How I Came to be Here

This corner in South Scottsdale carries the memory of the Yaqui. Driven from their homeland in the northern Mexican state of Sonora after centuries of resistance to Spanish and then Mexican rule, Yaqui families fled north in the early twentieth century, some escaping deportation and forced labor. A number of them settled here, building a community whose descendants became the Pascua Yaqui and won federal recognition in 1978. The marker sits beneath the flight paths of Sky Harbor and within sight of Papago Park, layering one story of arrival over the ancient desert and the modern city alike.

What the plaque says

A public-art marker that reflects on how people and places arrived in the Valley. It notes the Yaqui, who originated in the northern Mexican state of Sonora; in the 1920s, after four hundred years of conflict with Spanish colonists, their flight led the Yaqui to Arizona, where they settled in South Scottsdale. It also points west to Hole-in-the-Rock in Papago Park, whose sandstone shape has been carved by wind and rain over roughly fifteen million years, and overhead to the flight paths of Sky Harbor Airport.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Heard Museum — 8.4 mi
  The Native Southwest, told in the first person
• Phoenix — 8.7 mi
  The fifth-largest US city, built on the canals of a thousand-year-old one
• Taliesin West — 10 mi
  Frank Lloyd Wright's desert masterwork, grown from the ground it stands on

More markers nearby

• Papago Escape Tunnel — 0.8 mi
• Our Lady of Perpetual Help — 1.1 mi
• The Little Red Schoolhouse — 1.2 mi
• Herb Drinkwater — 1.2 mi