Scottsdale calls itself “The West’s Most Western Town,” and its oldest blocks still hold the schoolhouse and storefronts of a farm town. This map of Scottsdale prints the Scottsdale Grammar School, the George Ellis House, the Frank Titus House, the Roald Amundsen Pullman Private Railroad Car, the Village Grove 1-6 Historic District and the Town and Country Scottsdale Residential Historic District, from Old Town Scottsdale out to DC Ranch, with Apache Peak, Brown’s Mountain and Butte Peak giving shape to the land.
Scottsdale is a city in eastern Maricopa County, part of the Phoenix metropolitan area.
KNOWOL made this map in 2026 and gave modern data the look of a vintage atlas. The shaded relief of Apache Peak, Brown’s Mountain and Butte Peak comes from United States Geological Survey elevation data, and the streets were drawn from Census Bureau files. Historic sites such as the Village Grove 1-6 Historic District, the George Ellis House and the Scottsdale Grammar School were confirmed against the National Park Service and the National Register of Historic Places. Butte Peak, at 4,890 feet, is the highest point in the city, which runs 31 miles from its northern edge to its southern one.
The chaplain’s town
Before it was Scottsdale, this was an Akimel O’odham village called Vaṣai S-vaṣonĭ, “rotting hay,” and some Akimel O’odham still live here; the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community borders the city to the south and east. In 1888 Winfield Scott, an Army chaplain and Civil War veteran known as the “Fighting Parson,” bought 640 acres where Old Town Scottsdale stands now, and his brother George cleared the brush and planted citrus. Scott was the first to grow peanuts, citrus and grapes in the Salt River Valley, and he promoted the valley as a farm country and a health resort. Accounts differ on how the town got its name. One says the Scotts first called it Orangedale for their citrus groves; another says a neighboring landowner, Albert G. Utley, filed plans for an “Orangedale” that a newspaper mistakenly called “Scottsdale,” and Utley took up that name. Either way, it was Scottsdale by the 1890s.
The first schoolhouse opened in 1896, and in 1909 the town replaced it with the Scottsdale Grammar School, a two-classroom red brick building that cost $4,500 and is known as the Little Red Schoolhouse. It later served as City Hall and justice court, the public library and the chamber of commerce. When it faced demolition for the Scottsdale Mall, the Scottsdale Historical Society formed in 1969 to save it, and it opened as a history museum in November 1991. Cavalliere’s Blacksmith Shop also opened in 1909 and, though not in its first building, has worked ever since. The Ingleside Inn, the region’s first resort, opened the same year.
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 Olesen Rd, E Jomax Rd, E Pinnacle Peak Rd, Pinnacle Peak, E Ranch Rd, Desert Highlands Dr, Ida Rd, E Paraiso Dr, Power Line Rd, N Pinnacle Peak Power Line Rd, Fire Rd, E School Rd.
More street names, A to Z
41st St, Beeline Hwy, Cavedale Dr, Chaparral Rd, E Bellview St, E Bia741, E Clarendon Ave, E Earll Dr, E Indian School Rd, E Jackrabbit Rd, E Las Villas, E Lincoln Ave, E Mayo Blvd, E Montecito Ave, E Oak St, E Rio Verde Dr, E Via de Ventura, E Virginia St, E Wildcat Dr, E Windstone Trl, Heritage Ct, Highland Ave, McCormick Ranch Rd, Mountain Rd, N Beeline Hwy, Palm Ln, Southern Csr, Vista Dr, Zion Rd.
From farm town to city
During World War II, Thunderbird II Airfield, later Scottsdale Airport, gave 5,500 pilot cadets their primary flight training. Scottsdale incorporated on June 25, 1951, with about 2,000 people, took up its Western motto, and saw its first modern resorts, the Hotel Valley Ho and the Safari Hotel, open in 1956. The Scottsdale Arabian Horse Show has been held since 1955, and the Parada del Sol since 1954. When the city grew into the Indian Bend Wash floodplain, a plan for concrete channels lost in a 1965 bond vote, and the 12-mile Scottsdale Greenbelt, finished in 1984, links four city parks by a 25-mile path. The city’s own historic preservation program recognizes the Village Grove 1-6 Historic District, built in 1957, and the Town and Country Scottsdale district of 1959 as historic districts, and the George Ellis House on Cattle Track Road, built in 1925, was listed on the National Register in 1999.
Railroad park and mountains
In 1967 the Fowler McCormicks gave 100 acres of the McCormick Ranch to the city for a park for everyone, and Guy Stillman built his Paradise and Pacific Railroad there; the U.S. Marines helped lay the track. The McCormick-Stillman Railroad Park opened on October 4, 1975, and it keeps the Roald Amundsen, a 1928 Pullman private car used by every president from Herbert Hoover through Dwight Eisenhower. On August 18, 1940, President Franklin Roosevelt and Canadian Prime Minister W. L. Mackenzie King met aboard it and agreed to the Ogdensburg Declaration on the joint defense of North America. The car came to the park in 1971 and joined the National Register in 2009. To the northeast, Frank Lloyd Wright built Taliesin West, his winter home and school, at the foot of the McDowell Mountains, and Scottsdale voters approved a sales tax in 1995 to buy land for the McDowell Sonoran Preserve, now some 30,500 acres with more than 180 miles of trails. DC Ranch is one of the master-planned communities built within Scottsdale’s borders, dating from the 1990s. The Frank Titus House appears on the map too.
This Scottsdale map makes 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 Scottsdale home, from Old Town to the McDowells, and KNOWOL created it in 2026 to show the city as it looks today. Zoom in on the preview above to explore the details, then click here to get your copy of the Scottsdale map.
Sources
- Scottsdale, Arizona, Wikipedia
- List of historic properties in Scottsdale, Arizona, Wikipedia
- Winfield Scott (chaplain), Wikipedia
- Little Red Schoolhouse (Scottsdale, Arizona), Wikipedia
- McCormick-Stillman Railroad Park, Wikipedia
- Roald Amundsen (railcar), Wikipedia
- McDowell Mountains, Wikipedia
- McDowell Sonoran Preserve, Wikipedia
