Welcome to Phoenix!

Phoenix  is the capital and the most populous city of the U.S. state of Arizona and the county seat of Maricopa County. It is the most populous capital city in the United States. Its physical location is along the banks of the normally dry Salt River. It was incorporated as a city on February 25, 1881. Residents of Phoenix are known as Phoenicians.
Phoenix had an estimated 2006 population of 1,512,986, making it the fifth largest city in the United States, as well as the largest state capital. Phoenix has expansive city limits (515 square miles), and it has the 10th highest land area for a city in the United States. As of 2006, the Phoenix Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) was the 13th largest in the United States, with an estimated population of 4,039,182. As early as 700 AD, the Hohokam civilization occupied the land that would become Phoenix. The Hohokam created roughly 135 miles of irrigation canals, making the land arable. Paths of these canals would later become used for the modern Arizona Canal, Central Arizona Project Canal, and the Hayden-Rhodes Aqueduct.
It is believed that between AD 1300 and AD 1450 periods of drought and severe floods led to the Hohokam's disappearance.
Although Spanish and Mexican explorers knew of the area, only southern Arizona fell under their influence. The Salt River Valley remained mostly abandoned. Local Akimel O'odham settlements, thought to be the descendents of the formerly urbanized Hohokam, concentrated on the Gila River alongside those of the Tohono O'odham and Maricopa peoples.
In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt signed the National Reclamation Act allowing for dams to be built on western streams for reclamation purposes. Residents were quick to enhance this by organizing the Salt River Valley Water Users' Association on February 7, 1903, to manage the water and power supply. The agency still exists today as part of the Salt River Project. On February 14, 1912, under President William Howard Taft, Phoenix became the capital of the newly formed state of Arizona.
In 1913, Phoenix adopted a new form of government from mayor-council to council-manager, making it one of the first cities in the United States with this form of city government. During World War II Phoenix's economy shifted to that of a distribution center, rapidly turning into an embryonic industrial city with mass production of military supplies. Luke Field, Williams Field, and Falcon Field, coupled with the giant ground-training center at Hyder, west of Phoenix, brought thousands of men into Phoenix. A fire in October 1947 destroyed most of the streetcar fleet, giving the city a difficult choice between implementing a new street railway system or using buses. The latter were chosen and the metropolitan area's development has been oriented toward cars ever since. This is expected to change, however, with the December 2008 implementation of the Phoenix light rail system. By 1950, over 100,000 people lived within the city and thousands more in surrounding communities. There were 148 miles of paved streets and 163 miles of unpaved streets. Phoenix's population in the north and west, as well as that of surrounding cities, are expanding greatly, as they have been since the 1960s.