Continental, Arizona
| Continental, Arizona | |
|---|---|
| Populated place | |
The Continental Community Center in 2014.
|
|
 Continental, Arizona
|
|
| Coordinates: 31°51′03″N 110°58′29″W / 31.85083°N 110.97472°WCoordinates: 31°51′03″N 110°58′29″W / 31.85083°N 110.97472°W | |
| Country | United States |
| State | Arizona |
| County | Pima |
| Elevation | 2,864 ft (873 m) |
| Time zone | Mountain (MST) |
| Area code(s) | 520 |
| Post Office opened | May 26, 1917 |
| Post Office closed | February 28, 1929 |
Continental is a populated place located about 25 mi (40 km) south of Tucson, in Pima County, Arizona, near the town of Sahuarita and the retirement community of Green Valley. Once a center for cotton production, Continental is now nearly surrounded by large pecan orchards and Green Valley subdivisions. It is also the closest town to Madera Canyon, a premier birdwatching area and tourist attraction located in the Santa Rita Mountains.
Continental was founded during World War I in 1916, after President Woodrow Wilson asked the Intercontinental Rubber Company of Bernard Baruch, Joseph Kennedy, and J. P. Morgan to grow guayule. Guayule is a plant that produces latex and can be used to make rubber if, as many Americans feared, the German navy were to cut off shipping lanes and imports of rubber from the Far East.
In 1916, Intercontinental established the Continental Farm seven miles south of Sahuarita and immediately east of the present-day Green Valley, along the eastern banks of the Santa Cruz River and the Southern Pacific Railroad. Over the next few years, a small town was built to accommodate the workers at the farm. In addition to several large adobe homes that were built for the farmers around 1918, and the fields and the processing facility built for the guayule, the town of Continental had a post office that opened in 1917, a schoolhouse that was built in 1918, a church, a general store, and its own cemetery. The guayule project was abandoned after the end of World War I. In 1922, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands bought the farm and rented the fields to cotton farmers until 1949.
...
Wikipedia