What is the capital of Arizona?

Phoenix is the capital of Arizona, located in the Salt River Valley in the Sonoran Desert in central Arizona, about 350 miles west of El Paso, Texas and 270 miles east of Los Angeles, California. Phoenix has been the capital since 1889, when the territorial legislature moved from Prescott (which had alternated with Tucson). Arizona was admitted as the 48th state on February 14, 1912, the last of the contiguous United States.

Phoenix takes its name from the mythical bird that rose from the ashes, chosen because the city was built on the ruins of a much older Hohokam civilization that had developed extensive irrigation canals between roughly 300 and 1450 CE before mysteriously vanishing. American settlers arrived after the Civil War, and engineer John W. Smith began rebuilding the Hohokam canals in 1867. Phoenix was incorporated as a town in 1881.

The city's growth was made possible by federal water projects. Theodore Roosevelt Dam on the Salt River, completed in 1911 as one of the first major projects of the Bureau of Reclamation, provided irrigation water and electricity that fueled agricultural development. World War II military bases including Luke Air Force Base and Williams Air Force Base drove rapid wartime growth. Air conditioning made widespread postwar settlement of the desert possible.

Phoenix is now the fifth largest city in the United States with about 1.6 million residents, and the metropolitan area has about 5 million people, the eleventh largest in the country. Sun-belt migration has made Phoenix one of the fastest growing cities for decades.

The Arizona State Capitol, completed in 1901, is now part of a larger capital complex with separate buildings for the executive and legislative branches. The state government includes the Governor, the bicameral Legislature (30 senators and 60 representatives), and the Arizona Supreme Court. Major institutions include Arizona State University (Phoenix-Tempe area, about 80,000 students, one of the largest universities in the country), the University of Phoenix (online and in-person, founded 1976), and Grand Canyon University.

The economy includes electronics and semiconductors (Intel, ON Semiconductor, Microchip Technology, TSMC), aerospace and defense (Honeywell, Raytheon, General Dynamics), healthcare, financial services, and tourism (the Grand Canyon is about 230 miles to the north). Phoenix has a hot desert climate with summer high temperatures regularly exceeding 110 degrees Fahrenheit and very mild winters.

Water scarcity is a continuing concern. The Salt River, the Verde River, the Gila River, and groundwater pumping support the city, supplemented by the Central Arizona Project canal that brings water from the Colorado River 336 miles east.