Wittmann is a census-designated place in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States. It is located along U.S. Route 60 in the central part of Arizona, about 35 miles northwest of central Phoenix, and while technically located within the city's metropolitan area it is generally regarded by locals to be just outside it. As of the 2010 census, there were 6700 people living in the Wittmann ZIP Code Tabulation Area, but 763 in Wittmann itself. A variant name was Nadaburg; the present name is for Joseph Wittmann and his wife Eleanor van Beuren Wittmann, a couple who attempted several times to get approvals to build a dam project in nearby Box Canyon that would benefitted the town. This was to be a successor to the poorly engineered Walnut Grove dam that collapsed in February 1890 less than two years after it had filled. Eleanor van Beuren's father was the nominal head of a group of East Coast investors that had funded what was then primarily a placer mining project. One of the Walnut Grove Water Storage Company's engineers was Lieut. Col. Alexander Ogden Brodie who was later appointed Arizona's Territorial governor. Governmental approval and adequate funding lacking, the replacement dam project plans faltered. A long projected time for repayment of supplemental Government funding killed Joseph Wittmann's project in the 1940s leaving promises to Maricopa County families broken. The naming of nearby Morristown also refers to the Wittmann and van Beuren families, for they had residences in Morristown, New Jersey.
History
The town was first named Nadaburg, which is a combination of two words, the Spanish word "Nada", which means "nothing" and the German word "burg", which means "town". The railroad who built the Southern Transcontinental Railroad line named the site Nadaburg years before the area was formally opened to homesteading as a result of the Department of Interior Act of December 29, 1916. William Hovey Griffin, a native of Texas, founded the town of Nadaburg. He filed his homestead petition in September 1920. That same year he also plotted out the town site. Griffin donated a block of land to the Maricopa County School District where the little Red School House was built. The school currently serves as the Nadaburg Unified School District Governing Board’s Boardroom. Joseph Wittmann, continuing a legacy initiated by his father-in-law, endeavored to build a dam on the Hassayampa River, which would bring irrigation water to the town of Nadaburg. In 1926, lots and acreage were given to Wittmann, by the citizens of Nadaburg, in support of the construction of the dam. In 1930, the people of Nadaburg changed the name of the town to Wittmann, honoring the family who promised them the water that would irrigate their fields. Other land and claims included those that had belonged to the Wittmann-van Beuren family ever since the Walnut Grove Water Storage Company went into receivership in the 1890s. However, unable and/or ill-equipped to keep his family's promise, Joseph Wittmann and his son Joseph, Jr. were sued by the citizens of the town. Justifiably, at least half of them were able to recover their lands.
