Gila Bend Station was located 17 miles (27 km) east of Murderer's Grave Station and 40 miles (64 km) west of Maricopa Wells Station across the waterless Forty Mile Desert. as 'Gila Ranch Station', it was a stage station on the more famous Butterfield Overland Mail route to California. From 1849, what became the Southern Emigrant Trail passed through the area, which by 1854 had acquired the name Tezotal or Tesotal, from the scientific name of the desert ironwood tree ( Olneya tesota), given it in the botanical report of the Boundary Survey along the Gila River led by William H. Only Graham found corn stubble on the riverside with which to graze his cattle. : 111–112 Tezotal ĭuring the Mexican–American War, the expeditions of Kearny (1846), Cooke (1847) and Graham (1847) passed through the area but found no village. By the time of the California Gold Rush, the Maricopa villages were all located east of the Sierra Estrella, on the Gila River, below the Pima Villages. After the 1820s, the Maricopa, under relentless pressure from the Yuma and other tribes, and population loss from epidemics, were compelled to leave the Gila Bend and join the Pima in the Middle Gila region. As late as the 1820s Maricopa were living at Gila Bend. Oyadaibuc was also visited by Juan Bautista de Anza, commander of the Presidio at Tubac and founder of the city of San Francisco, and by Father Francisco Tomas Garces in 1774. : 26–27 The Opa and Pima used the flood waters of the river to irrigate their crops. During one of his three visits to Gila Bend, Kino counted 960 Opas living in their own rancherias down river to the west of Oyadaibuc as far as a few miles beyond Agua Caliente.

132 Pima people lived in a ranchería called Oyadaibuc, or as Kino named it San Felipe y Santiago del Oyadaibuc, near the modern town, and other Pima lived in three rancherias up river to the north mixed with the Cocomaricopa or Opa. The Hohokam site along the fertile banks of the Gila River had been abandoned, and other tribes lived in the vicinity. Father Eusebio Francisco Kino was the first European to visit, arriving in 1699 on his first journey of exploration to the Colorado River. The town of Gila Bend is situated near an ancient Hohokam village. Just outside the town is the San Lucy district (O'odham: Weco Cekṣanĭ) of the Tohono O'odham Nation, with a small settlement, San Lucy (O'odham: Si:l Mek) bordering the town itself. As of the 2020 census, the population of the town was 1,892. The town is named for an approximately 90-degree bend in the Gila River, which is near the community's current location. Gila Bend ( / ˌ h iː l ə ˈ b ɛ n d/ O'odham: Hila Wi:n), founded in 1872, is a town in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States.

Space age restaurant gila bend