The state capital and largest city
in Arizona, PHOENIX holds only minimal appeal for tourists.
When it began life in the 1860s, it must have seemed
like a good idea. The sweltering little farming town
stood in the heart of the large Salt River Valley, with
a ready-made irrigation system left by ancient Indians
(the name Phoenix honors the fact that the city rose
from the ashes of a long-vanished Hohokam community).
Within a century, however, Phoenix had turned into what
writer Edward Abbey called "the blob that is eating
Arizona," acquiring as it did so the money and
political clout to defy the self-evident absurdity of
building a huge city in a virtually waterless desert.
Now the sixth largest city in the US, it has filled
the entire valley, engulfing the neighboring towns of
Scottsdale, Mesa and Tempe in the process, with over
a million people within the city boundaries and more
than two million in the metropolitan area. Arizona's
financial and industrial epicenter may just be getting
into its stride; boosters claim the megalopolis will
one day stretch 150 miles, from Wickenburg to Tucson.
The
city's phenomenal rise was originally fueled by its
image as a healthy oasis, where the desert had been
tamed and transformed into a suburban idyll. While retirees
still flock to enclaves such as Sun City , Phoenix now
has a deserved reputation as the most unpleasant city
in the Southwest - Las Vegas with no casinos, or LA
with no beach. Above all, it's hot ; between June and
August daytime highs average over 100°F, making
it the hottest city outside the Middle East.
In
winter, when temperatures rarely drop below 65°F,
tourists from colder climes arrive in large numbers.
They pay vast sums to warm their bones in the luxury
resorts and spas, concentrated especially in Scottsdale,
that are the modern equivalent of the 1930s dude ranches.
Unlike golf, tennis and shopping, sightseeing rarely
ranks high on the agenda - which is just as well, since
there's a good deal of truth in the charge laid by Phoenix's
older arch-rival, Tucson, that the city is sorely lacking
in culture and history. Apart from the Heard Museum
's excellent Native American displays, and Frank Lloyd
Wright's architecture studio at Taliesin West , Phoenix
is short of must-see attractions. In fact, if you're
on a touring vacation, you'd miss little if you bypassed
it altogether; a day at one of the city's plentiful
upscale malls is probably as authentic and enjoyable
an experience as Phoenix has to offer.
