Where to Stay in Mesa, Arizona

What is Mesa known for?

The third-largest city in Arizona sits inside the Phoenix metropolitan area as the most populous place in the East Valley, which is how somewhere of this rank ends up filed under the heading of suburb. The museums carry the visit. Mesa Arts Center, the Arizona Museum of Natural History, and the Mesa Grande Visitor Center anchor a downtown that also keeps the Sirrine House and a run of early buildings, while Sloan Park, Fitch Park, and Golfland Sunsplash cover the open-air end.

What are the main landmarks in Mesa?

The list is long for a suburb. Mesa Arts Center and the Arizona Museum of Natural History lead it, with Mesa Grande and its own Mesa Grande Visitor Center listed apart, and Sloan Park, Fitch Park, and Golfland Sunsplash covering the open-air end. Older houses fill the rest.

Sirrine House, Strauch House, the Angulo-Hostetter House, and the Spangler-Wilbur House all carry names from the early town, and the Queen of Peace Catholic Church stands among the city's listed buildings.

What is the history of Mesa?

Mesa dates from 1878. That puts its founding well ahead of the suburban decades that produced most of the East Valley, and the early town survives in names like the Sirrine House, the Strauch House, and the Spangler-Wilbur House. Congregations left buildings of their own.

The Queen of Peace Catholic Church, the First United Methodist Church of Mesa, and Mount Calvary Baptist Church all appear among the city's named landmarks. One thing never followed. Mesa never became a county seat, and it grew regardless, to the point of being the most populous city in the United States without that status.

Growth made it a city in its own right. It ranks third in Arizona behind Phoenix and Tucson, and it carries more people than anywhere else in the East Valley of the Phoenix metropolitan area, which the wider Greater Phoenix picture tends to obscure. The borders tell the rest.

Tempe on the west, the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community on the north, Chandler, Gilbert, and Queen Creek on the south, and Apache Junction on the east left Mesa hemmed in on every side, so the growth went into the ground the city already held. Downtown kept its institutions through all of it, and the Mesa Arts Center and the Arizona Museum of Natural History belong to that continuity rather than to the newer edges.

Where is Mesa?

Mesa fills a large block of Maricopa County. The city lies in the East Valley of the Phoenix metropolitan area with Tempe on the west and Apache Junction on the east, and the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community forms the boundary on the north. Chandler and Gilbert take the south.

Nothing in the terrain marks any of these edges, since the whole of Greater Phoenix runs together as one built surface across the county.

What is the climate of Mesa?

The visitor season inverts here. Summer heat across Maricopa County empties the streets of downtown Mesa in the middle of the day, and the months that fill the hotels here are the quiet ones almost anywhere further north. Indoor plans carry July.

The Arizona Museum of Natural History and the Mesa Arts Center absorb the hottest afternoons, while Golfland Sunsplash and Fitch Park work best once the evenings cool.

How do you get to Mesa?

Getting into Mesa means driving. The freeway network of Greater Phoenix ties it to Phoenix and Tempe on one side and out toward Apache Junction on the other, and a car is the assumption behind every distance quoted in the city. Downtown is the exception.

The blocks around the Mesa Arts Center can be covered on foot, but reaching Sloan Park, the Mesa Grande Visitor Center, or the Gilbert and Chandler boundaries means driving.