US Map / Cities / Chandler

Chandler Map

Chandler was laid out as an irrigated townsite south of the Salt River and is now a semiconductor town of about 281,000 people on the southern edge of metro Phoenix.

Where is Chandler?

Chandler is in south-central Arizona, about 20 miles southeast of downtown Phoenix, with Gilbert immediately east and Mesa to the north. Tucson is roughly 100 miles southeast down Interstate 10. The city's southern boundary is the Gila River Indian Community, which is why Chandler's growth ran east and north rather than continuing straight out into open desert.

Chandler at a glance

Chandler in Arizona

Like Gilbert, Mesa, Scottsdale and Glendale, Chandler lies entirely within Maricopa County — one of just 15 counties on the Arizona county map, and the one that contains most of the state's population. Arizona does not observe daylight saving, so Chandler stays on Mountain Time all year and matches California clocks each summer. The Arizona state page sets out how the metro relates to the rest of the state.

Chip fabs on the desert floor

Chandler's ground is flat, dry and cheap to build on, and it sits on the same canal network that once watered cotton and alfalfa here. That combination — level land, reliable water rights, very little seismic risk and Sky Harbor twenty miles up the freeway — is why Intel built its large Arizona wafer fabrication campuses in the city and why other electronics manufacturers followed. The Price Road corridor along Loop 101 is the result. Beyond the built edge the Sonoran Desert resumes: the San Tan Mountains stand southeast, the Sierra Estrella southwest across the Gila River valley, and the Salt River — dry for most of the year below its dams — passes a few miles north. Downtown Chandler is still arranged around the square the original townsite plan set at its center, an older pattern than most of the Sun Belt suburbs around it, and the freeway loops that carry the city's traffic — Loop 101 on the west and Loop 202 across the south — were built long afterwards around the same grid.

Cities near Chandler

Neighboring cities are Gilbert, Mesa, Scottsdale, Phoenix and Glendale. To see where Arizona sits among its neighbors, open the Mountain division page.