This is lightly modified from a Twitter thread that covered the same topic.
With the MLB season right around the corner, I thought that this week would be the right one to look at some of the lost stadiums around Phoenix & beyond. The Arizona desert has long been a haven for sports, so those shown here are just a fraction of the Phoenix’s lost stadiums.
As always, we’ll take a look at what these stadiums were, who they were for, and why they’re now gone. Stadiums generally have a shorter lifespan than other buildings – a dynamic that tied into Phoenix’s lax attitude (until recently) toward historic preservation.
Compadre Stadium was built to help Chandler get a piece of the Spring Training pie, ultimately luring the Brewers from Sun City. The City was much smaller in the 1980’s, with less than 30,000 residents in 1980 – so as you’ll see below, there wasn’t much around the ballpark.
The ballpark was quickly surpassed in amenities by its peers and the Brewers asked that the City invest $10+ million in the stadium to improve it. Chandler attempted to fund improvements via a bond election, but it failed. As a result, the Brewers left for Maryvale in 1998.
For our next subject, we’re going to look at a stadium that was demolished soon after Compadre opened. Montgomery Stadium (1927-1987) was a football stadium located in Downtown Phoenix. Below, you can see it in the upper portion of this image from 1930.
Montgomery Stadium is probably best known for hosting the Salad Bowl from 1948-1955. Sponsored by local Kiwanis clubs, it was a college football bowl game from 1948-1952, before hosting other games from 1953-1955. ASU (2x) & UofA played in Salad Bowl, winning none between them.
The stadium had a capacity of 23,000 and was part of the Phoenix Union High School (PUHS) campus – now part of the Phoenix Biomedical Campus. The stadium was stood where ASU Prep is currently located at 7th St. and Polk. Here’s an aerial image of the stadium from 1930 next to PUHS.
Montgomery Stadium was, quite frankly, a weird stadium. With only one large grandstand, it had and unusual layout. Perhaps more interestingly, the one grandstand was really, uh, grand! Even as it was facing demolition, its beauty wasn’t lost.
From Downtown Phoenix, we’ll head west to explore a now-demolished horse racing track: the Phoenix Trotting Park. Now, if you ever drove west on Interstate 10, you probably know this structure. And I’d guess, you probably, like me, have wondered what it was.
Opened in 1965, the Trotting Park closed for good in 1966. Despite its limited use, the large concrete grandstand wasn’t demolished until 2017. It could hold more than 12,000+ spectators, but rarely did. And that, plus construction costs nearly 4x expected, sunk this ship.
It’s location almost certainly didn’t help matters. The photo in the previous tweet is from 1969 – after the track had already closed. If we zoom out, we’ll see that the Phoenix Trotting Park was far from basically everything. Of note, there was no I-10 at that time.
I think at this point, I should clarify exactly where this structure was. It sat at what’s now the junction of the 303 and I-10, so if it was built today, it may have had a fighting chance. But as we can see below, even in 1986 -20 years later- there still wasn’t a lot out there.
Ultimately, the Phoenix Trotting Park is more a curiosity than a place that was full of history. It’s a story of the ambition and optimism of Phoenix in the 1960’s – even if it was a failure. If you want to know more about it, I recommend visiting https://phoenixtrottingpark.com. Finally, we’ll head south to Casa Grande to bring this thread full circle. Unlike the other stadiums in this thread, much of this complex remains and has taken on a new life. That’s right, we’re going to visit Francisco Grande, once the Spring Training home of the San Francisco Giants.
Developed by Horace Stoneham, owner of the Giants, Francisco Grande opened in 1961. It featured a 3,000 seat ballpark, 4 practice fields, and, oh yeah, a full-service high-end resort. Get this, the resort had – and still has – a pool shaped like a baseball bat.
The ballpark is now gone, but the resort still stands. It’s located west of Casa Grande on AZ 84 and features a large sports training complex as well as a golf course. It underwent renovations in 2003 to bring it back to life. You can see it today in the photo below.
Wait, what’s that on the left of the image above? Is that an abandoned airfield? Of course it is. Though not in use anymore, Francisco Grande had an unpaved runway that was used in its early days, with a taxiway to the resort. This place really had it all.
The Giants ended up leaving Francisco Grande in the early 1980’s for Scottsdale, where they still play today. As I mentioned above, Francisco Grande is still a sports training facility – now home to the Barcelona FC US Residential Soccer Academy.
As always, there’s so much more history for each of these than I could cover here – and there are many more stadiums that have been lost along the way. But I hope that this sparks your curiosity and maybe brings back fond memories.
Sources: Wikipedia, The Arizona Republic/AZCentral, Francisco Grande Resort, Stadiumpostcards .com, San Francisco Giants, Salt River Stories, Phoenix Trotting Park .com, Ballpark Digest, Flickr, http://Chandlerpedia.org, Maricopa Historical Aerials, Airfields-Freeman & Google Maps.
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