The Power of Community: How Randolph, AZ used its History to fight for its Future

In 2021, the Salt River Project (SRP), the largest provider of water and electricity in Central Arizona, made public its proposal to more than double the size of a gas-fired power plant just south of Coolidge. The plant stood next to the small, unincorporated town of Randolph and its expansion would have surrounded the town with industries on three sides. Randolph’s residents, many of whom live near or below the poverty line, organized against the expansion to prevent SRP from significantly increasing the amount of environmentally hazardous products that emanate from their power plants. Remarkably, in the summer of 2022, the Arizona Corporation Commission voted against the expansion. For the town’s residents, it was a “David vs. Goliath” victory -- a stunning moment in the town’s unique history.

Randolph was settled in the 1930s by families who moved west from Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas to pick cotton in the Gila River Valley. Most of the early settlers were Black and they built a close-knit community based solely around cotton production. By the early 1960s, at the height of the town’s growth, Randolph boasted thriving stores, bars, churches and gas stations. Mechanization of the cotton industry in the 1960s and ‘70s, however, resulted in high unemployment rates and an exodus that sent many to California. When heavily polluting industries arrived to replace cotton production in the 1980s and ‘90s, Randolph and its people struggled not only economically, but environmentally as well. Markers of ill health continue to plague the town. Today, many of Randolph’s residents are descendants of the original families who settled the town and some even live in homes constructed during Randolph’s earliest years. Few places with such a unique history exist in the West today.