Phoenix City Map Poster

About Phoenix

For more than 2,000 years, the Hohokam people occupied the land that would become Phoenix. The Hohokam created roughly 135 miles (217 km) of irrigation canals, making the desert land arable. Paths of these canals would later become used for the modern Arizona Canal and Central Arizona Project Aqueduct. The Hohokam also carried out extensive trade with their neighbors, as well as with other tribes from across western North America.[citation needed]The Akimel O'odham were offshoots of a larger group known as Maricopa which stretched southward into Mesoamerica; they migrated north to present-day southern California in search of new lands after climate changes caused by prehistoric Lake Bonneville dried up their original lands.[14][15] They have been living in what is now called Maricopa County for at least 4500 years,[16][17] but may be older than 7500 years[18].