Phoenix was named for the bird that rises from its own ashes, because the city was being built on the canals of a people who had farmed this valley long before. This map runs from Ahwatukee Foothills out to Alhambra Village and prints the Arizona State Capitol Building, the Tovrea Castle Historic Area, the Roosevelt Historic District, the Encanto-Palmcroft Historic District, the Phoenix Indian School Historic District and the Maricopa County Courthouse, with Adobe Mountain, Barnes Butte and Camelback Mountain giving shape to the land.
Phoenix is the capital of Arizona and the county seat of Maricopa County, in the Salt River Valley.
KNOWOL made this map in 2026 and gave it the look of an old atlas. The shaded relief of Adobe Mountain, Barnes Butte and Camelback Mountain comes from United States Geological Survey elevation data, and the streets were drawn from Census Bureau files. Historic sites such as the Arizona State Capitol Building, the Tovrea Castle Historic Area and the Roosevelt Historic District were confirmed against the National Park Service and the National Register of Historic Places. With over 1.6 million people at the 2020 census, Phoenix is the fifth-most populous city in the United States and the most populous state capital, and at 517.9 square miles it’s the largest city by area in Arizona.
A city born from the canals
The Hohokam lived here for 2,000 years and dug roughly 135 miles of irrigation canals that made the desert farmland, and the paths of those canals were later used for the Arizona Canal and the Central Arizona Project Canal. After them the Akimel O’odham, Tohono O’odham and Maricopa used the land, along with groups of Yavapai and Apache. In 1867 Jack Swilling, prospecting out of Wickenburg, traveled the valley, noticed the old canal mounds and formed a canal company to farm here. Lord Darrell Duppa, one of the original settlers in Swilling’s party, suggested the name Phoenix for a city born from the ruins of a former civilization. Yavapai County recognized the town on May 4, 1868, lots were sold under the name Phoenix from December 1870 on a grid that still shapes the city, and Governor John C. Fremont signed the bill making Phoenix a city on February 25, 1881.
The territorial capital moved here from Prescott in 1889. The capitol building, designed by James Riely Gordon after he won a design contest, was turned over to the territory on May 1, 1900; funding ran short, so its legislative wings were dropped and a smaller top replaced the dome he’d planned, and because the ceremony would have fallen in the heat of summer, it was built without a cornerstone. On February 14, 1912, Arizona became the 48th state and Phoenix a state capital. The legislature moved to new buildings in 1960 and the governor’s office in 1974, and the 1900 capitol, on the National Register since 1974, reopened as the Arizona Capitol Museum in 1981.
Courthouse, castle and school
The Maricopa County Courthouse and Old Phoenix City Hall are two conjoined buildings sharing one architecture and filling a full city block, a joint project of the county and the city. At the cornerstone ceremony Senator Carl Hayden spoke as acting Grand Orator and John Philip Sousa conducted the Marine Corps Band, and the city and county took possession on June 23, 1929, after building it for $1,200,000. Terra cotta sculptures of the phoenix flank the city entrance on Second Avenue. The Superior Court still uses the building, and the Maricopa County Justice Museum opened in a sixth-floor cell block in 2012.
Tovrea Castle, the “Wedding Cake Castle,” was built from 1929 to 1931 by Alessio Carraro, who meant it as the hotel at the heart of a planned resort and modeled it on castles of his Italian homeland. E.A. and Della Tovrea bought it in 1931, and despite the local legend, it wasn’t built as a copy of their wedding cake. The city restored the castle and gardens, now home to over 5,000 cacti, finishing in time for Arizona’s centennial on February 14, 2012. The Phoenix Indian School opened in 1891 as a federal boarding school run under an assimilation policy, and it was the only non-reservation BIA school in Arizona until it closed in 1990. In 1912 older students and former students made up Company F of the Arizona National Guard, the first all-Indian unit in the nation. The campus keeps the 1902 Dining Hall, the campus’s oldest building, and Memorial Hall, built in 1922 largely by students’ labor, and the campus became Steele Indian School Park in 2001, with a $35 million trust fund set up for the education of Native children.
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.
Places: Downtown, Barnes Butte, Aso Tank and New River.
Streets and roads: Rio Vis, W Carefree Hwy, Jomax Rd, Gas Pipeline Rd, 500 Kv Power, New River Rd, W 500 Kv Power Rd, Carefree Hwy, Linda Ln, Rockaway Hills Rd, E Cloud Rd, E Old New River Rd.
More street names, A to Z
Airport Blvd, Back Rd, Beardsley Rd, Bend Rd, Buckeye Canal, Buckeye Dr, Canyon Rd, Chaparral Rd, Deer Valley, Desert Dr, E Jackrabbit Rd, E Lehi Rd, Eleventh St, E Montecito Ave, E Pecos Rd, E San Juan Rd, Happy Valley Rd, Indian Springs Rd, Jan Rd, N 147th Ave, N Gate Way, Northern Ave, N Vineyard, Paradise Valley Rd, Rio Salado, River Rd, Summit Rd, Tonopah Dr, Valley Rd, Virginia Ave, W Estrella Dr, W Roeser Rd, W Yuma Rd.
Mountains and the people who made Phoenix proud
Camelback Mountain, shaped like the hump and head of a kneeling camel, rises to 2,704 feet, the highest point in the Phoenix area. In 1965 Senator Barry Goldwater helped protect its upper slopes from development, and it became a city park in 1968. In 2008 the city’s second-tallest mountain was renamed Piestewa Peak for Army Specialist Lori Ann Piestewa, a Hopi woman from Tuba City and the first Native American woman to die in combat in the U.S. military. Its O’odham name is Vainom Do’ag, which translates to Iron Mountain. On September 25, 1981, Phoenix resident Sandra Day O’Connor was sworn in as the first woman on the U.S. Supreme Court; by 1973 she had become the first woman to serve as majority leader of any state senate. In 2001 the Arizona Diamondbacks beat the New York Yankees in the World Series, the city’s first national title won by a pro team while in Arizona, and the Phoenix Mercury have won three WNBA championships.
Ahwatukee Foothills, the southernmost part of Phoenix, takes its name from a house: Helen Brinton bought it in 1935 and gave it, and eventually the area, a name that all three theories of its origin trace to the Crow language. Its development began in 1970, and Phoenix annexed it in stages from 1980 to 1987. Alhambra Village carries the name William John Murphy chose for one of the four North Phoenix areas he subdivided, and it was built mainly for the housing needs that followed World War II. The Roosevelt Historic District, the Encanto-Palmcroft Historic District, Adobe Mountain and Barnes Butte are printed on the sheet too.
This Phoenix 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 Phoenix home, from Ahwatukee Foothills out to Alhambra Village, 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 Phoenix map.
Sources
- Phoenix, Arizona, Wikipedia
- Arizona State Capitol, Wikipedia
- Maricopa County Courthouse, Wikipedia
- Tovrea Castle, Wikipedia
- Phoenix Indian School, Wikipedia
- Steele Indian School Park, Wikipedia
- Camelback Mountain, Wikipedia
- Piestewa Peak, Wikipedia
- Lori Piestewa, Wikipedia
- Sandra Day O’Connor, Wikipedia
- Ahwatukee, Phoenix, Wikipedia
- Alhambra, Phoenix, Wikipedia
