Mesa, Arizona

• 1. Introduction

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  Mesa, Arizona sits on a flat desert plateau east of Phoenix, and at the 2020 census it counted 504,258 residents. That number places it 37th among all American cities, yet Mesa holds a distinction no other place of its size can claim: it is the most populous city in the United States that is not a county seat. Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, both independent of any county, are the only exceptions to that rule.

  Beneath the streets and subdivisions of this sprawling desert city lie canals that are thousands of years old. The people who dug them built what scholars call the largest and most sophisticated prehistoric irrigation network in the entire New World. When Mormon pioneers arrived in 1877, they found those same channels waiting in the sand and put them back to work within months.

  How did a modest townsite of 300 people, incorporated in 1883, become the population center of the entire East Valley? What drew the military, the aerospace industry, and tens of thousands of college students to this patch of Sonoran Desert? And what does it mean that researchers from MIT and UCLA once declared Mesa the most conservative American city of more than 250,000 residents? Those questions run through the whole story of this place.

• 2. The Hohokam Foundation

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  At least 2,000 years ago, a culture called the Hohokam settled in what is now the Mesa area and began moving water across the desert on a scale that was without precedent in the ancient Americas. Their canals ran up to 90 feet wide and 10 feet deep at the head gates, and individual channels stretched as far as 16 miles across open desert.

  By 1100 CE, that network could deliver water to an area of more than 110,000 acres, turning the Sonoran Desert floor into productive farmland. By 1450, the Hohokam had constructed hundreds of miles of these channels. Many of those canals remain in use today.

  What ended the Hohokam presence is not recorded in the source. Explorers did not venture into the region in the period after their disappearance, so the intervening centuries remain largely blank. By the late 1800s, U.S. Army troops had relocated the Apache people from the area near present-day Mesa, clearing the ground for the next wave of settlers. The Hohokam's engineering would become those settlers' most valuable inheritance. The Park of the Canals, now a cultural attraction in the city, marks the places where that ancient water system shaped everything that followed.

• 3. Mormon Pioneers Arrive

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  In March 1877, Daniel Webster Jones and Henry Clay Rogers left St. George, Utah, heading south into Arizona. Jones had been asked by Mormon officials to lead a party of settlers in founding a new community. The group eventually came down on the north side of the present Mesa area and established a settlement they called Fort Utah, later renamed Jonesville, near what is now Lehi Road. In 1883, that settlement took the name Lehi, at the suggestion of Brigham Young, Jr.

  A second party, called the First Mesa Company, arrived from Utah and Idaho around the same time. Its leaders were Francis Martin Pomeroy, Charles Crismon, George Warren Sirrine, and Charles I. Robson. Rather than joining Jones at his Lehi settlement, they climbed onto the elevated plateau the city would eventually be named after. They dug irrigation canals and tapped into surviving Hohokam channels. By April 1878, water was flowing.

  A third wave, the Second Mesa Company, came in 1879 and settled to the west, in a place initially called Alma and later known as Stringtown, near Alma School Road. On the 17th of July 1878, Mesa City was registered as a one-square-mile townsite. The first school opened in 1879. When Mesa City was formally incorporated in 1883, it had a population of 300 people. Dr. A. J. Chandler, who would go on to found the neighboring city of Chandler, widened the Mesa Canal in 1895 to allow enough flow to support a power plant. Mesa bought that utility company in 1917, and revenues from it funded city capital expenditures all the way into the 1960s.

• 4. War, Air, and Growth

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  Falcon Field, located in the northeastern part of the city, was established during World War II as a training facility for British Royal Air Force pilots. When the war ended, the field was transferred to the city. Williams Air Force Base, located to the southeast, closed in 1993 and was eventually reimagined as Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport, which now provides commercial air service as an alternative to Sky Harbor International Airport. Allegiant Air announced Gateway as a Focus City, with service beginning on the 25th of October 2007.

  Boeing builds the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter at a facility adjoining Falcon Field. Falcon Field itself currently has 605 aircraft based there. These facts point to a transformation that began in the early 1940s, when the opening of both Falcon Field and Williams Field drew military personnel to Mesa in significant numbers.

  The advent of air conditioning and the growth of tourism pushed population growth higher still. Industry, particularly early aerospace companies, expanded through the 1950s and 1960s. As late as 1960, half of Mesa's residents still made their living through agriculture. That share declined sharply as suburban development continued alongside the broader Phoenix metro expansion. George Nicholas Goodman, a pharmacist who served as mayor five separate times across three decades (1938-1942-1946-1948, and 1952-1956), was directly involved in acquiring land for both Falcon Field and Williams Field, making him the elected official credited with the most lasting impact on Mesa's growth.

• 5. A City of Colleges

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  More than 40,000 students are enrolled in at least ten colleges and universities located within Mesa. Mesa Community College, the largest of the Maricopa Community Colleges, enrolls more than 24,000 full and part-time students. Arizona State University's Polytechnic campus in southeast Mesa serves more than 6,000 undergraduate and graduate students in scientific and engineering fields. A. T. Still University operates an osteopathic medical school in the city.

  In 2022, Arizona State University opened the Media and Immersive eXperience Center inside the ASU at Mesa City Center complex. It houses programs from the Herberger Institute for Design and Arts, including a film school with full media production facilities and a theater. That opening came a decade after Mesa launched a higher education initiative in 2012, which eventually attracted branch campuses of five private liberal arts schools: Albright College, Westminster College, Benedictine University, Upper Iowa University, and Wilkes University. Albright and Westminster have since left the city, and Wilkes has moved entirely online.

  The scale of higher education in Mesa has a counterpart in its public school system. Mesa Public Schools is the top employer in the city, with 7,726 employees according to the 2022 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report. Gilbert Public Schools ranks tenth on that same list, with just over 1,000 employees, reflecting how the city's southern edge bleeds into neighboring school districts.

• 6. Politics and Demographics

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  A 2014 study by researchers from MIT and UCLA analyzed more than a decade of public opinion surveys and declared Mesa the most conservative American city with a population exceeding 250,000 residents. In 2017, the Pew Research Center independently reached the same conclusion.

  The Mesa City Charter of 1967 established a council-manager form of government. Voters in May 1998 approved Proposition 100, creating six geographical council districts. Council members serve four-year terms and cannot serve more than two consecutive terms. The mayor, elected city-wide, is held to the same limit. Mayor John Giles, for example, served a partial term from 2014 to 2016 before winning two full consecutive terms from 2016 to 2024; that partial term did not count against his limit.

  The city's population has grown and diversified over time. The 2000 census recorded 396,375 residents; by 2010 that figure had risen to 439,041; by 2020 it reached 504,258. The Hispanic and Latino share of the population held relatively steady across those decades, at roughly 19.75% in 2000-26.36% in 2010, and 27.27% in 2020. The non-Hispanic white share moved in the other direction, from 73.21% in 2000 to 59.59% in 2020. The median household income as of the 2010 census was $42,817, and the median family income was $49,232. The per capita income that year was $19,601.

• 7. Notable Lives

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  Ernesto Miranda, whose conviction the U.S. Supreme Court overturned in the landmark case Miranda v. Arizona, is buried in the City of Mesa Cemetery. That ruling created the Miranda warning that American law enforcement officers recite to suspects to this day.

  Carl Hayden, who served as Arizona's first representative in the U.S. House of Representatives and later as an Arizona senator, died in Mesa in 1972. John Jacob Rhodes served as House Minority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives; his son John Jacob Rhodes III later became a member of the same body. Bruce Crandall, a Medal of Honor pilot and veteran of the 1st Cavalry at the Battle of Ia Drang on the 14th of November 1965, is among Mesa's notable residents.

  The city has also produced figures across sport, culture, and entertainment. Julie Ertz is a world champion soccer player. Misty Hyman won an Olympic gold medal in swimming. Jagger Eaton became the youngest competitor in X Games history and went on to the Olympics. Troy Kotsur won an Academy Award as a deaf actor. Buck Owens, a singer and member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, is listed among those with connections to Mesa. Jim Adkins, vocalist and lead guitarist of Jimmy Eat World, and Jake Shears, lead singer of the pop band Scissor Sisters, both have roots here as well.