Most people look at December 15, 1970, as the community’s official birthday. That seems like a logical choice, since that is when the fountain first shot upward.

But I have always thought that February 15, 1972 would be more appropriate as the official birthday of the community. That was when the first residents moved here.

I don’t want to start another town controversy like the A-frame street signs which we have been talking about for as long as we have had store fronts open or the roundabout, which has been a more recent talking point.

How was that for a lead-in to a column on businesses in early-day Fountain Hills?

We’ll start with Cocopah Construction. They opened two model homes in the community in January, 1972. They began work on them in October 1971 when the footings were poured on the first house in Fountain HiIls on Calaveras Avenue. Fountain Hills Cocopah President Dick Jordan called the ad agency and asked if I could meet him and Cocopah Realty sales representative Dick Hadley at 2 p.m. on Calaveras Avenue, east of Del Cambre, to shoot a picture.

He told me general directions of how to get there. Then he said with a laugh, “You can’t miss us, we’re the first and only ones to build out there.”

Well, I found them and took the picture. I got one of the first concrete pouring into the trench which was dug out before I got there for footings for the home.

The second builder was Jack Dickenson Construction of Mesa. He built five model homes and a number of individual homes for lot owners.

Their office was in Del Heap Realty in downtown Mesa.

Savittieri Construction and Ted Hay Homes were the next two contractors to build in Fountain Hills.

Del Trailor, a widely known, award-winning Phoenix-area builder, built several projects in the Phoenix area similar to the 220 units he built in Fountain Hills under the name of Gold Key Homes. His Fontana residential project was built at a cost of $2.2 million. The development in the northeast section of Fountain Hills was half sold out by the time the models opened in August 1972.

The first person doing business that wasn’t involved in real estate or construction was a delivery man for Shamrock Dairy named Steve Boll. He made weekly deliveries to Fountain Hills after the first families began moving in.

He would supply a small refrigerator to each household that signed up for his service. They would put it on the patio or by a side door so he could access the refrigerator and place the orders inside. He would deliver milk and other dairy product staples to the homes. The customers would leave him a list of items to deliver the next week. I don’t know how long he provided this service, because U-Tote-M Markets opened the first convenience store in the community.

They selected seven locations in Fountain Hills for its chain of convenience stores. (Remember, the planned population for Fountain Hills was 78,000.) Only two were ever built. The first opened in mid-June 1972 on the corner of Saguaro Boulevard and Panorama Drive.

The second store was opened on the corner of Fountain Hills and Glenbrook boulevards and was the first place to sell gasoline in Fountain Hills. Both stores were operated by the Russell family. Bob Russell, the father, was a former Tribal Chairman at Fort McDowell. Sadly, he passed away shortly after the second store opened.

Other commercial stories that happened in 1972 were:

Valley National Bank, the state’s largest banking firm at the time, purchased a lot in February for a future branch. Today, it is the location of Chase Bank on the Avenue of the Fountains.

Del Camino Nursery, a full-service plant and tree store was opened on Enterprise Drive in September. The owner of the business was Pat Riding, who had a successful nursery business in Scottsdale.

The community’s first post office opened in October. It was located in the same building as U-Tote-M Market. Bud Jenkins, who worked in McCulloch’s mail room in Scottsdale, became the community’s first postmaster. The post office was a contract station. A woman named Mildred Richards was hired to assist Jenkins and she was so outgoing, most people thought she ran the facility. She was later the first president of the Fountain Hills Women’s Club and started a book exchange program that was the beginning of the library in Fountain Hills. She was also the director of the Desert Singers who became the unofficial ambassadors of Fountain Hills in the mid-1970s. They were a group of talented women singers that performed all over the Valley and on several local TV programs.

Goettl Bros. Metal Products, an innovative, nationally known heating and air conditioning firm opened an office in Fountain Hills in October 1972. The 34-year-old company began as a small sheet metal shop with two employees in the early days of the evaporative cooler industry. In the 1950s, the firm had grown to 81 employees. It was at this time that the company developed the first commercially successful air-to-air refrigeration unit.

The company had some 625 employees in 1972 installing over 14,000 units annually across the nation.

The Goettl office was located in the building on Saguaro Blvd. that later was the location of Paul’s Hardware and Champion’s Fitness Center.

The business community grew even more in 1973 and that will be the topic of my next Fountain Hills history lesson.