Professional Organizer in Mesa, AZ

Mesa was founded in 1878 by a group of Mormon pioneers known as the Mesa Company, who arrived in the Salt River Valley from Utah and Idaho on February 14, 1878. This small group spent nine months of grueling labor through the desert heat, carving out canals to bring Salt River water to the parched land atop the “mesa.” Remarkably, some of these early settlers rebuilt and reused ancient Hohokam irrigation canals that had crossed the valley centuries before. On July 17, 1878, Theodore Sirrine traveled to the county seat in Florence to formally register the original one-square-mile townsite, an area bounded by today’s Country Club Drive, Mesa Drive, University Drive, and Broadway. With water flowing, agriculture and fruit-growing flourished. On July 15, 1883, with a population of about 300, the community was formally incorporated as Mesa City. It became a town in 1897 and officially a city in 1929, growing steadily into the major East Valley hub it is today. Through the twentieth century, alfalfa, citrus, and cotton gave way to dairies, then to the neighborhoods, schools, and aerospace employers that shape modern Mesa. Falcon Field opened during World War II as a training airfield and remains a busy general-aviation hub, and the arrival of freeways and master-planned communities transformed the once-rural farming town into Arizona’s third-largest city while its walkable historic downtown still honors those pioneer beginnings.