Parker Arizona
Parker is town located within the northern corner of Colorado River Indian Tribe reservation. It is in La Paz County, Arizona. It lies at an elevation of about 450 feet on a mesa that overlooks the Colorado River. The town is bordered on the north by Whipple Mountains, on the south by Riverside Mountains and on the east by Gibraltar Mountains.
In 1909, Parker’s original town site was surveyed and laid out by a railroad location engineer named Earl H. Parker. However, the town’s name was derived from another person of the same name, Gen. Eli Parker, who was the Commissioner of Indian Affairs at the time the Colorado River Indian reservation was established by Congress in 1865. The town was officially named on January 6, 1871 when the post office was established on the Colorado River Indian reservation to serve the Indian Agency. In 1948, Parker was officially incorporated as a town.
Today, Parker has an estimated population of 3,140 based on the 2000 census. 13,000 acres of non-contiguous land about ten miles to the southwest was annexed by Parker in 1980. It was later known as Parker South. From 1983 to the present, Parker serves as the county seat of La Paz County. La Paz County was formed a year earlier by initiative petition. It offers nearby parks for recreational activities as well.
