Springerville: Gateway to the White Mountains

Springerville sits in the Round Valley of Arizona's White Mountains at roughly seven thousand feet elevation, where ponderosa pine replaces saguaro and the summer air actually cools at night. The town's formal identity dates to eighteen seventy-six, named for Henry Springer, a German-born merchant from Santa Fe who established a trading post in eighteen seventy-five to supply passing traders, ranchers, and pioneers moving through the mountain corridor.

In the late eighteen seventies and early eighteen eighties, Mormon settlers from Utah recognized the Round Valley's irrigable farmland and began establishing communities here alongside existing Hispanic ranching families. The two traditions shaped a bicultural town that still marks itself with both cattle and farming heritage.

Today Springerville and its neighboring community of Eagar serve as the main supply point for the White Mountains, the high-country refuge for Arizonans escaping summer desert heat. The Springerville volcanic field, with hundreds of cinder cones, spreads across the country around town.