Gila Valley Pioneer Days

At 5:30 on the evening of Saturday, July 25, 2026, the main Pioneer Parade set out from the Pima Highway Church. Its route ran east past the old high school, south on 100th Street past the town pool, and west on 400 South back to Main Street. From there it went north to the Pima Cafeteria, west on 200 South as far as the fire department, and east again to the church where it began. The theme that year was “Walk With Me.”

Gila Valley Pioneer Days is held each July across the communities of the Gila Valley in Graham County. One town takes the signature events in turn. “It’s the LDS Church. They kind of rotate who’s in charge each year,” said Natalie Goodman, public relations representative for the 2026 committee. “So this year Pima is in charge. So we’re the one host team. And there are activities throughout the Gila Valley that are going on, like sporting events and the variety show. So we kind of all help each other. But the big parade and the barbecue—we take turns on that.”

The organizers’ Facebook page is listed under the category Church. In the days before the 2026 celebration it posted short videos of residents speaking about their ancestors and their “walk with Christ.” Among them, Dale Rogers spoke about his fourth great-grandfather, David White Rogers. Goodman said the celebration honors the Latter-day Saint pioneers who arrived in Utah and also those who later settled the Gila Valley. She left the word open: “Pioneers can mean different things. Anybody who is coming in and starting something that’s better for their family or the communities, they’re pioneers too.”

Pulled pork and fireworks at Edd Hubbard Field

After the parade the crowd moved to the Edd Hubbard Football Field. Gila Valley Central counted 12 food vendors there in 2026, along with jumping castles, pioneer games and music. The annual barbecue plates sold for $5. The Eastern Arizona Courier described them as pulled pork meals served at the field. The event’s Facebook listing placed the dinner near the Digger O’Dell Cafeteria Building and promised it rain or shine. “The funds come from the barbecue dinner,” Goodman said. “The funds that we make from that are to pay for the fireworks.”

The fireworks began at dark. Until then the children’s games ran, Goodman said, “so that the adults can sit there and visit.” Her advice to visitors was brief: “Come hungry.”

Wagons on the Hubbard Field track

Saturday began twelve hours earlier on the same field. From 7:30 to 9:00 that morning, families walked the track pulling decorated wagons, strollers and bikes. Electric scooters and e-bikes were not allowed. Organizers billed it as a “throw-back to the 80’s.” Goodman remembered the original: “We would walk around the block around the church all dressed up in our pioneer gear with our wagons and just reenact the pioneers coming in. So we’re doing that again.” Pioneer clothing was encouraged but optional. “Anybody can come and just walk the track,” she said. Crafts, stories, races and pioneer games filled out the morning.

Walkers were asked to bring new or gently used shoes and socks, a drive tied to the year’s theme. On August 10 the organizers reported more than 150 pairs of shoes and over 500 pairs of socks. The donations went to St. Vincent de Paul, the Mt. Graham Safe House, Samaritan Home and several local school districts. By the organizers’ account, the load reached St. Vincent de Paul on the day of its back-to-school giveaway. The store had just run out of socks and was nearly out of shoes, and its manager, Stephanie, was moved to tears.

Friday at the arena and the Stake Center lot

The celebration had opened the day before, Friday, July 24, with basketball, volleyball and pickleball tournaments. At 4:30 p.m. a community variety show went up at the David M Player Center for the Arts, with tickets at $3. The family rodeo followed at the Vard Lines Memorial Roping Arena, with events beginning at 7. At 9 the community dance, “Under the Stars,” was held in the parking lot of the Pima LDS Stake Center.

Twenty-eight souls and a burned camp

The Courier traced the celebration to the Latter-day Saint pioneers who settled Pima, first called Smithville. According to the paper, early settlers gathered each year to mark the end of the long journey west. Those reunions brought together people who had traveled together and later scattered through the valley. Talana Hooper, a local historian, estimated that the celebration began as early as 1882 or 1883, as a celebration of Smithville’s settlement.

The settlement itself grew out of a poorly defined boundary. A 2012 profile from the League of Arizona Cities and Towns tells it this way. A dozen Mormon families had built homes and planted fields a few miles south of Cooley Ranch, now Show Low, and then learned they stood on Fort Apache Reservation land. An advance party staked out a new townsite on the south bank of the Gila River in 1878.

“Pioneer Town,” the 1979 Pima centennial history, names William R. Teeples of Holden, Utah, as the man most responsible. Apostle Erastus Snow had asked him to captain ten families to Arizona. On a first look at the Gila Valley, Teeples was much impressed, and the others with him were not. In February he went back with Hyrum Weech, Ben Pearce and John W. Tanner, and all liked what they saw. On March 17, 1879, with permission from church authorities, he started for the valley with twenty-eight men, women and children. The Church’s Newsroom also counts the company at 28. A 2009 Church News account says seven families.

Caroline Teeples, one of his two wives, left an account of the arrival. At the Gila River a young Indian snatched a plate of fried fish and warm bread while her back was turned, and she cooked again. The company camped near Mr. Moor’s ranch at Fort Thomas and reached the townsite on the afternoon of April 8. “The first thing we did was to burn the tall grass for a camp site, where Pima now stands,” she said. “There were lots of insects, mice and snakes, and burning the grass made it safer for a camp.”

They named the place Smithville for Jesse N. Smith of the Snowflake Stake, who had blessed their departure from Cooley’s Ranch. According to the League profile, the territorial government refused the name and designated the post office Pima, and eventually the new name stuck. The settlers cut canals with horse plows, wooden scrapers and shovels to bring Gila River water to their crops. The League adds that the farmers made use of the remnants of Hohokam canals.

Revolvers at the first Fourth

Caroline Teeples also recorded the colony’s first “July 4th” on the Gila. Some of the women prepared dinner while others gave a program. Three young men from Show Low, working for local ranchers, brought provisions. After dinner the men and boys played games until chore time. In the evening, planks were set around the rooms for seats, and Wm. Thompson played the accordion.

During the promenade, Mrs. Patterson and her friends arrived, “a Band of Ruffians” in her words: four women and five men. Each woman carried two revolvers and each man one. They laid their weapons down to dance. While four couples danced, the extra man slipped a revolver outside and hid it in their wagon. When it was missed, the women began to accuse “us ‘Mormons.’” Teeples asked them to be quiet and said the gun would be found. It turned up under some things in their own wagon. “When they got started home they made a terrible racket and drove like Satan was after them,” she said.

William Teeples was appointed postmaster in 1880. He died June 5, 1883, at forty-nine, and his wife Harriett was appointed postmistress in his place.

Joseph Knight Rogers had been presiding elder of the company of 28. On September 26, 1880, he was ordained bishop of the Smithville Ward. He was then elected to the 11th Territorial Legislature, which convened in Prescott on January 3, 1881, and there he introduced the bill creating Graham County out of Pima and Apache counties. The county took its name from Mount Graham, named in turn for Lieutenant Colonel James Duncan Graham. Rogers made the trip from Pima to Prescott on horseback. Sister Mary Ransom knitted him a pair of gloves to protect his hands.