Noah Broadway is believed to have been the son of William M. Broadway and Mary “Polly” Key. On the federal census of 1850, Broadway was living with his brother John in Kemper County, Mississippi, and his age was given as 19, making him born around 1831.
No photo of Broadway has ever been found, nor evidence of
him marrying or serving during the Civil War. He seems to have been a somewhat solitary man.
Broadway is known to have been farming in the Salt River
Valley by 1868. He and seven other men
formed the Prescott Ditch company on 26 Sep 1870, and dug the Prescott (later
Broadway) Ditch to irrigate his crops.
The Maricopa Crossing was on Broadway’s ranch. It was a nice crossing with a firm gravel bottom,
and the stages usually crossed the Salt River there. The road which ran through Broadway’s ranch
is known today as Broadway Road.
Broadway never sought public office but was nominated for
sheriff by Dr. W. W. Jones and elected on the 14th ballot in late 1884. Although he was considered to be of good and honest
character, some didn’t support him as he had publicly expressed a desire to
‘string up’ men who were selling whiskey to Indians.
Broadway was the first sheriff to have his office in the
new, two-story brick courthouse between First and Second Avenues facing
Washington, the previous office being in an adobe structure. The county jail was not very secure and
security was lax; eight prisoners almost escaped one day when someone failed to
lock up.
As sheriff, Broadway regularly conveyed prisoners to
Yuma. Another of Broadway’s duties was
conveying insane people to the hospital in Stockton, California. On 9 March 1885, the county approved the
issuance of bonds to build an insane asylum in Phoenix.
Broadway’s term as sheriff was plagued by a rash of armed
robberies. Men dressed as Indians held
up stagecoaches carrying Wells Fargo boxes north of Phoenix. Detective work led to the arrest of one John
Pennington and two cohorts. The massacre
of the Martin family in 1886, supposedly by the Valenzuela gang led by S.
P. Stanton, also occurred during Broadway’s watch.
Water rights were a contentious issue in frontier Phoenix,
for land was virtually worthless without it.
Broadway occasionally had to fight for his rights in court. He owned the NW quarter of Section 30,
Township 1N, Range #E. He later acquired
the NE quarter and the NE quarter of Section 25, Township 1N, Range 2E. In time, Broadway and Michael Wormser became
the two biggest landholders in south Phoenix.
By 1902 Broadway’s health was declining and his ranch was
much neglected. When he died in 1905,
his lawyer sold the ranch and liquidated his assets, which amounted $12737. Since Broadway had no other heirs, this sum was
divided among his three surviving sisters.
-by Donna Carr
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