Tucked away inside a neighborhood in Avondale, Arizona, Goodyear Farms Cemetery holds the graves of countless workers who helped build this community. The small wooden crosses that once marked them have long since disintegrated in the desert heat. Rows of crumbling cement slabs, their inscriptions worn away by time, stand as reminders of those buried here.
I grew up on the west side of the Phoenix valley and went to high school in Avondale, not far from this cemetery. Unsurprisingly, I had no idea it even existed. More than that, I never knew the history behind it or the important role the people buried here played not just for Arizona, but for the entire country.
The Surprising History of Goodyear, Arizona
Goodyear, Arizona, sits just a few miles from Avondale, but for years I never thought much about the name. When I was younger, I vaguely knew the town’s name came from the company because I often saw the blimp. But I didn’t realize Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company had transformed thousands of acres of untouched desert into cotton fields.
In 1917, Goodyear sent a junior executive, Paul W. Litchfield, to the desert west of Phoenix. His job was to purchase land and grow cotton, a lot of cotton. At the time, Goodyear relied on cotton as a primary component of its tires, but with World War I underway, it was becoming harder to source from outside the United States. Litchfield secured enough land for the company, and by 1920, more than 800,000 acres of cotton were growing in Arizona.
The Bisbee Deportation of 1917
Just a few years earlier, Arizona violently expelled over 1,000 Mexican and Mexican American workers during the 1917 Bisbee Deportation. Officials claimed these workers threatened jobs and national security. Yet, when industries needed more labor, the U.S. government reversed course. It legally imported over 2,000 Mexican families to work in the cotton fields. The government had driven them out but later brought them back—only as long as they stayed cheap and expendable.
Goodyear’s expansion wasn’t just about securing land, it was about securing labor. In 1919, Paul Litchfield introduced a plan to ‘stabilize labor,’ ensuring a steady workforce for the company’s cotton fields. The company provided housing, but this also made workers dependent on Goodyear, limiting their ability to leave or demand better conditions. Just two years later, the U.S. government approved the recruitment of over 2,000 Mexican workers, ensuring the fields remained productive. But as history shows, when Goodyear no longer needed them, it erased the workers and their communities, leaving behind only a cemetery and a church as evidence they ever existed.
Life and Death in the Cotton Camps
Transforming the desert into farmland required an enormous workforce. The work was grueling, the hours were long, and the summer heat was relentless. Goodyear offered better wages than what was available in Mexico, but that didn’t mean the pay was good. The company provided housing, but only because they needed a stable labor force — workers who were too dependent on their employer to leave.
Camps formed around the fields, each assigned a number. People called the camp near Goodyear Farms Historic Cemetery Camp 50. It was the main camp, sometimes called Algodon or Centro. 1A People’s Guide to Maricopa County Most of the men worked in the fields, but some of the women found jobs at the nearby Wigwam Resort, which had originally been built as a retreat for Goodyear executives. In 1929, it opened to the public, offering visitors an escape from colder climates far removed from the harsh conditions in the nearby cotton fields.
Shortly after workers harvested the first crops, the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 swept through the camps. No one recorded exact numbers, but many believe the unmarked graves in Goodyear Farms Cemetery hold migrant workers who died during the outbreak. With the nearest cemeteries miles away in Glendale or downtown Phoenix, Paul Litchfield saw the need for a burial ground and established the Pioneer Cemetery, later renamed Litchfield Cemetery. The burial plots were provided for free to the workers but they had to dig the graves themselves.
Workers lived, toiled, and died here, their labor fueling the success of Goodyear and its booming cotton industry. Yet, they remained practically invisible in life and, for too many, their sacrifices have been overlooked in history.
The End of Goodyear Farms and the Cycle of Erasure
For decades, the cotton fields thrived, but in 1986, Goodyear Farms shut down, closing the camps for good. Nearly every structure was demolished to make way for new housing developments. All that remains of Camp 50 today is the cemetery and a small church.
Goodyear no longer needed the workers, and just like that, the community they had built disappeared. It’s a pattern as old as American labor history, immigrants are brought in when there’s a demand for labor, worked to exhaustion, and discarded when the industry moves on.
A Cemetery That Still Tells Its Story
The cemetery, located near Santa Fe Trails and Indian School Road, is usually unlocked during daylight hours. Every November 1st, the City of Avondale and local groups host a Día de los Muertos event at the site, honoring the people buried there. For a brief moment, this forgotten place comes back to life, its history honored and remembered.
It’s impossible to visit this cemetery and not think about how little has changed. A hundred years later, we’re still having the same debates, still seeing the same contradictions. The same country that demonizes immigrants relies on their labor. The same industries that claim they can’t survive without them are the first to discard them when they’re no longer useful.
The graves at Goodyear Farms Cemetery are silent, but the story they tell is loud and clear. The cycle of labor exploitation, erasure, and hypocrisy didn’t end with them, it’s still happening today. The question is: Are we finally ready to do something about it?