The clock faces on the old Pinal County Courthouse in Florence have read 11:44 since 1891, put up when the money for real clockworks ran out. The Pinal County Courthouse and the First Presbyterian Church of Florence are printed on this map, along with Anthem Elementary School, Florence K-8, the Charles Whitlow Rodeo Grounds, the Florence Aquatic Center, Poston Butte, Walker Butte and the Florence Canal.
Florence is the county seat of Pinal County, on the south bank of the Gila River.
KNOWOL made this map in 2026 and gave it the look of an old atlas. The shaded relief of Poston Butte and Walker Butte comes from United States Geological Survey elevation data, and the streets were drawn from Census Bureau files. The First Presbyterian Church of Florence and the Pinal County Courthouse are on the National Register of Historic Places, and we checked them against National Park Service records. Florence is one of the oldest towns in the county, with a National Historic District of more than 25 buildings on the National Register. Its O’odham name is S-auppag, and 26,785 people lived here at the 2020 census.
Levi Ruggles’s crossing
The Hohokam, ancestors of the O’odham people, lived here long before the town. Until the Gadsden Purchase of 1853, the Gila River was part of the border between the United States and Mexico. Levi Ruggles, a Civil War veteran, came to the Arizona Territory in 1866 as a U.S. Indian agent. He saw the farming promise of the valley, found a crossing on the Gila that was easy to ford, surveyed a townsite on the south bank and, with Governor R.C. McCormick’s help, got it a post office. Ruggles held many public offices, among them territorial legislator, and Florence became the seat of the new Pinal County when it was formed in 1875. Silver found in the nearby mountains in the 1870s led to the Silver King Mine, and every federal land deal in southern Arizona went through Florence until the land office moved to Tucson in 1881.
In 1870 Fred Adams started a farming town two miles west of the townsite, with stores, homes, a post office, a flour mill and water tanks, and called it Adamsville. After a Gila River flood in the 1900s its people moved to Florence, and Adamsville became a ghost town inside Florence’s boundaries, with a historical marker where Highways 79 and 287 meet. A canal built in the 1880s turned Gila River water onto the fields, and farming and ranching became a large part of Florence’s economy.
The courthouse clock
The second Pinal County Courthouse, a three-story red brick building at Pinal and 12th Streets, was finished in 1891 to a Late Victorian design by the Arizona architect James M. Creighton. The supervisors wanted a building that showed their faith in the county’s future in mining and farming. The money ran out before the clockworks could be bought, so clock faces were put on the tower with the hands set at 11:44, and they’ve stayed that way. In 1952, when the supervisors voted to take down the cupola, county residents protested and saved it. A new courthouse replaced the old one in 1961, and the building was closed in 2005. The county restored it, and after a 12-month renovation it was dedicated again on December 19, 2012. The supervisors now hold their meetings on the main floor in what was once the jail, with the old iron bars still on its high windows, and the former courtroom on the second floor is used for community gatherings and weddings.
Ernest McFarland moved to Florence after he was elected Pinal County attorney in 1924. He went on to the U.S. Senate, where he sponsored the G.I. Bill, and he later served as governor of Arizona and chief justice of its supreme court. A monument at the state capitol honors him as the “Father of the G.I. Bill.” In 1974 he bought the county’s first courthouse, gave it to the state and paid for its renovation, and it opened as McFarland State Historic Park on October 10, 1979.
Click to explore a larger preview. The digital watermark does not appear on printed maps.
Names on this map
These names are printed on this map.
Streets and roads: E Lake Rd, E Rolls Rd, E Bella Vista Rd, E Wild Turkey Dr, Easter Ln, E Tumbleweed Ln, E Judd Rd, E Reksom Rd, Kino Rd, W Rhea Rd, E Dixie Rd, E Arizona Farms Rd.
More street names, A to Z
Alpine Dr, Bonney Brook Rd, Cline Rd, Congress Ave, Coolidge Ave, Coolidge St, Cumberland Rd, Della Rd, Desert Air Dr, Desert Mountain Blvd, E Canal Rd, E Central Ave, E Diversion Dam Rd, E Flint Ln, E Florence Kelvin Hwy, E Franklin Rd, E Garcia Rd, E Helios Dr, E Hera Rd, E Heritage Rd, E Hunt Hwy, E Javelina Dr, E Kenilworth Rd, E Largo Rd, El Dorado Rd, E Magma Rd, E Miller Blvd, E Orville St, E Palmer Rd, E Pinebrooke Ln, E Price Station Rd, E Reynolds Rd, E Robin Rd, E Soledad Ln, E Sun Aire Dr, E Sundog Rd, E Tobacco Rd, E Track Rd, E Villa Ln, E Wallflower Ln, Farm Rd, Field Rd, Gasline Rd, Grove Ln, Hiller Rd, Hiscox Ln, Judd Rd, King Rd, Lonesome Ln, Magma Rd, Mayfield Rd, N Dark Sky Rd, N Henry St, N Hunt Hwy, N Kayley Ct, N Kelvin Hwy, N Padilla Rd, N Reed Rd, N Ritten House Rd, N Sweetwater Rd, N Sweetwater Way, N Yeager Rd, Old Mc Carthy Rd, Orange Ct, Orville Rd, Orville St, Pima Farms Rd, Pinal Pkwy, Plant Rd, Quail Run Ln, Rainbow Cir, Ranchview Rd, Springfield Way, Sunaire Dr, Surrey Ln, W Adamsville Rd, W Century St, W Elliot St, W Franklin Rd, W Gaslight St, W Mayfield Rd, W Monterra Blvd, Wood Rd, W Sonoma Way.
Poston Butte and the church on Butte Avenue
Poston Butte, once called Primrose Hill, stands along Hunt Highway near the eastern end of the Santan Mountains. At its top is the pyramid-shaped tomb of Charles Debrille Poston, who lobbied President Lincoln and Congress to create the Arizona Territory and is known as the Father of Arizona. A trail of 0.6 miles climbs to it from a trailhead near Hunt Highway. The First Presbyterian Church of Florence, at 225 East Butte Avenue, was built in 1931 in the Mission and Spanish Revival style, designed by Wallingford & Bell. It joined the National Register in 1994, and the congregation is now called Desert Hope Presbyterian Church.
Florence High School’s front building opened in 1916, a design by the Phoenix architects Lescher & Kibbey, and it’s on the National Register too. The town’s page says the Florence Jr. Parada Rodeo is the oldest junior rodeo in the United States. Florence also hosts the Country Thunder music festival, and its Main Street and open desert were the setting of the movie Murphy’s Romance. Florence is considered the hometown of Adolfo “Harpo” Celaya, a World War II veteran and one of the survivors of the USS Indianapolis, and in 2017 its post office was dedicated in his name. Walker Butte rises in the relief, and the Charles Whitlow Rodeo Grounds, the Florence Aquatic Center, Anthem Elementary School and Florence K-8 are all on the sheet.
This Florence map is a good addition to an office, library or den, and it can help teach children the geography and history of the area. It’s made for anyone who calls Florence home, and KNOWOL created it in 2026 to show the town as it looks today. Zoom in on the preview above to explore the details, then click here to get your copy of the Florence map.
Sources
