The first families here came from Peoria, Illinois, and they named the new town after the one they’d left. This map of Peoria runs from Olive West out to Villa Vista and prints the First Presbyterian Church of Peoria, Peoria High School, the Peoria Jail House Museum, Sunrise Mountain Library, Liberty High School and Sunrise Mountain High School, with Baldy Mountain, Black Mountain and Calderwood Butte giving shape to the land.
Peoria is a city in Maricopa and Yavapai counties, with most of it in Maricopa County and a northern portion in Yavapai County.
KNOWOL made this map in 2026 and gave it the look of an old atlas. The shaded relief of Baldy Mountain, Black Mountain and Calderwood Butte comes from United States Geological Survey elevation data, and the streets were drawn from Census Bureau files. Historic sites such as the First Presbyterian Church of Peoria, Peoria High School and the Peoria Jail House Museum were confirmed against the National Park Service and the National Register of Historic Places. 190,985 people lived here at the 2020 census, and Peoria is the ninth-largest city in Arizona by population and the sixth-largest by land area.
Settlers from Illinois
William John Murphy, who had worked on the Arizona Canal, recruited settlers to start a community here, many of them from Peoria, Illinois. Albert J. and Elizabeth Straw were the first to settle, in November 1886, followed by the Hannas, the Copeses and the McMillans, all from Peoria. In 1887 a new road, Grand Avenue, was laid out on an angle through the new town sites of Alhambra, Glendale and Peoria. On August 4, 1888, a post office opened under the name Peoria for 27 people, and in 1891 the first school building, one room, was finished. The word peoria itself is a corruption of the Miami-Illinois word for “prairie fire.” The town’s original streets ran Monroe, Madison, Jefferson, Washington, Jackson, Lincoln, Grant and Van Buren, and the cross streets were Almond, Peach, Orange, Vine and Walnut, now 85th through 81st avenues.
A rail spur came through between 1891 and 1895, and Peoria’s small depot on 83rd Avenue now stands at McCormick-Stillman Railroad Park in Scottsdale. The three-story Edwards Hotel went up in 1918, and the Mabel Hood building, the John L. Meyer “flatiron” building and the Paramount Theatre followed in 1920. That same year Peoria’s first library opened at the women’s club, and in May 1959 the club gave its clubhouse to the city. A Chamber of Commerce, formed about 1919, served as the town’s informal government until Peoria incorporated on June 7, 1954, with 1,925 residents. Two years later Peoria was named the “Rose Capitol of the World.”
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: Morristown New River Hwy, N Quintero Ln, N Picacho Wash, 500 Kv Power, W 500 Kv Power Rd, 87th Ave, W River Rd, Carefree Hwy, Gas Pipeline Rd, New River Rd, W Dove Valley Rd, W Dixileta Dr.
More street names, A to Z
43rd Ave, 155th Ave, 183rd Ave, 25000 N, Corsair St, Dale Ln, Grand Ave, Greenway Rd, Hope Dr, N 147th Ave, N Beardsley Canal Rd, N Cotton Ln, N Grand, N Sarival Rd, N Williams, Peoria Ave, Sarival Ave, Tessmer Rd, W Blackstone Dr, W Carefree Hwy, W Daley Ln, W Deer Valley Rd, W Dynamite Blvd, W Happy Valley Pkwy, W Hatfield Rd, W Jomax Rd, W Olive Ave, W San Ysidro Rd.
Peoria High School and the city today
Peoria High School began in 1919 with a single teacher in the back of a combined general store and post office. Its Spanish Colonial Revival building, Old Main, opened in 1922 with 50 students and was the largest structure in town, with indoor plumbing. The school’s page says it was the only high school in Arizona that kept allowing Japanese American students to attend during World War II, and in 1962 it was the first in the area to let African American students play sports. Old Main was renovated from 2012 to 2014 and named to the National Register of Historic Places in 2019, and the school won its first state football title in 1939, when the team was still the Horned Toads.
Peoria grew from 4,792 people in 1970 to 50,675 in 1990. The Peoria Sports Complex, finished in 1994, was the first Major League Baseball spring training facility in the county shared by two teams, the San Diego Padres and the Seattle Mariners. The city annexed Lake Pleasant, a reservoir on the Agua Fria River, in 1996. Lake Pleasant Regional Park, run by Maricopa County inside Peoria’s boundaries, has two marinas, kayaking, fishing, camping and scuba diving, and since the New Waddell Dam was finished in 1994 the lake’s main source of water has been the Central Arizona Project aqueduct. Old Town keeps its historic buildings and the Peoria Center for the Performing Arts, run by Theater Works. Calderwood Butte is among the mountains and hills at the city’s northern end, and Sunrise Mountain High School opened in 1996 and Liberty High School in 2006. Mary Peters, a former U.S. Secretary of Transportation, is among Peoria’s notable people. The First Presbyterian Church of Peoria, the Peoria Jail House Museum, Sunrise Mountain Library, Baldy Mountain and Black Mountain are printed on the sheet.
This map of Peoria 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 Peoria home, from Olive West out to Villa Vista, and KNOWOL created it in 2026 to show the city as it looks today. Zoom in on the preview above to explore the details, then click here to get your copy of the Peoria map.
Sources
