Water: Feast and famine in early Phoenix 
By Mike Miller
Published: September 25, 2009 at 12:04 pm
Irrigation helped make Phoenix an attractive place to live for many of the pioneers who were heading west to California in the 1800s. Mrs. Columbus Gray started toward California with her husband in 1868 in a wagon train from Arkansas.
Illness stopped the wagon train in Maricopa. Good farm lands were reported as being available in ...