Mesa is a city in Maricopa County, in the State of Arizona and is a suburb located about 20 miles (32 km) east of Phoenix. Mesa is the central city of the East Valley section of the Phoenix Metropolitan Area.

It is bordered by Tempe on the west, the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community on the north, Chandler and Gilbert on the south, and Apache Junction on the east. As of the 2010 Census Mesa became Arizona’s center of population.

On July 17, 1878, Mesa City was registered as a 1-square-mile (2.6 km2) townsite. The first school was built in 1879. In 1883, Mesa City was incorporated with a population of 300 people. Dr. A. J. Chandler, who would later go on to found the city of Chandler, worked on widening the Mesa Canal in 1895 to allow for enough flow to build a power plant.

In 1917, the city of Mesa purchased the utility company. The revenues from the company provided enough for capital expenditures until the 1960s. During the Great Depression, WPA funds provided paved streets, a new hospital, a new town hall and a library.

After the founding of the city the elected official that most impacted the municipality was George Nicholas Goodman. He was mayor 4 different times in parts of 3 different decade (1938-1942, 1946-1948, 1952-1956). As mayor he was directly involved in the process of acquiring land for both Falcon Field and Williams Field.

With the opening of Falcon Field and Williams Field in the early 1940s, more military personnel began to move into the Mesa area. With the advent of air conditioning and the rise of tourism, population growth exploded in Mesa as well as the rest of the Phoenix area. Industry—especially early aerospace companies—grew in the 1950s and 1960s.

As late as 1960, half of the residents of Mesa made a living with agriculture, but this has declined substantially as Mesa’s suburban growth continued on track with the rest of the Phoenix metro area.

Mesa is the third-largest city in Arizona, after Phoenix and Tucson, and the 38th-largest city in the US. The city is home to 484,587 people as of 2016 according to the Census Bureau. Mesa is home to numerous higher education facilities including Polytechnic campus of Arizona State University.

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