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Many early names derived from geographic features or landmarks. Baseline is such a road. The point from which all land in Arizona is surveyed is called the Gila and Salt River Base Line and Meridian, which is marked on a hill near Baseline Road and 115th Avenue. This was established in a survey conducted in 1851. Shortly after the Civil War, surveyors extended a baseline east from that point through what is now south Phoenix, Tempe and along the Mesa-Gilbert border. Baseline is so named because it follows that line. During the summer equinox, the sun rises and sets in a straight line along this road. This “base line” was used in developing the Valley street grid system.

Hayden Road
Until 1991, Hayden Road extended south to University Drive. At that time, Hayden Road was renamed McClintock Drive and extended to the border of Scottsdale at McKellips Road. While you may think that it was named after Tempe’s founder, Charles Trumbull Hayden, it was actually named after Wilford Hayden, who farmed south and east of the original Scottsdale town site from the late 1890s through the 1950s, according to the book “Historic Scottsdale: A Life From the Land” by Joan Fudala.
^{Hayden Road (now McClintock Drive) south of First Street (now Rio Salado Parkway) in 1995.}

Kyrene Road
South Tempe used to be referred to as Kyrene. It is not known with certainty why the name had been given to the region. It is theorized that Darrell Duppa, who had a classical education and was familiar with the history and geography along the Mediterranean Sea, may have used one of two places which bear resemblance to the current spelling of Kyrene. Cyraen/Cyrene was a city in what is now the country of Libya. The New Testament references a Simon of Cyrene. There was also a seaport on the island of Cyprus near Turkey named Kyrenia. The name Kyrene was very likely derived from one of these cities. It is not known when Kyrene Road was named.

Named for Colonel James Harvey McClintock, who was in the Territorial Normal School’s first graduating class. He owned a large farm near Tempe, later acquired the Tempe Daily News and was the first teacher at the Kyrene School. As a member of Teddy Roosevelt’s “Roughriders,” he was wounded in the attack on San Juan Hill in 1898. He completed a monumental three-volume history of Arizona in 1916 and after that became the state’s first official historian. 

^{Col. James McClintock circa 1910}