Canals older than the city, citrus groves, and a name that means rebirth
Phoenix sits on a canal network first dug by the Hohokam people over a thousand years before the city's founders reused those same channels to irrigate the desert — hence the name, a city rising from the ruins of one that came before. Its early economy ran on the "Five C's": cotton, cattle, citrus, climate, and copper, and you can still find orange trees planted decades ago dotting older neighborhoods downtown. The Heard Museum holds one of the country's most significant collections of Native American art and history, a deliberate counterweight to a city often mistaken for having none of its own. Papago Park's red sandstone buttes rise right inside city limits, proof the desert never really left even as the sprawl grew around it. And South Mountain Park is one of the largest municipal parks in the US — bigger than several small cities.
