<p>The vanguard of local- and state-level implementation of neoliberal policies within the United States was in a region known as the Sunbelt. This article examines people’s real-world experiences of the precocious implementation of local neoliberalism in the mid- to late-twentieth century within the last residential section of Portland Tract in Phoenix, Arizona, a quintessential Sunbelt city. Portland Tract was an early twentieth-century development in Maricopa County initial targeting middle-class Black households, which was annexed by the City of Phoenix in 1954. Following this annexation, the Tract was rezoned to light industrial and ultimately, largely demolished to make way for the expansion of Phoenix’s Sky Harbor airport by the early twenty-first century. Only a small section of Portland Tract, which comprises our study area, remained residential until 1975 when the City of Phoenix purchased the lots for inclusion in the S’eḏav Va’aki Museum grounds. Using a combination of archaeological and historical methods, we analyze the lives of the residents of this section of Portland Tract showing that those who lived in this area had to and did find ways of make do as best they could, all while they and their neighborhood were the targets of and negatively impacted by the Postwar neoliberal pollical-economic policies and practices of the City of Phoenix.</p>