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Higley is an unincorporated community in Maricopa County, Arizona. It has its own school district. Higley's zip code was 85236 until 2007, when the U.S. Postal Service decided to get rid of it. As of 2007, the vast majority of Higley has been annexed into either the neighboring town of Gilbert or the city of Mesa, especially the former.
The community of Higley was named after one of the community’s first landowners, Stephen Weaver Higley, born May 3, 1857, and originated as a plot of 40 acres purchased in 1905-1906. The Higley (General) Store building, which still stands near the southwest corner of Higley and Williams Field roads, was built in 1910. While working as a stagecoach shotgun guard in 1872, Stephen accepted a job offer from a Santa Fe railroad passenger. In 1891, he transferred to construction work from the main line of the Santa Fe in New Mexico to the Prescott & Phoenix Railroad with headquarters in Prescott, Arizona.
Stephen is credited with building the Santa Fe railroad line from Cadiz, CA to Congress, AZ, where it joined the Ray-Hayden-Christmas railroad line running through Higley. In 1905-1906 he bought an estimated 8,300 acres of land in the area believing it to be very fertile soil for farming. The original town site consisted of 40 acres and is believed to have been donated by him.
The first Post Office was in a back corner of the Higley Store. Interestingly, there are multiple spellings for the name of the first Postmaster, appointed on January 11, 1910; it’s spelled either Lawrence H. Sarey, Laurence H. Sorey, or Lawrence H. Sorey, depending on the source. When the first rural route was established in 1915, his daughter, Matilda, served as its first carrier.
A tragedy also struck the family that same year. His wife, Anna M. Sorey, at age 40 was stricken suddenly by taking a dose of strychnine by mistake. “She had been troubled with liver complaint and had arisen early to take some liver pills. She seized the wrong bottle by mistake and swallowed the deadly contents before she had any intimation of danger. Despite every effort she died before doctors could reach her.”
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