Rio Rico: The Land Rush That Went Wrong

Rio Rico's name means "rich river," and in nineteen sixty-six that richness was purely a sales pitch. Developer Leonard Rosen's Gulf American Corporation announced plans to transform the old Baca Float land grant, a Spanish-era parcel of roughly fifty-five thousand acres just north of Nogales, into a master-planned community of four small cities, golf courses, and suburbs. The price tag: one hundred fifty million dollars over twenty years.

It was billed as the largest land development in Arizona history. Gulf American had already sold swampland in Florida under dubious circumstances; Rio Rico followed a similar pattern. Buyers across the country purchased lots on installment contracts for parcels that had no water, no roads, and no near-term prospect of either.

By the nineteen seventies the company had collapsed into bankruptcy amid fraud lawsuits. The land sat largely empty for years. Rio Rico today is a genuine community of roughly twenty-two thousand people, but it grew slowly and on different terms than Rosen's brochures ever promised.