Phoenix, Arizona
The city of Phoenix is the state capital of Arizona. It currently the most populous city in the state. The city is located in the American Southwest, known for its hot desert climate. The highest recorded temperature was 122°F in 1990, according to weather.com. The Metro Phoenix area is nicknamed the Valley of the Sun. Each year Phoenix gets over 300 days of sunshine.
The city of Phoenix is divided up into 15 urban villages, which can be found on the official City of Phoenix Web site. These urban villages include: Ahwatukee Foothills, Alhambra, Camelback East, Central City, Deer Valley, Desert View, Encanto, Estrella, Laveen, Maryvale, North Gateway, North Mountain, Paradise Valley (not to be confused with the town of Paradise Valley), South Mountain and Rio Vista.
History
During the Native American period the land that would become Phoenix was occupied for more than a 1000 years by the Hohokam people. They made the land cultivable by creating of about 135 miles of irrigation canals. They abandoned the land between the 1300 and 1450 due to severe droughts and floods.
In the 1600s and 1700s Father Eusebio Kino, an Italian Jesuit, in the service of the Spanish Empire was among the first Europeans to travel to Phoenix.
In 1848, after the Mexican-American War concluded, most of Mexico's northern region passed to United States control and a portion of it was made the New Mexico Territory (this included what is now Phoenix) shortly afterward.
The land was contested territory during the American Civil War. Both the Confederate Arizona Territory, organized by Southern sympathizers in 1861 and with its capital in Tucson, and the United States Arizona Territory, formed by the United States Congress in 1863, with its capital at Fort Whipple (now Prescott, Arizona) included the Salt River Valley within their borders.
According to Phoenix.gov, Phoenix's history begins in the second half of the 1800s. In 1867, Jack Swilling of Wickenburg stopped to rest his horse at the foot of the north slopes of the White Tank Mountains. He saw farm land, predominately free of rocks, and a warm climate with no wintry precipitation. Swilling had a series of canals built which followed those of the ancient Native American system. On May 3, 1881 Phoenix was incorporated. The introduction of the railroad revolutionized the economy of Phoenix.
On February 14, 1912, under President William Howard Taft, Phoenix became the capital of the newly formed state of Arizona. By 1950, over 100,000 people lived within the city and thousands more in surrounding communities. Phoenix has maintained a growth streak in recent years, growing by 24.2% since 2000.
