800 to 1400 AD - the Hohokam people lived in the area we now call Scottsdale. The Hohokam were a farming society – and the need for water for their crops led them to engineer over 200 miles of canals, digging them with sharp sticks, thin rock slabs and broken pieces of pottery. Hohokam means "vanished", which is what the Hohokam did sometime around 1400 AD.

In 1888, Winfield Scott, a US Army chaplain, paid $2.50 an acre for a 640 acre section of the area now known as Scottsdale. He and his brother cleared the land and planted, among other crops, a citrus orchard. The original name of the town was Orangedale.

In 1894, the name of the town was changed to Scottsdale, after the first settlers, the Scott brothers.

In 1937, architect Frank Lloyd Wright created Taliesin West at the foot of the McDowell Mountains.

On June 25, 1951, the City of Scottsdale was incorporated. The city consisted of one square mile, with a population of 2000. The new city’s mayor was Malcolm White, who quipped that Scottsdale was "the West’s most Western town".

In 1956, Life Magazine called Scottsdale "one of the most desirable communities in the west". The boom in Scottsdale was launched, moving the city from being a quiet cowboy-style hamlet to the Valley’s most fashionable community!

In 1960, the population of the City of Scottsdale had grown to 10,026 and the land area had expanded to 3.8 square miles.

In 1970, the population had increased to 67,823 with a leap in land area to over 68 square miles.

In 1987, the Phoenix Open moved to Scottsdale's Tournament Players Club. (The Tournament is now the FBR Open since 2003). The FBR Open has the highest attendance of any PGA Tournament in the world.

In 1987, the world renowned Mayo Clinic opened in Scottsdale.

In 1988, Scottsdale’s population stood at 126,000 with a land area of 183.4 square miles.

In 1993, Scottsdale was voted "Most Livable City" by the US Conference of Mayors.

In 2002, The Robb Report called Scottsdale "America’s Best Place to Live for Golf".

In 2005, Scottsdale Healthcare’s Scottsdale Clinical Research Institute became a primary research site for the Translational Genomics (TGen) Research Institute, providing opportunities for state-of-the-art clinical research and clinical trials in the areas of genomics medicine.