While in Tempe in 1871 and with his sons as irrigation development workers to contain the raging Salt River to make water available for farming and settlement, Tiburcio Sotelo of Hermosillo, Mexico, purchased 160-acres of Tempe land located on the present-day southeast corner of Rural Road and University Drive—named the Sotelo Addition. Upon his death shortly thereafter, his widow, Manuela Sánchez Sotelo, moved from Tucson to Tempe with her children and made their home on the Sotelo Addition. The family planted wheat, garden vegetables, and herbs which Manuela successfully sold and traded with her Anglo-American neighbors. She developed important cultural and social relationships and friendships with them—helping to end discriminatory and racial practices against Mexican and Mexican Americans of Tempe. Within a few years, Manuela Sánchez Sotelo became a legal shareholder in the Tempe Irrigating Canal Company, one of few women in the Salt River Valley to hold water rights to her land and property –and in her name. Her neighbor, Charles Trumbull Hayden, among the “founders” of Tempe, gained access to her property so that his Hayden Branch off the Tempe Canal could run water to his Tempe flour mill on Mill Avenue. This helped Tempe prosper and grow to develop into the major city it has become. Manuela Sánchez Sotelo died of pneumonia in her Tempe home at the age of 82, in 1902. Her legacy lives on in the many descendants that still make their home in Tempe and the surrounding communities.