Qualla: Pioneer and Military Memorial Park

Pioneer and Military Memorial Park: Introduction

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Marine 69-71, CC BY-SA 4.0. Jacob Waltz took his secret to the grave here in 1891. The German immigrant who discovered what became known as the Lost Dutchman's Mine lies in Pioneer and Military Memorial Park, his legendary gold deposit still unfound in the Superstition Mountains to the east. But Waltz is just one among hundreds of Phoenix founders, territorial governors, Civil War veterans, Buffalo Soldiers, and Rough Riders resting beneath the desert soil of Block 32, seven historic cemeteries built unwittingly atop the ruins of a pre-Columbian Hohokam village that archaeologists would later name La Villa.

Image: Marine 69-71 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Pioneer and Military Memorial Park: Birth of a Burial Ground

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Marine 69-71, CC BY-SA 4.0. In the 1880s, Phoenix was a raw frontier town with railroad ambitions. The city's old cemetery, wedged between 5th and 7th Avenues near a new train station, struck officials as an unseemly welcome for arriving passengers. In 1884, they purchased Block 32 on the city's edge, unkno...

Image: Marine 69-71 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Pioneer and Military Memorial Park: The Man Who Named Phoenix

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tony the Marine (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Phillip "Lord" Darrell Duppa, an educated Englishman with aristocratic pretensions, arrived in the Salt River Valley and saw something others missed. Looking at the ancient canal systems built by the vanished Hohokam, he proposed naming the new settlement Phoenix, the mythologica...

Image: Tony the Marine (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Pioneer and Military Memorial Park: Firsts and Founders

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tony the Marine (talk) / Marine 69-71 at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. The headstones read like a founding document. William Augustus Hancock laid out the first Phoenix town site in 1870 and earned the title "Father of Phoenix." He served as district attorney, probate judge, and first sheriff of Maricopa County before dying in 1902. John Taylor Alsa...

Image: Tony the Marine (talk) / Marine 69-71 at en.wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

Pioneer and Military Memorial Park: Soldiers and Seekers

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tony the Marine (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Wars left their mark here. Robert Plumridge served with the California Column and fought Confederates at the Battle of Picacho Pass, the westernmost engagement of the Civil War. Millard Lee Raymond rode with Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders, serving in Troop F of the 1st U.S. Vo...

Image: Tony the Marine (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Pioneer and Military Memorial Park: Resurrection and Remembrance

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tony the Marine (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. The cemeteries lay neglected until 1930, when the Pioneers' Cemetery Association formed to preserve and restore them. World War II interrupted the work, and researcher Thomas Hayden's death further delayed progress. The present association, formed in 1983, completed what the earl...

Image: Tony the Marine (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0