The adobe ranch home of Anne “Fifi” Potter Stillman McCormick and her husband, Fowler McCormick, president of International Harvester, and grandson of Cyrus McCormick and John D. Rockefeller, stood a few hundred yards from the northeast corner of Scottsdale and Indian Bend roads where the Seville Center is located.

The McCormicks had been coming from Illinois to Arizona for a number of years, visiting Indian communities, purchasing quantities of Native American jewelry and enjoying the warm winter climate when in 1943 they decided to purchase property.

Coincidentally, Merle Cheney, a retired chemist, had put his 7,000-square foot adobe home and 160-acre R.P. Ranch on the market. In April 1944, the McCormicks purchased Mr. Cheney’s ranch and desert home with its circular living room and wood-hewn beamed ceilings. Eventually the ranch – which was considered far north of downtown Scottsdale in the midst of desert sage and mesquite – became the permanent winter residence of Mrs. McCormick. Through the years, property was added to until it reached seven-square miles.

They brought their prize herd of Ayrshire and Black Angus cattle to Scottsdale and took up part-time residency, still maintaining homes in Canada and Chicago as well as a farm in Barrington, Illinois.

A student of genetics, Mrs. McCormick acquired her first Arabian, the champion chestnut stallion Mustafa, in 1948. However, her greatest contribution to American Arabian breeding stock came in 1963 when she imported Naborr who sired a total of 435 foals in Russia, Poland and the U.S., twenty-one of which were bred by Mrs. McCormick.

Two of her famous projects were the Indian Crafts Center on Pima Road, which was one of the first Indian Arts and Crafts Centers in Scottsdale. The other was the 80-acre Paradise Park where in 1957 the “first” Scottsdale Show of the Arabian Horse Association of Arizona took place. Today, the streets where Paradise Park was located are named after many horse breeds beginning at Arabian Trail and Mountain View Road.

Mrs. McCormick’s goal was to put Scottsdale on the map as far as the breeding and showing of Arabians was concerned. Each February, the park became a mecca for the nation’s Arabian breeders growing from 200 entries to more than 1,000 until 1978 when developers decided to build single family homes. The show was then relocated to WestWorld of Scottsdale.

After Anne McCormick’s death on May 25, 1969 at age 89, her breeding stock was sold at public auction. Naborr, at age 19, was bought by Tom Chauncey and Wayne Newton for $150,000, at the time the highest price ever paid for an Arabian.

Fowler McCormick, 20 years Anne’s junior, died in 1973. The 4,236-acre ranch had been sold in 1970 to Kaiser-Aetna (K-A) for $12.1 million.

The McCormicks were extremely civic-minded and generous with their wealth and left one-half of their estate to more than 100 different charitable and educational institutions and museums around the nation. In 1967, the McCormicks legacy to Scottsdale became the donation of 100 acres of land, thirty acres of which was designated for what has become McCormick-Stillman Railroad Park. The park, on the southeast corner of Indian Bend and Scottsdale roads, became the passionate creation of Guy Stillman, son of Anne and stepson of Fowler McCormick. Since 1974, the rail park has become a living memorial to railroading history, recognized nationally and internationally as one of Scottsdale’s and the state’s most popular attractions.

Now, over fifty years after K-A, the master developer recorded the non-profit McCormick Ranch Property Owners’ Association Articles of Incorporation September 21, 1972, the Ranch is operated by an executive director and board of directors that work diligently to maintain the Ranch’s fresh image which make residents proud to say – “We live on McCormick Ranch.

The writer, Lois McFarland, a 33-year resident of McCormick Ranch, is an award-winning journalist specializing in historical and feature writing. A columnist and staff writer for the Scottsdale Progress and later the Scottsdale Tribune newspapers for 21 years, she has been a correspondent for the Arizona Republic/Scottsdale Republic since 2001.