Long before the coming of the Spanish Conquistadors and missionaries in the 17th Century, the Marana/Avra Valley area was inhabited by the Hohokam Indians, who developed extensive canal systems to use the waters of the Santa Cruz River for irrigated agriculture. By the coming of the first Spaniards to the area in the 1690s, the Hohokam had long since disappeared, and their irrigation works had become ruins.
Up until 1776, when the Spanish established a presidio at Tucson, the Marana/Avra Valley area lay under the domination of the Tohono O’Odham Indians, who themselves were subject to the domination of the Apaches from the nearby highlands of southern and eastern Arizona. With the independence of Mexico from Spanish colonial rule in 1821, official jurisdiction over the area passed to the new Republic of Mexico and remained so as a part of the State of Sonora until the middle of the 19th Century.
The American flag came to the Marana area for the first time in 1846, carried by the troops of the Mormon battalion who passed through the region on their way to San Diego, California. Despite the trek of the Mormon soldiers to secure the Mexican Territory, of what is now New Mexico, Arizona, and California, for the United States, when the Mexican war ended all of Arizona south of the Gila River remained in the hands of Mexico. During the Gadsden Purchase of 1854, however, 29,640 square miles of southern Arizona and New Mexico south of the Gila were purchased from Mexico for a total of $10 million, about 53¢ an acre.
The Gold Rush of California in 1848 spread eastward into Arizona. Also, many Mexican ranchers established large cattle ranches in the area, displacing most of the remaining indigenous Papago Indians. With the Marana area under the jurisdiction of the United States, prospectors seeking mineral riches intensified their efforts in the region. Gold was not discovered in abundance, but by 1865, high grade copper ore was being shipped from mines in the Silver Bell Mountains to Yuma and then by ship to Baltimore for smelting.
During the Civil War, soldiers of the Confederacy occupied Tucson and extended their control through Marana and as far west as what is now Casa Grande. In early 1862, Union Troops were sent eastward from Yuma to take back Southern Arizona for the North. The Bluecoats engaged a patrol of Confederate Calvary near Picacho Peak; the site of Arizona’s only Civil War battle and the western-most battle of the entire war. The victorious Union troops then rode through the Marana area to retake Tucson and replanted the American flag in eastern Pima County in May of 1862.
Rail transportation came in 1881 and signaled a major change in the area. It gave Marana its first identification as a specific place by appearing on Southern Pacific Railroad maps in 1890. Marana is a Spanish word meaning a jungle, a tangle or a thicket and was chosen as an appropriate name by the railroad workers as they hacked their way through the dense brush.
World War I brought new prosperity to what was left of the once thriving Silverbell Mine. The population climbed back to over a thousand and the town had both a school and a hospital. However, ranching and the railroad continued to form the backbone of the immediate Marana community.
The aftermath of World War 1 brought another change to Marana. In 1920, a land promotion involving irrigated agriculture was started by Michigan immigrant Edwin R. Post. His project involved drilling wells in the desert, the installation of a pumping plant, and the construction of an extensive irrigation system to bring ground water to the fertile desert land. Many families then migrated to the area to grow cotton. The community grew by several hundred during the heyday of the irrigated farming expansion from 1920 to 1924.
During World War II, the impact of the rising importance of air power came quickly to Marana. In 1942 the Federal Government bought about three and a half square miles of the old Aguirre Ranch southwest of Red Rock and began construction of an air base. Emergency landing fields were also built throughout the area. To serve the nearby military facility, the highway from Tucson to Casa Grande was improved and soon became the major road through the Marana area. This, along with electricity, moved Marana into the 20th Century.
The migrant labor camps that dotted the Marana/Avra Valley area up until the late 1950s were replaced by a new structure born of the cold war and the space age. Beginning in 1959, Titan missile sites were located in the area as part of a complex of ballistic missile installations built around Tucson. Five sites were located in the Marana vicinity and as a result many of the rural roads in the Avra Valley area were paved. This had a significant impact in making many parts of Marana more accessible.
In 1961, the Arizona Highway Department and the federal government removed most of the Marana business district to widen Interstate 10. The high school, several of the shops, and the businesses relocated but were not centralized and ended up scattered throughout the area. Consequently there is no "Main Street" in north Marana yet and the business district in southern Marana has become the main shopping region.
In March of 1977 the Town of Marana was incorporated with about 10 square miles. In August of that year the 1,500 townspeople elected their first town council. In early 1979 the Town began growing through an aggressive annexation policy and is now nearly 120 square miles with an estimated population of 20,000.
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