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Mesa
A large city in the Phoenix metro's East Valley
Mesa, Arizona
Mesa is one of the largest cities in Arizona and a core of the Phoenix metropolitan area's "East Valley," spread across the flat, sun-baked floor of the Salt River Valley in the Sonoran Desert. Founded by Mormon pioneers in 1878 on a low desert plateau - a "mesa" above the river - it has grown into a city of more than half a million.
Like the rest of metro Phoenix, Mesa depends on water diverted from the Salt and Colorado rivers to sustain a desert metropolis where summer highs routinely exceed 105 degrees. Its wide grid of low-rise development sits within sight of the Superstition Mountains to the east.