Gila Bend takes its name from a sharp turn, a bend of about 90 degrees in the Gila River near town, and it calls itself the Crossroads of the Southwest. Stout’s Hotel, the Gila Bend Community Center, Gila Bend High School, the Gila Bend Community Pool, Burleson Park and the Gatlin Archaeology Site are printed on this map, along with Bender Wash, Quilotosa Wash and Sand Tank Wash.
Gila Bend is a town in southwestern Maricopa County, just off Interstate 8 on State Route 85.
KNOWOL made this map in 2026 and gave it the look of an old atlas. The shaded relief of the landscape comes from United States Geological Survey elevation data, and the streets were drawn from Census Bureau files. Stout’s Hotel is on the National Register of Historic Places, and we checked it against National Park Service records. The town covers 64.4 square miles, all of it land, at 735 feet above sea level, the lowest elevation of any city in Maricopa County and in Greater Phoenix. Its O’odham name is Hila Wi:n, and 1,892 people lived here at the 2020 census.
Oyadaibuc
Gila Bend lies near an ancient Hohokam village, and the town’s page says the ancestors of 13 modern tribes lived and farmed in this area. Father Eusebio Francisco Kino was the first European to visit, in 1699. By then the Hohokam site on the river had been abandoned, and 132 Pima people lived in a ranchería called Oyadaibuc near today’s town, which Kino named San Felipe y Santiago del Oyadaibuc. More Pima lived upriver, mixed with the Cocomaricopa or Opa, and on one of his three visits Kino counted 960 Opa in their own rancherías downriver to the west. The Opa and Pima used the river’s floodwaters to water their crops. Juan Bautista de Anza and Father Francisco Tomás Garcés came through in 1774, and Maricopa people were still living at Gila Bend as late as the 1820s.
The Gatlin Site
The Gatlin Archaeology Site, on a plateau above the Gila River, preserves one of the few documented Hohokam platform mounds, along with pit houses, ball courts, trash mounds and prehistoric canals. Between AD 800 and 1200 it was an important Hohokam settlement at the great bend of the river, the largest site in the area and home to more than 500 people. Its two ceremonial ball courts and one of the earliest known platform mounds show how important it was, and it was named a National Historic Landmark in 1964. The site came to light in surveys before the Army Corps of Engineers built Painted Rock Dam, on land that then belonged to the rancher Colin Gatlin, and its first excavations began in 1959. It belongs to the town now, and Gila Bend is developing it as a regional cultural park.
Click to explore a larger preview. The digital watermark does not appear on printed maps.
Names on this map
These names are printed on this map.
Streets and roads: Valley Rd, Pierpoint Rd, S Old US 80, Sisson Rd, W Sisson Rd, W Powerline Rd, W Indian Rd, E Indian Rd, W Maricopa Rd, Main St, W Pima St, Center Rd.
More street names, A to Z
Butterfield Trl, Centennial Park Rd, E Old 84, Frontage Rd, Hartin Ave, Old Hwy 64, Paloma Rd, W Thayer Rd.
Crossroads of the Southwest
From 1849 the Southern Emigrant Trail passed this way, and by 1854 the place was called Tezotal, from the scientific name of the desert ironwood tree, Olneya tesota, given in William H. Emory’s boundary survey along the Gila. In 1857 it became Gila Ranch, a water and camping stop on the San Antonio and San Diego Mail Line, and in 1858 Gila Ranch Station joined the Butterfield Overland Mail route to California. East of the station lay the waterless Forty Mile Desert, 40 miles across to Maricopa Wells. A settlement grew up around the station from 1865, and it got a post office on May 1, 1871. Stage and freight routes from the mining camps met here, especially after the railroad came in 1879, and in 1880, once the railroad had drilled wells near its own Gila Bend station, people began moving to a new town 4 miles south-southwest of the old one. The postmaster of the old stage station was among the first to go. The town’s nickname comes from those routes: Gila Bend was the center of a wheel, with spokes in many directions.
Gila Bend is known among fans of roadside attractions for its welcome sign, its roadside sculptures and the Space Age Lodge, a motel and restaurant that opened in 1963 with Space Age architecture and decor. Since 2013 the Solana Generating Station, a 280-megawatt solar plant, has supplied power to Arizona Public Service. Summers are extremely hot, with July highs that average 109 degrees.
Gila Bend High School, the Gila Bend Community Center, the Gila Bend Community Pool and Burleson Park have their places on the sheet. Bender Wash, Quilotosa Wash and Sand Tank Wash give the land its shape.
This Gila Bend map is a good addition to an office, library or den, and it can help teach children the geography and history of the area. It’s made for anyone who calls Gila Bend home, and KNOWOL created it in 2026 to show the town as it looks today. Zoom in on the preview above to explore the details, then click here to get your copy of the Gila Bend map.
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