Horses, cattle original McCormick residents
Source: The Arizona Republic
October 15, 2007
Today's question:
I live at McCormick Ranch. Who was McCormick and was this ever really a ranch?
Gee, don't you ever read your Property Owners' Association Web site? It has a nice, long history of McCormick Ranch (www.mccormick ranchpoa.com).
But here's a condensed version, anyway.
The answers to your question are "the reaper guy" and "yes."
Well, actually Fowler McCormick was the grandson of the reaper guy, Cyrus McCormick, who invented the farm implement. His other grandfather was John Rockefeller, so he wasn't exactly hurting for cash. Fowler worked his way up from a factory job to become president and chairman of the board of International Harvester.
McCormick and his wife, Anne, bought the 160-acre ranch from Merle Chaney in the mid-1940s for use as a winter home. By the time the estate was sold in 1970, it had grown to 7 square miles.
It seems that, of the two McCormicks, Anne was the rancher. She lived on the estate every year from Thanksgiving to mid-April.
In 1949, she imported a small herd of Angus cattle from the family's farm in Illinois to see how it would do in a desert environment. The herd eventually grew to about 350 head of show and breeding stock. The McCormick Property Owners' Association's logo is based on the McCormick brand.
But Anne's real love was horses, one reason the McCormicks kept buying more land: Anne wanted room to ride.
She started out with palominos and then began breeding Arabians. She was one of the founders of the annual All Arabian Show, which is pretty cool even if you're not all that interested in horses.
She also donated to Scottsdale the 100-acre parcel that is now McCormick-Stillman Railroad Park.
Anne McCormick died in 1969, and the property, more than 4,200 acres, was sold to Kaiser-Aetna in 1970. Fowler McCormick died in 1973.
Kaiser-Aetna developed a master plan for a residential community on the property and later sold off 1,120 acres of leftover land, which later became Scottsdale Ranch.
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