Pima started out as Smithville, a Mormon settlement in the Gila Valley that, unlike others of its time, wasn’t planned by the leaders of the church. This map of the town prints Gila Valley Learning Center, Pima High School, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Pima Swimming Pool, the Pima Public Library and Discovery Plus Academy, with Rogers Reservoir giving shape to the land.
Pima is a town in central Graham County, in the valley of the Gila River, and despite its name it isn’t in Pima County.
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. U.S. Route 70 runs through town, 8 miles northwest of Safford, the county seat, and 68 miles southeast of Globe. The town covers 5.9 square miles, and 2,847 people lived here at the 2020 census.
Smithville
Mormon settlers founded Pima in 1879 and called it Smithville. The first families had been living at Forrest Dale, but they were told they had to leave because the land there was Indian land. Joseph K. Rogers was named the first branch president at Pima before any of the settlers arrived, and the branch became a ward in 1880. By 1930 the ward had 666 members, and the town had 980 people.
Joseph Knight Rogers, an early settler in the area and a member of the Arizona Territorial Legislature, is known as the father of Graham County: he introduced the bill that created it, out of southern Apache County and eastern Pima County, on March 10, 1881. The county takes its name from Mount Graham, and it was the first in Arizona to break the tradition of naming counties for Native Americans. In 1990 Pima had 1,725 residents.
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: W Coons Ln, Harvest Pl, Tripp Canyon Dr, W Anderson Rd, W Tripp Canyon Rd, E Center St, W Marshall Ln, Tripp Canyon Rd, W Center St, S 800 W, Cowboy Way, Alma Ln.
More street names, A to Z
Alder Ln, Ash Dr, Central Rd, Cottonwood Wash Rd, Melanie St, Oak Ln, Pistachio Cir, Robin Ave, W Kachina St, W Layton Rd, W Mohave St.
A temple foretold
In 1882 Jesse N. Smith, the first president of the church’s Eastern Arizona Stake, predicted that a temple would one day be built in Pima; the temple’s own page says he named Thatcher. The Gila Valley Arizona Temple now stands between the two, in the community of Central, within the Pima Arizona Stake. Its groundbreaking was on February 14, 2009, and more than 90,000 people toured it during the public open house in the spring of 2010. The day before its dedication, more than 1,600 young people from the area took part in a celebration of the church’s history in Arizona, and Thomas S. Monson dedicated the temple on May 23, 2010. It stands 104 feet tall on 17 acres, with art-glass windows and murals of the valley’s river, desert and mountain landscapes inside, and an anonymous woman from the area gave $500,000 for its original artwork. Until then, Latter-day Saints in the eastern Gila Valley traveled 150 miles to the temple in Mesa.
Today San Carlos Apache Nnee Bich’o Nii Transit links Pima with the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation, Safford and Globe. Gila Valley Learning Center, Pima High School, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Pima Swimming Pool, the Pima Public Library, Discovery Plus Academy and Rogers Reservoir are printed on the sheet.
This Pima 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 Pima home, in the valley of the Gila, 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 Pima map.
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