This school is found across the street from the post office.  It was originally a school but was turned into a church when a larger school was built to the north east of town.

The town of Gila Bend is situated near an ancient Hohokam village. When Father Eusebio Francisco Kino visited in 1699, the older site along fertile banks of the Gila River had been abandoned by another early tribe called the Opas, who instead used the river to irrigate their crops at a nearby rancheria. This same rancheria was 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.^[9]

From 1857, Gila Ranch was a stagecoach stop on the San Antonio-San Diego Mail Line and the later more famous Butterfield Overland Mail route to California located 17 miles from Murderer’s Grave Station to the west and 40 miles east of Maricopa Wells Station. Later other stage and freight routes and the railroad converged here. The nickname the “Crossroads of the Southwest” stems from the area having been part of an important transportation route in the settling, development and growth of the Great Southwest. Gila Bend was the “center of a wheel”, with spokes leading in many directions throughout the region.