US Map / Cities / Scottsdale

Scottsdale Map

Scottsdale is roughly 30 miles long and only a few miles wide, a ribbon of city running north from the Salt River valley into the Sonoran Desert foothills.

Where is Scottsdale?

Scottsdale lies immediately east of Phoenix in south-central Arizona, with Mesa and Gilbert to the south and southeast and Chandler beyond them. Downtown Phoenix is about 12 miles southwest of Old Town Scottsdale. Tucson is roughly 115 miles southeast and Las Vegas about 300 miles northwest. The city's northern end reaches almost to the Tonto National Forest boundary.

Scottsdale at a glance

Scottsdale in Arizona

Scottsdale is one of the six Maricopa County cities among the hundred largest, and the one hemmed in most tightly, which is why it grew the shape it did. Phoenix forms nearly all of its western edge, Tempe and Mesa close it off to the south, and its eastern boundary for much of its length is the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community — sovereign land that has held a hard edge on the metro where suburbs would otherwise have continued. North was the only direction left, and the city annexed that way until it ran out of valley; the Arizona county map shows the county it sits in. Arizona holds Mountain Time without daylight saving; the Arizona state page covers the rest of the state.

The McDowell Mountains and the desert preserve

The McDowell Mountains rise along the northeastern side of the city, and Scottsdale has bought up a very large area of desert around and beyond them as the McDowell Sonoran Preserve — tens of thousands of acres of protected Sonoran Desert inside city limits, which is the main reason the northern half of the city looks nothing like the southern half. Camelback Mountain marks the southwestern corner shared with Phoenix. The Salt River runs along the southern edge, dry below its dams for most of the year. Frank Lloyd Wright built Taliesin West, his winter studio, at the foot of the McDowells, and the desert light and dry winters that drew him also built the city's resort and spring-training economy. South of Old Town the Arizona Canal and the Indian Bend Wash greenbelt run through the city — the wash was rebuilt as a chain of parks and golf courses that doubles as the floodway carrying storm runoff off the McDowell foothills, an alternative to the concrete channel that was originally proposed for it.

Cities near Scottsdale

Its metro neighbors are Phoenix, Mesa, Gilbert, Chandler and Glendale. For the mountain states around Arizona, see the Mountain division page.