PIMA — There’s a new target date to open Pima’s planned World War II memorial.
The new date to open to the public is Veteran’s Day, Nov. 11, 2026.
Pima Town Manager Vernon Batty said Peterson Landscaping was completing installation of the grass and was getting ready to install the brick walking path. After that other amenities will be installed.
“A sculpture of some kind, a monument that has all the names of the 27 men from Pima who died in World War II, and a mural along the wall that we built over there,” Batty said.
The plan was to have the memorial completed by Memorial Day weekend; however, local artist Brandt Woods, who has been commissioned to paint the mural, is working on another art project outside the Gila Valley and won’t be able to start the work in Pima until late summer or early fall.
The memorial will be located at the corner of 100 South and Main Street, across from Pima Elementary, and will share the lot with a new Pima Library building.
The memorial will be a tribute to local men who died while serving in World War II. There were 867 residents of Pima according to the 1940 U.S. Census, and the 27 Pima men who died in service to the country represented 3 percent of the town’s population. On a per capita basis, that was the greatest loss of life by any city or town in the United States during the war.
