Eagar, Arizona

Round Valley sits at about seven thousand one hundred feet elevation in the White Mountains of eastern Arizona, ringed by the largest stand of Ponderosa pine in the world. The valley was White Mountain Apache territory, and the people called these highlands Dzil Ligai Si An, the White Mountains. Mormon settlers arrived in the eighteen seventies, led in part by three brothers named Eagar, Joel, William, and John Thomas, who claimed homesteads and donated land for a town center.

The settlement was first called Union in eighteen eighty-eight, an attempt to unite the scattered homesteads of Round Valley into one community. The name changed to Eagar in eighteen ninety-two, honoring the founding brothers. Today Eagar and the adjacent town of Springerville sit together as the commercial hub of this remote high-country valley, serving as the main stop on US One Ninety-One between the Mogollon Rim and the New Mexico line.