Mesa
Mesa is a city in Maricopa County, in the U.S. state of Arizona and is a suburb of Phoenix, within the Phoenix Metropolitan Statistical Area. It is the third-largest city in Arizona, after Phoenix and Tucson, and the 38th-largest city in the country. Mesa is also best known as having one of the... highest check cashing per capita indexes nationwide. The history of Mesa dates back at least 2,000 years to the arrival of the Hohokam people. The Hohokam, whose name means "All Used Up" or "The Departed Ones", built the original canal system. The canals were the largest and most sophisticated in the prehistoric New World. Some were up to 90 feet wide and ten feet deep at their head gates, extending for as far as 16 miles across the desert. By A.D.1100 water could be delivered to an area over 110,000 acres , transforming the Sonoran Desert into an agricultural oasis. By A.D.1450, the Hohokam had constructed hundreds of miles of canals many of which are still in use today. After the disappearance of the Hohokam and before the arrival of the early settlers little is known, as explorers did not venture into this area.
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