Like many other towns and cities surrounding Phoenix, Goodyear was, for many years, just another sleepy suburban community in the great arc of Arizona’s capital city. Although it got off to a promising early start, the community languished for a time in the mid- to latter part of the past century, when its industrial spark sputtered a bit.
In historic terms, Goodyear is a relative newbie in Arizona. It was founded just over a century ago in 1917 as part of a land purchase executed by the famed, Akron, Ohio-based Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. But the community wasn’t established to actually make tires. Rather, the 36,000-acre plot of land was purchased by the company to grow long-staple cotton crops used as a component of tire cords in their manufacturing process.
This brings us back to the Egyptian question. An interesting footnote of Goodyear’s history is that the community was indeed once known simply as Egypt. The explanation for it is that the multitudinous bales of cotton Goodyear Tire and Rubber was initially using for its manufacturing process had originally come from the hot, dry crop fields of the country of southern Egypt. Because the desert southwest climate was rumored to be similar to that of the cotton-growing regions in Egypt, Goodyear employee Paul Litchfield was sent by the company to investigate that claim. Eventually, he was instrumental in heading up the purchase of the land for the company. Egypt later evolved to Goodyear Farms, and finally to just Goodyear.
In the early 1940s, in one of Goodyear’s last bursts of the industry prior to a long lull, the community became a vital resource for World War II-era production of aircraft frames. In fact, Goodyear Aircraft Corporation was constructed adjacent to the Litchfield Naval Air Facility precisely for that purpose.