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Phoenix, Arizona:
what's hot in the valley of the sun
by Carrie Miner | Photography: Courtesy of Arizona Office of Tourism
 Nothing looks sweeter to a pilot escaping winter’s bitter chill for a weekend or week-long getaway than the first sight of Phoenix’s glitter and gleam rising from its arid desert surroundings.
Now the nation’s sixth largest city, Phoenix offers an ideal combination of warm, dry weather and more than 200 golf courses. And when you head for the 19th hole, you’ll find an impressive number of above-par attractions, whether it’s tossing foam balls into a giant nose to teach your children about allergies at the Arizona Science Center or catching nine innings with peanuts and Cracker Jack at the Bank One Ballpark.
The Early ‘Bird’
 Phoenix owes its rise out of the desert to crafty Civil War veteran Jack Swilling, who took advantage of the Hohokam Indians’ immense network of ancient canals to launch a farming enterprise in the late 1860s. One prominent early settler, Bryan Philip Darrell Duppa, noted that Swilling was building a new city over the old, and named the fledgling community after the legendary bird that burst into flames only to be reborn from its own ashes.
In the more than 130 years since Swilling settled here, the once humble community in the Valley of the Sun has become a metropolitan sprawl covering 2,000 square miles. More than 2.8 million residents now make their home in Phoenix, which encompasses many smaller cities, including Tempe, Scottsdale, Mesa and Chandler. But they blend together so seamlessly you’d never notice the community boundaries without a map.
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