Sahuaro Ranch Park

William Henry Bartlett and his brother Samuel Colcord Bartlett purchased 640 acres west of Phoenix in 1885, and formally founded Sahuaro Ranch in 1886. Bartlett, a native of Illinois, never lived permanently at the ranch but took an active role in its development, commissioning buildings and residences for the workers and his visiting family.

The ranch grew into a major commercial operation with fig and other fruit orchards, vineyards, and fields of alfalfa, earning it the nickname 'Showplace of the Valley.' In 1898, after the Bartletts' son Willie was diagnosed with tuberculosis, the family moved to Arizona seeking the dry desert air as a cure. W. H. Bartlett's death in 1918 marked the end of the Bartlett family era at Sahuaro Ranch.

The property changed hands several times in the early 20th century. Richard W. Smith owned the ranch from 1927 until his death in 1944. The ranch continued under successive ownership until urban development around the growing city of Glendale began to encroach on its acreage.

In 1977 the City of Glendale purchased the remaining 17 acres, preserving 13 buildings along with a historic landscape of trees, irrigation ditches, and the ranch's distinctive peacock flock that descends from birds Bartlett brought to the property. Sahuaro Ranch was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on March 7, 1980. In September 2017 three suspicious fires destroyed the blacksmith shop, granary, and milk house; a 14-year-old was arrested for trespassing at the third fire though no evidence connected the teen to the arson itself. The damaged buildings were reconstructed and reopened in February 2020.