Dale C. Riggins, Jr.

Inducted in 2014

Mar 3

Mesa - Maricopa County

Inducted in 2014

The son of a Mesa school teacher, Dale C. Riggins Jr, grew up on a small farm that his dad kept to supplement his income. As a boy, one of his chores was to help feed and care for the livestock, and he remembers the farm having a lot of animals. He laughs that when he got older, he had a sign in his office that said, "I don't own anything that eats."

An Arizona native, Dale was born in Mesa in 1926 and has been involved in agriculture throughout his life. He joined the Army in 1945. When he returned home, Dale enrolled at ASU, where he earned his degree in Agronomics in 1951. That same year, he began farming 160 acres he rented in Mesa and the home farm. His primary crops were cotton and watermelon.

Land in Phoenix was being developed quickly, and developers were paying so much that he continued expanding his operations. In 1957, he bought 560 acres in the Gilbert Chandler area, where he grew cotton hay.

"If you're going to be involved, you have to be involved in marketing," Dale said. "With cotton, for example, it's a worldwide market." For that reason, he joined Calcot and the Arizona Cotton Growers Association.

He's a savvy businessman and community-minded individual. He was a Mesa and Gilbert Farm Bureau member and sat on the Arizona Corporation's board, among other things. During the 1960s and '70s, he co-owned Gilbert Feed and Seed. In 1980, he was on the move again, trading the Gilbert farm for a larger property in Florence. Jill says he had to keep increasing his land to stay ahead of the machinery cost and needs to produce his crops.

In her nomination letter, Dale's daughter, Catherine Wilkerson, commented that her dad still drives from Mesa to Florence each week to check on the farm my brother now operates. "He still puts on his boots each morning, drinks his coffee from the "Out Standing in His Field" coffee cup, and reads the weather report.

Dale has always believed that if you were going to be part of the community, you had to be part of the community. He has belonged to many civic organizations and served on numerous boards. Dale was probably the oldest member of the Mesa Hohokam, an organization he joined 58 years ago. He is also proud of his family and has made himself available for family events no matter how busy his schedule is.

Their youngest son, Scott, took over the farm. "The farm is a big operation," Dale said. "He has a big hay company. In 2000. he bailed 48,000 tons of hay in a year, much bigger than I was ever thinking of doing."

Dale and his wife, Sue, are parents to six children, grandparents to 12, and great-grandparents to eight.