Phoenix

The Hohokam lived in the Salt River Valley for some 2,000 years and dug roughly 135 miles of irrigation canals that turned the desert into farmland; later canals, including the Arizona Canal, followed their paths. Drought and floods between 1300 and 1450 are believed to have driven them away, and the Akimel O'odham, Tohono O'odham and Maricopa, together with Yavapai and Apache groups, later used the area. The O'odham are thought to descend from the Hohokam.

In 1867 Jack Swilling, passing through the valley, saw the old canal lines and formed an irrigation company to grow food for the mining town of Wickenburg. Yavapai County recognised the new settlement in 1868, a townsite with the grid plan that still defines the city was chosen in 1870, and Phoenix was incorporated in 1881 with about 2,500 people. It became territorial capital in 1889 and state capital when Arizona joined the Union in 1912. Cotton, cattle, citrus, climate and copper — the "Five C's" — carried the economy, and the population reached about 48,000 by 1930.

The Second World War brought air fields and pilot-training camps, and in 1948 Motorola opened a research centre, followed by Intel and other high-tech firms. Air conditioning made the long summers bearable, and a town of about 65,000 in 1940 grew into a city of 1.6 million by 2020, averaging four per cent growth a year for four decades. Its growth slowed after the 2008 recession, and the summers of 2023 and 2024 set new heat records.

Phoenix's culture is shaped by the desert, by its Native and Mexican roots, and by newcomers from across the country. The city has the largest urban Native American population in Arizona, and the Heard Museum is one of the country's leading museums of American Indian art. Frank Lloyd Wright moved to the area in 1937 and built Taliesin West; his last public building, Gammage Auditorium, stands in Tempe. The Musical Instrument Museum and the Phoenix Art Museum add international collections, and the First Friday art walk has drawn crowds to the downtown galleries since 1994.

Sport is a large part of local life. The Suns, founded in 1968, were the city's first major team; the Diamondbacks, who began play in 1998, won the World Series in 2001; the Cardinals, who moved from St Louis, are the oldest continuously run professional football franchise in the country; and the Mercury are the most successful of all. Every February and March fifteen Major League Baseball teams hold spring training around the valley.

Winter is the social season, when resorts, golf courses and patios fill. In summer life moves indoors or to the early morning, and many residents escape to the pines and lakes of northern Arizona. Hispanic residents make up about 42 per cent of the city, and Spanish is widely heard.

The 2020 census counted just over 1.6 million people in Phoenix, making it the fifth most populous city in the United States and the most populous state capital, and the metropolitan area has an estimated 5.19 million. The city covers almost 518 square miles, mostly low-rise suburbs of single-family houses, and is divided into fifteen planning areas called urban villages. Neighbouring cities — Scottsdale, Tempe, Mesa, Glendale, Chandler and others — merge into it without a break.

The economy is broad. Banner Health, based in Phoenix, is the largest employer in Arizona; Honeywell's aerospace division has its headquarters here; and Intel's site in the valley employs about 12,000 people. Government, Arizona State University's downtown campus, finance, tourism and construction add many more jobs. Neighbourhoods such as South Mountain, Alhambra and Maryvale, once troubled, have stabilised as violent crime has fallen since 2023.

Heat shapes the rhythm of the day. Nearly all homes have air conditioning, though poorer households can struggle to repair or run it. In summer, errands and exercise happen at dawn or after dark, and the hottest hours are spent indoors. Water is a constant issue: the region depends on the Colorado River and on canals that follow the Hohokam's routes. The city even has a feral population of rosy-faced lovebirds, descended from escaped pets.

Mexican food is the city's foundation, and it is overwhelmingly Sonoran in style, from the neighbouring Mexican state of Sonora: large, thin flour tortillas, carne seca (dried beef), chimichangas and the bacon-wrapped Sonoran hot dog. Restaurants and taquerías are spread across the city, and 24-hour Mexican food places sell burritos the size of a forearm. Some restaurants specialise instead in the hotter, chile-heavy cooking of New Mexico.

The valley's restaurants also reach well beyond Mexican food, from fusion kitchens to a Tohono O'odham-owned restaurant serving Native American family recipes. Pizzeria Bianco, opened by Chris Bianco in 1987 and in downtown's Heritage Square since 1996, has been rated the best pizza in the United States by several national magazines, and Matt's Big Breakfast is a downtown breakfast spot.

The farming past survives in the citrus trees of older neighbourhoods like Arcadia and in the "Five C's" that once included citrus. The resort culture of Scottsdale supports many upscale restaurants.