The Dilzhe’e Apache knew this place as Te-go-suk, the Place of the Yellow Water, long before it had a post office. This map of Payson prints the Ox Bow Inn, the Payson Public Library, Julia Randall Elementary School, Payson Elementary School, Rim Country Middle School and Rumsey Park, with Birch Mesa, Yerba Senta Butte and Stewart Pocket giving shape to the land.
Payson is a town in northern Gila County, surrounded by the Tonto National Forest.
KNOWOL made this map in 2026 and gave it the look of an old atlas. The shaded relief of Birch Mesa, Yerba Senta Butte and Stewart Pocket comes from United States Geological Survey elevation data, and the streets were drawn from Census Bureau files. The Ox Bow Inn was confirmed against the National Park Service and the National Register of Historic Places. The town sits at 5,000 feet, very near the geographic center of the state, which is why it’s been called “The Heart of Arizona,” and the Mogollon Rim rises to the north.
Union Park becomes Payson
The Yavapai lived in the area too, as did the Hohokam, Mogollon, Salado and Sinagua cultures. The Dilzhe’e are a band of Western Apache, the Tonto Apache, and the Tonto Apache Tribe’s land lies next to the town today. In 1882, the year counted as Payson’s founding, settlers led by Henry Sidles, John and Lucy Hise and James Callaghan set up a logging, mining and ranching hamlet called Union Park, also known as Green Valley. On March 3, 1884, a post office opened there with the help of Illinois Representative Levi Joseph Payson, and the town took his name in thanks.
Payson held its first rodeo in 1884, and the town calls its August Doin’s the world’s oldest continuous rodeo, held every year since. Each September it hosts the Arizona State Old Time Fiddlin’ Championship, with local and nationally known fiddlers. In the 1930s a trip from Phoenix to Payson took eight to twelve hours; the paved road was finished in 1958, and State Route 87, the Beeline Highway, was later widened to four lanes. The town incorporated in 1973. The Ox Bow Inn was built of logs as the Payson Hotel by William and Estlee Wade, next to their restaurant, the Busy Bee, and it borrowed design ideas from the Old Faithful Inn, which Willie Wade knew from his time in Yellowstone. Jimmy Cox took it over in 1945, expanded it and gave it the name Ox Bow Inn.
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: Johnson Dr, N Earhart Pkwy, Sherwood Dr, W Airport Rd, W Houston Mesa Rd, Alpine Dr, W Locust Rd, E Luke Dr, E Airline Rd, E Rancho Rd, E Airport Rd, E Eidelweiss Cir.
More street names, A to Z
Anasazi Rd, Bia Rd, Bobby St, Bonita St, Cedar Ln, Cherry St, Club Dr, Country Ln, Del Coronado, E Bolivar St, E Cedar Ln, E Frontier, E Granite Dells Rd, E Phoenix St, E Sherwood Dr, E Tranquility Pt, E Tyler Pkwy, Forest Dr, Green Valley Pkwy, Inez Dr, Irene St, Jade Ln, Miller Rd, N Beeline Hwy, N Briarwood Rd, N East Dr, N Graham Ranch Rd, N Heather Cir, N Hermosillo Dr, N Karen Way, S Ash St, S Beeline Hwy, S Meadow St, Spring Rd, S Tyler Pkwy, W Forest Cir, Woodridge Ln, W Pine St, W Pinon Cir, W Rancho Rd, W Random Way, W Remuda Way.
Zane Grey Country
Author Zane Grey made his first trip to the Payson area in 1918 and kept coming back. He bought land near Tonto Creek, including 120 acres under Myrtle Point, wrote many books about the area and filmed movies here, among them To the Last Man. In the 1970s and 1980s the country around Payson was most often called Zane Grey Country, a name that ran in the header of the Payson Roundup, though locals now more often say Rim Country. Grey’s cabin on the Mogollon Rim was restored in 1966 and opened as a free museum, and after the Dude Fire destroyed it in 1990 it was rebuilt in Payson; the replica stands in Green Valley Park.
The Forest Service oversees 97% of the land around Payson, and the town has the Cypress and Boulders trail system nearby and the Horton Creek trail on the Rim. Ten miles north is Tonto Natural Bridge, believed to be the largest natural travertine bridge in the world, standing 183 feet over a 400-foot tunnel; a Scotsman, David Gowan, first documented it in 1877, and his family’s lodge there is on the National Register. Rock hounds come for quartz crystals, geodes, agate and onyx, and fossils turn up along the Rim. Payson has two parks, Green Valley Park and Rumsey Park, and the Payson Unified School District serves the town. The Payson Public Library, Julia Randall Elementary School, Payson Elementary School and Rim Country Middle School are printed as well.
This Payson 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 Payson home, below the Mogollon Rim, 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 Payson map.
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