USA Guide
The Southwest
Phoenix
The state capital and largest city in Arizona, Phoenix holds minimal appeal for tourists. When it began life in the 1860s, the sweltering little farming town stood in the heart of the large Salt River Valley, with a ready-made irrigation system left by ancient Indians (the name Phoenix honors the fact that the city rose from the ashes of a long-vanished Hohokam community). Within a century, however, Phoenix had turned into what writer Edward Abbey called "the blob that is eating Arizona," acquiring the money and political clout to defy the self-evident absurdity of building a huge city in a virtually waterless desert. Now the fifth largest city in the US, it has filled the entire valley; over 1.5 million people live within its boundaries, while four million people inhabit the twenty separate incorporated cities, such as Scottsdale, Tempe, and Mesa, which together make up the metropolitan area.
Above all, Phoenix is hot; between June and August daytime highs average over 100°F, making it the hottest city outside the Middle East. Even in winter, temperatures rarely drop below 65°F, and snowbirds from colder climes pay vast sums to warm their bones in the luxury resorts and spas, concentrated especially in Scottsdale, that are the modern equivalent of the 1930s dude ranches that first attracted visitors here. Apart from the Heard Museum's excellent Native American displays, the cactuses at the Desert Botanical Garden, and Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture studio at Taliesin West, Phoenix is short of must-see attractions. In fact, if you're on a touring vacation, you'd miss little if you bypassed it altogether.
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