Goodyear Arizona Houses Colorful History

Twenty miles West of Phoenix is the city of Goodyear, Arizona. Goodyear has a rich and colorful history. In 1916, during World War I, the Goodyear Rubber Company (headquartered in Akron, Ohio) was searching for a new location to grow cotton to help in the manufacturing of this highly versatile fiber. Their current supply was coming from Egypt and was being slowly destroyed by the boll weevil, which is a cotton-eating insect. Executives from the Goodyear Company had heard that the Arizona real estate and climate was similar to the Egyptian desert, so they sent one of their up-and-coming executives, Paul Litchfield, to scout out the area.

Litchfield, a Boston native and graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had helped develop the modern cord tire and was considered an expert in the design and production of tires. Litchfield purchased 36,000 acres of sprawling real estate that stretched from Chandler to the White Tank Mountains horizontally and from the Estrella Mountains to Thunderbird Road vertically. Goodyear moved its headquarters to the area where Litchfield Park (named after Paul Litchfield) is today. Because they were growing Egyptian long-fiber cotton, the town was originally known as Egypt, but the community and cotton ranch soon became known as Goodyear Farms.

During World War II, a division of the Goodyear Rubber Company built the Goodyear Aircraft Corporation next to what had become the Litchfield Naval Air Facility. The company built canopies and other various parts for Navy airplanes, as well as the “air balloons” that led to the famous Goodyear blimps. The Litchfield Naval Air Facility housed 132 Navy blimps that were used for coastal defense, and the blimps were often used as early warning radar stations and also as convoy escorts. After the war, the plant continued to produce blimps and missile components, soon becoming Goodyear Aerospace. Through mergers and divisional sell-offs, Goodyear Aerospace became Loral Defense Systems and eventually evolved into Lockheed Martin.

In 1946, the town of Goodyear, with a population of 1,500, was incorporated adjacent to the Naval Air Facility. By 1980, the population had doubled, and in 1985 the residents voted for their town to become a city. Currently, Goodyear encompasses approximately 130 square miles of prime real estate dotted with a variety of homes and home-styles ranging from middle-income to high-end estates. Right now, over 60,000 people call Goodyear home.