Ernest W. McFarland “Mac”
Florence - Pinal County
Inducted in 2025
Ernest W. McFarland was a WWI Navy veteran who rose to serve as a U.S. Senator (1941-1953), U.S. Senate Majority Leader (1951-1953), Arizona Governor (1955-1959), and Chief Justice of the Arizona Supreme Court (1968). He is the only Arizonan to serve in the highest office in all three branches of state government: two at the state level and one at the federal level.
Known simply as “Mac,” his devotion to American veterans returning home from WWII resulted in his drafting of the educational and home and business loan provisions of the G.I. Bill (Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944). As Governor, he founded the Arizona Parks System. As a businessman, he created KTVK, the fourth TV station in Phoenix, due to his fascination with the then-new medium of television.
Mac was born in a log cabin on the family farm in the Pottawatomie Strip of Oklahoma in 1894. After enlisting in the Navy during WWI, Mac became ill and doctors urged him to relocate to a warmer climate to recover. That place turned out to be Phoenix.
After graduating from Stanford Law School in 1921, Mac settled on 1,000 acres of land near Florence, Arizona. He grew cotton, alfalfa, and grapes and taught his grandchildren how to irrigate and avoid wasting water. Mac knew firsthand that water was the most precious resource in Arizona’s hot climate and critical to creating a thriving farming and ranching community. The growth of irrigated agriculture and his legal insights helped launch his political career in Pinal County as a New Deal Democrat. He soon found his way to the Pinal County Superior Court where he served as judge from 1934-1940.
Mac entered the U.S. Senate race in 1940 and beat out 28-year-encumbant Henry F. Ashurst by a three to one margin. He made his mark in the Senate and would become “Father of the GI Bill” when the Serviceman’s Readjustment Act of 1944 was passed. In his second term in the Senate, he would go on to make another landmark move for Arizona.
After discovering the disparity in the allocation of Colorado River water to California compared to Arizona, Mac launched a decades-long fight to create a sustainable water system. In 1950, working alongside Senator Carl Hayden, a bill aimed at transporting Arizona’s purported share of Colorado River water to the central portions of the state began the beginning of the Central Arizona Project (CAP).
in 1954, Mac was elected Governor of Arizona. When Mac realized that California was using delay tactics to continue drawing water, he, in an unprecedented move as a sitting Governor, argued the case in front of the U.S. Supreme Court without notes. Without his motion, Arizona would have lost its allocation of the Colorado River.
His efforts resulted in the $4 billion water-reclamation project, Colorado River Basin Project Act, was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson in 1968. Today, the 336-mile CAP system brings Colorado River Water to central and southern Arizona and is the state’s single largest renewable water supply, serving 80% of the state’s population.
Along the way, Mac overcame personal tragedies, losing his first wife and young children due to illness and the complications of childbirth, before eventually remarrying. While Mac is most remembered for his exemplary political career, honesty, and humility, agriculture was in his blood. McFarland’s forward-thinking policies have allowed Arizona’s Agriculture community to flourish and will continue to do so for generations to come.
