Steele Indian School Park

Indian School Road, which runs between Central Phoenix and the western suburbs of Avondale, Goodyear, Litchfield Park, and Buckeye, is a large east-west arterial street that connects the former Phoenix Indian School and the new Steele Indian School Park. To the east, the street connects the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community and Scottsdale (particularly its downtown industry, entertainment/nightclub, and “Old Town” cultural and tourist district).

The Phoenix School first opened its doors in 1892. The school had 900 students at its height in 1935. It was declared unnecessary in the late 1980s because most Native students were attending schools in the general community or on their own reservations at the time; additionally, the land on which the school was constructed, now part of a bustling commercial district in Central Phoenix, was much too financially valuable at the time to justify the school’s existence.

The park was created in the tradition of the City Beautiful movement, a late-nineteenth-century design philosophy. Its basic concept is straightforward: city dwellers require passive, open green space in city centers as a respite from the physical confinement of city life. The movement also believed that accessible, public spaces are critical to the development of civic pride and a sense of community.