Mesa

About Mesa

Mesa is the third-largest city in Arizona, a sprawling desert city of about 500,000 people roughly 20 miles east of downtown Phoenix. It was founded in 1878 by Mormon pioneers who rebuilt ancient Hohokam canals to farm the flat tableland that gave the city its name. Today the canals still carry water across the East Valley, and Mesa Grande Cultural Park preserves one of the largest Hohokam platform mounds in the region.

Downtown Mesa is walkable along Main Street, where the light rail runs past murals, cafés and the Mesa Arts Center, the largest arts complex in Arizona, with theaters, galleries and studios. The i.d.e.a. Museum is a hands-on art museum for children, and the Arizona Museum of Natural History has dinosaur halls and a three-story Dinosaur Mountain.

Every spring the Chicago Cubs play their spring training games at Sloan Park. To the east, Usery Mountain Regional Park has desert trails and saguaro views, tubers float the Salt River in summer, and the jagged Superstition Mountains rise just beyond the city.