Sonoran Valley, also referred to as Mobile, is a community in the southern planning area of Goodyear,

Maricopa County Maricopa County () is a county in the south-central part of the U.S. state of Arizona. As of the 2020 census the population was 4,420,568, or about 62% of the state's total, making it the fourth-most populous county in the United States and ...

Arizona Arizona is a U.S. state, state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region of the western United States with Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It also borders Nevada to the nort ...

, United States. It is situated about 35 miles southwest of

Phoenix, Arizona Phoenix ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of cities and towns in Arizona#List of cities and towns, most populous city of the U.S. state of Arizona. With over 1.6 million residents at the 2020 census, it is the ...

, and has a population of less than 100. Sonoran Valley is also home to a number of

landfill A landfill is a site for the disposal of waste materials. It is the oldest and most common form of waste disposal, although the systematic burial of waste with daily, intermediate and final covers only began in the 1940s. In the past, waste was ...

Lufthansa Deutsche Lufthansa AG (), trading as the Lufthansa Group, is a German aviation group. Its major and founding subsidiary airline Lufthansa German Airlines, branded as Lufthansa, is the flag carrier of Germany. It ranks List of largest airlin ...

operates a private airport to the north of Sonoran Valley, used for pilot training by student pilots of Lufthansa Flight Training,

All Nippon Airways (ANA) is a Japanese airline headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. ANA operates services to both domestic and international destinations and is Japan's largest airline, ahead of its main rival flag carrier Japan Airlines. the airline has approximate ...

and

KLM KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, or simply KLM (an abbreviation for their official name Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij N.V. , ),

being based in Goodyear. Its

ICAO airport code The ICAO airport code or location indicator is a four-letter code designating aerodromes around the world. These codes, as defined by the International Civil Aviation Organization and published quarterly in ICAO Document 7910: ''Location Indic ...

is 1AZ0, and features ILS on runway 9. Phoenix Litchfield Airport - Ramp

History

Mobile was founded in the 1930s as an area for

African-Americans African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. ...

to live. Notable African-American woman of Mobile, Rebecca Dallis, taught in Casa Grande 1939. Local lore has it that some of its early residents were African-Americans from

Mobile, Alabama Mobile ( , ) is a city and the county seat of Mobile County, Alabama, United States. The population was 187,041 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. After a successful vote to annex areas west of the city limits in July 2023, Mobil ...

. However, researchers have found that

railroad Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport using wheeled vehicles running in railway track, tracks, which usually consist of two parallel steel railway track, rails. Rail transport is one of the two primary means of ...

companies referred to the area as "Mobile" almost a decade before the first permanent settler in the area in the 1920s. In the 1930s, two railroad cars were used for two separate schoolhouses (one black and one for whites), and the population of local homesteaders reached about 100. By the 1950s the town was booming with almost 400 inhabitants, but the lack of employment, running water and educational facilities (no education past 8th grade) led to the exodus of most of the original residents and their descendants. In 2007, Sonoran Valley was annexed into the city of Goodyear as part of a expansion, part of an agreement with Montage Holdings, a local developer, to develop a

planned community A planned community, planned city, planned town, or planned settlement is any community that was carefully planned from its inception and is typically constructed on previously undeveloped land. This contrasts with settlements that evolve ...

in the area. The planned community, named Amaranth, envisioned as a self-sustaining community with a regional mall, employment centers and eventually home to over 50,000 people, has been placed on hold until at least 2010 due to economic slowdown. The delay, as well as the developer's inability to meet financial obligations to the city, has forced Goodyear to cut back on emergency services to the area.

Geography

Sonoran Valley is located at

geographical coordinates A geographic coordinate system (GCS) is a spherical or geodetic coordinate system for measuring and communicating positions directly on Earth as latitude and longitude. It is the simplest, oldest, and most widely used type of the various s ...

33° 3' 19" N 112° 16' 16" W (33.055301, -112.271102). The private airstrip is located at 33° 6'43.27"N 112°16'8.66"W (33.111720, -112.269517).

Transportation

Sonoran Valley is accessible by car from State Route 238.

References

{{Goodyear, Arizona Former census-designated places in Arizona