Gila (pronounced "hee-la") Bend, named for the sharp bend in the Gila River. It is located near a prehistoric Hohokan Indian Village which Farther Eusebio Francisco Kino visited in 1699. Kino found the fertile banks of the Gila River had been abandoned by an early Indian tribe call the Opas, who had established a rancheria and raised two grain crops annually, irrigating from the Gila River. This same rancheria was visited by Spanish Captain Juan Bautista de Anza, commander of the Presidio at Tubac, and founder of the City of San Francisco, and Father Francisco Tomas Garces in 1774.

Gila Bend has long been nicknamed the "Crossroads of the Southwest". For hundreds of years the area has been part of an important transportation route in the settling, development and growth of the Great Southwest. Gila Bend is ideally situated as the "center of a wheel" with spokes leading to and from all areas of the southwest