Eden, first known as Curtis, lies on the northern side of the Gila, nine
miles northwest of Pima. It dates from early in 1881, when there was
arrival from Brigham City, Arizona, of a party of United Order settlers,
headed by Moses M. Curtis. Though other immigrants occupied holdings
nearby, M.M. Curtis and Wm. R. Hawkins were the only residents of the
present Eden townsite in 1881. The men first turned their attention
toward the construction of a ditch from the river, this completed the
following year. For a while the young community was on very short
rations. At times there could be only one meal a day, that a meager one
of beans, served at noon to the workers, who scarcely could summon
strength for more than a half day's labor.
Some of the early settlers built boweries of brush under which they
rolled their covered wagons, to secure better protection from the
pitiless Arizona summer sun, and with no other home for weeks. There were
Indian "scares," as elsewhere told, and life was far from comfortable,
with occasional crossing of the Gila at flood to secure protection at the
more populous Pima. In January, 1882, was a moving back to five log
houses that had been built on the Curtis townsite, but even after that
was flight to Pima when word came of an Indian raid. In the fall of 1882
eight families were living in a little stockade fort that enclosed a half
acre of ground, near the river. The present townsite was located May 10,
1883.