Desert city rising from ancient canals
Phoenix runs on canals the Hohokam dug more than a thousand years before the city's founders arrived and reused them — hence the name, a settlement rising from the ruins of one that came before. The Hohokam network ran hundreds of miles and was abandoned around 1450 for reasons still argued over. The early economy leaned on the Five C's: cotton, cattle, citrus, climate, and copper, and orange trees planted decades ago still dot older neighborhoods downtown. The Heard Museum holds one of the most significant collections of Native American art in the country, a deliberate counterweight to a city often assumed to have no history at all. Papago Park's red sandstone buttes rise inside city limits, and South Mountain Park is among the largest municipal parks in the United States.
