tap water, which is delivered by way of more than 7,000 miles of water pipes. Learn more about Jack Swilling and Phoenix history.