Riggs Road
By Brandon Cooley, Spring 2005

About 57 years ago Lyle and Willetta Riggs settled an area of south Chandler which was about 420 acres of dusty desert dirt. Using his knowledge of farmland and the major demand for crop farming, Lyle started a family farm that has lasted through the many urban developments that now threaten its existence.

Originally, Riggs road was named Superstition Road because of the imposing mountain range nearly thirty miles to the northeast. Soon, residents fought the name of the road because they thought the mountain range was too far away for it to be named Superstition. Years later the Arizona Farm Bureau asked the county to rename the road Riggs after the legendary family that farmed the area. Maricopa County agreed and decided to name it Riggs Road.

Because of the population boom the area where the farm used to be is now being rapidly developed. Currently, the Riggs family now owns just 38 acres of farmland. As Willetta Riggs said in the Arizona Republic, “All the farmland has been turned into growing homes instead of crops.” The major focus around the area is an attraction called R Country Store which consists of a petting zoo and an actual tour of what it’s like to actually live and work on a farm.

Additional family information provided by Jean Reynolds, Chandler Public
History Coordinator:

Willetta Riggs was born in 1917 on the John and Fanny Nelson farm located at Gilbert Road and Chandler Heights Road. Her grandparents had originally lived in the town of Roosevelt, now underneath the Roosevelt Lake. Her father, William, and mother, Edith homesteaded 160 acres in this area. She recalls her childhood: "I started school when I was five and a half years old. We rode a school bus that had old wooden side boards and canvas flaps. We rode approximately 30-40 miles round trip... to the grammar school
that's there on Williams Field Road, known as Cleveland... At that time we were all known as desert rats, because this country where we lived, now on Chandler heights Road, was nothing but desert. We kids used to roam this desert, hunting birds, riding our horses, and burning tumbleweeds. We lived in an adobe house. And of course, there was no water and no electricity--no furnaces, no air conditioning, but we all survived. "

As a child, she roamed the desert, and remembers her mother shooting rattlesnakes that tried to make a home on their porch. She recalls the local American Indians from the Sacaton area hunting jackrabbits. She made friends with many of them. Later, the family moved to Germann Road because they couldn't get enough water to the first farm to be profitable. In high school, Willetta played many sports and worked at the J.C. Penney's store in downtown Chandler. After graduation in 1935, she worked as secretary for the school superintendent.

While at Chandler High School, she met her future husband, Lyle Riggs. Lyle was born in 1916 in Mesa, Arizona. He grew up on Jep Petersen's farm near Gilbert Road and Chandler Boulevard. Over time, his family moved to various farms between Gilbert and Chandler, and he and his sister Elaine attended Chandler schools. He remembers: "Back in the time of the first depression when it was really rough, my dad was farming there. He had cotton and a few hogs and that was the year everything came down on top of his head with a thud. (1929). He had 200 head of fat hogs ready for the market, and they got poison(ed)-- wiped him out the whole bunch. And then that same year he had some long staple cotton, and they were going to sell it for about $1 a pound one day, and the next day, why he couldn't give it away-- so he lost again. So that's how he ended up going out of the farming business and went to be a water boss- a zanjero- for the Roosevelt Water Conservation District."

Lyle also worked on farms as a young man, especially harvesting hay for the Chandler Improvement Company. he played football in high school and became captain of Chandler's team. Lyle and Willetta married after they graduated from high school.

SOURCES:

Boberg, Palmer. Personal Interview with Lyle Riggs, February 28, 1985,
Chandler Museum

Boberg, Palmer. Personal Interview with Willetta Riggs, February 28, 1985,
Chandler Museum

Willetta Riggs and family