US Map / Cities / Mesa

Mesa Map

Mesa is bigger than Kansas City or Minneapolis and is still not the largest city in its own metropolitan area — about 517,000 people in 2024, all of them in the Phoenix valley.

Where is Mesa?

Mesa lies immediately east of Phoenix in central Arizona, on the terrace of dry ground above the south bank of the Salt River that gave the town its Spanish name. Downtown Phoenix is about 20 miles west; Tucson is roughly 105 miles southeast, and Las Vegas some 300 miles northwest. There is no gap between Mesa and its neighbors — the built-up area runs continuously from here to the far side of the valley.

Mesa at a glance

Another 2,919 residents would lift Mesa past Atlanta into No. 36; 1,119 fewer would put it behind Kansas City at No. 38. Within Arizona it comes third of seven, behind Phoenix and Tucson. Against Arizona's 7.58 million residents, though, that is only about 7%. It holds about 11% of Maricopa County's 4,673,096 residents.

Mesa in Arizona

Mesa is one of six Maricopa County cities in the national top 100, alongside Phoenix, Chandler, Gilbert, Glendale and Scottsdale; Tempe and Peoria fill in the rest of the ring. The Arizona county map shows a single county carrying more than 60% of the state's population. Tucson, in Pima County, is the only large Arizona city outside this valley — see the Arizona state page.

Canals, the Salt River and the Superstitions

Mormon settlers laid the town out in 1878 on the mesa above the river, and they did it by reopening prehistoric Hohokam canals that had watered the same fields centuries earlier — the modern irrigation grid still follows some of those lines. The Salt River bed along the northern edge is usually dry, its water held upstream in a chain of reservoirs and topped up since the 1990s by Colorado River water carried across the desert by canal. The Superstition Mountains stand about 20 miles east, where the valley floor ends and the Tonto National Forest begins.

Cities near Mesa

In the same valley: Phoenix, Chandler, Gilbert, Scottsdale and Glendale. The West region page sets Arizona among the other western states.