There is a small white pyramid located on a low butte in the southeastern section of Papago Park in Phoenix that often puzzles newcomers to the area. It is the tomb of Arizona’s first governor, George W.P. Hunt and serves as the Hunt family’s mausoleum. It was patterned after a much grander tomb, Giza’s Pyramid of Mycerinus in Egypt. It holds the remains of Governor Hunt, his wife, Helen, and her parents and sister.

Hunt arrived in Arizona in 1881 after leaving his family’s farm in Huntsville, Missouri, three years earlier. Clad in overalls and leading a burro, the 21-year-old Hunt found himself in Globe where he worked as a grocery clerk at the Old Dominion Commercial Company. Although he lacked a formal education, he was industrious and resourceful, and in time became a moderately wealthy businessman.

Hunt made friends easily and was a natural politician. He was elected as a Gila County member of the Territorial Council and later became its presiding officer. From that position, he was elected to the presidency of the territory’s 1910 Constitutional Convention. After the Constitution was approved, Hunt became the Democratic Party’s first gubernatorial candidate in Arizona.

In the general election on Dec. 12, 1911, Hunt defeated Republican Edward W. Wells by a vote of 11,123 to 9,166. Then, on Feb. 14, 1912, the day Arizona became a state, Hunt walked from the Ford Hotel at Second Avenue and Washington Street to the Capitol—15 blocks west—to take his oath of office. The walk was intended to show that he was a man of the people.

In 1916, Hunt ran for re-election in a bitterly fought battle with the Republican candidate for governor, Thomas E. Campbell. When the votes were tallied, Campbell had won the election by a mere 30 votes. Hunt contested the results and took the matter to court. Campbell became de facto governor, but a year later, the Supreme Court ruled in Hunt’s favor, and he was back in the governor’s office. He went on to serve as Arizona’s third, sixth, seventh, eighth and tenth governors, with two of his six years out of office spent as U.S. Minister to Siam (now Thailand).

In the late 1920s, Hunt visited Egypt and was fascinated with the pyramids along the Nile. When his wife died in 1931, he decided to build a replica of a pyramid as a mausoleum for his wife and himself. He got permission from Congress to build a 20 by 20-foot pyramid on a small portion of the 2.05 acres that had been set aside as Papago Saguaro National Monument by Woodrow Wilson in 1914. The white-tiled pyramid was built by Del Webb and completed in 1932.

In 1934, Hunt ran for governor an eighth time, but was unsuccessful. He died the same year of heart disease and joined his wife in the white pyramid.

In the 1940s, the pyramid and the desert around it fell to neglect. Vandals scrawled graffiti on the walls, damaged the iron fence around the tomb and littered the hilltop with bottles, cans and trash. In January 1949, Hunt’s descendants proposed a bill to the state Legislature asking that the State Department of Library and Archives assume maintenance of the tomb.

Ten years later, the city of Phoenix bought Papago Park and acquired Governor Hunt’s tomb. The city began to make improvements to the site by adding night lighting, plantings, fences and benches. In 1967, the city received approximately $120,000 from the federal government to make additional improvements to the park, and special funds were earmarked to develop Hunt’s tomb as a scenic viewpoint area.

Today, the tomb offers visitors a panoramic view of Papago Park, including the Phoenix Zoo and Hole-in-the-Rock, and is considered the most visited gravesite of any Arizona governor.

— Research by Tracy Keller. Photo of Governor Hunt courtesy Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records. Photo of Hunt’s Tomb courtesy Arizona Parks and Recreation Dept Papago Park.