The Honorable Margaret Taylor Hance served as mayor of Phoenix from 1976 to 1984, winning four consecutive two-year terms. Hance was the first woman to hold the office.

 

Born in Iowa, Margaret Taylor moved to Phoenix, where she was a Girl Scout as well as active in athletics. She earned a bachelor's degree from Scripps College in Claremont, CA, in 1945. That year she married Richard M. Hance. The couple had three children.

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Hance was the president of the Junior League of Phoenix, a volunteer organization for women who want to improve the community, from 1959 to 1960. In 1967, she began producing documentaries for a local PBS affiliate. She began her involvement in local politics following the death of her husband in 1970. Among her first significant public initiatives was authorizing the Phoenix Mountain Preserve, for which she was unofficially known as the "Mother of the Mountain Preserve." After retiring as mayor, Hance worked with the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. She died of cancer in 1990.

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