Marana is a town that mostly lies in Pima County with a small portion in Pinal County, in the U.S. state of Arizona. It is located northwest of Tucson, Arizona. As of the 2020 census, the population of the town was 51,908.
History
Archaeologists found evidence of about 4,200 years of continuous human settlement in the vicinity of Marana and in the middle of Santa Cruz Valley. Many significant archaeological sites have been found near Marana. Las Capas, a large, early agricultural site, is related to the nearby Costello-King site near present-day Ina Road and the Interstate 10 interchange. It was occupied from 4,200 to 2,500 years ago. It is the site of the oldest-known cemetery in the American Southwest and the oldest-known canals in North America. The oldest tobacco pipes in the world were found here. Marana Mound, dating between 1150 and 1300 A.D., is the remnant of a large platform mound that was the center of the Hohokam community. The people lived between the Santa Cruz River and the Tortolita Mountains. The mound is surrounded by an adobe compound wall. Multiple rooms were constructed against the wall and were associated with 30–35 nearby residential compounds. Multiple house features have been found both inside and outside the compounds, as well as wall segments and trash mounds. The whole complex covers an area of approximately one square mile. Linda Vista Hill, dating between 1200 and 1350 A.D., is a Trincheras culture site in the Tucson Mountains. The people inhabited mountain slopes overlooking arable land along streams. The hillside site has more than 150 terraces and 75 pit houses excavated into the terraces. A massive, adobe-walled compound is located on the hill summit. Los Morteros, a Hohokam ballcourt village ruin, is located on the Santa Cruz floodplain near the Point of the Mountain at the northern end of the Tucson Mountains. Los Morteros has also been identified as the probable location of the Llano del Azotado campsite used by the Juan Bautista de Anza expedition in 1775, which was chronicled. The location is near the present-day Arizona Portland Cement Plant in the Town of Marana. In 1775, Juan Bautista de Anza, Captain of the Presidio of Tubac, led an expedition north along the Santa Cruz River to find the city of San Francisco. His group of about 200 included 30 soldiers and their families and a number of escorts. They brought more than 1,000 heads of livestock. Their campsite was developed in the 20th century as the CalPortland Cement Plant near Marana. A segment of the route that the expedition took through Marana is designated as part of the Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail. Pointer Mountain Station, of the Butterfield Overland Mail stagecoach line used from 1858, was found during the study of Los Morteros, within the limits of the nearby Puerta del Norte trailer court.
Spanish colonists began to inhabit this area in the 17th and 18th centuries. Over time they intermarried with Native Americans, and a class of mestizo settlers also developed. From the early years, mining and ranching were the chief economic activities. The area became part of the independent Mexican Empire established in 1821 (soon replaced by the Republic of Mexico).
US territory
More than two decades later, the United States acquired this territory as part of the Gadsden Purchase; it was not part of the Mexican Cession following the defeat in the Mexican-American War, ending in 1848.
20th-century pioneers
According to historian David Leighton, Charles B. Anway was the first member of the Anway family in the Tucson area; from the eastern United States, he came because the dry mountain air was thought to be beneficial for people suffering from tuberculosis, as he was. Antibiotics were not yet in general use to treat this disease, which had a high mortality rate and no known cure. In 1919, his brother William and his two children, Louis and Ila, arrived in town, but they decided to settle in an area northwest of Tucson called Postvale, Arizona.
In 1920, the longtime widower William Anway married Orpha Ralston. She had been a member for many years of the Postvale Co-operative Women's Club. This group lobbied to have the local post office renamed from Postvale to Marana; in time, the town was also named Marana.
Marana did not become developed primarily as an agricultural center until after World War I. It has produced the commodity crops cotton, wheat, barley, alfalfa, and pecans.
During World War II, the Army built facilities in Marana to support the military effort, including the Marana Airfield (1942–45, now the Pinal Airpark). It became the largest pilot-training center in the world, training some 10,000 flyers.