Mesa
Mesa has long been associated with Cactus League baseball as the spring training home of the Chicago Cubs. That link includes the now closed Buckhorn Baths where ballplayers, starting in the 1940s, soaked away aches and pains. bit.ly/2vjaZNy
Now, a beautiful stadium, Sloan Park, that opened in 2014, hosts the Cubs while the Oakland A's play at refurbished Hohokam Park. Buckhorn Baths, built between 1935-47 by Ted and Alice Sliger, is at Recker Road and Main Street, formerly U.S. 60. The mineral baths closed in 1999 and the motel in 2007. A new owner, who bought the property in 2017, has plans for a renovation. Nearby, is the now-vacant drive-in that was one of many barrel-shaped A&W Root Beer stands built across America in the 1950s and 60s. Vaqueros taco stand is no longer in business. The Mesa Preservation Foundation spent more than $120,000 restoring the Starlite Motel's Diving Lady sign on East Main Street at Lindsay . Sign maker Paul Millet created the sign in 1960, two years after the Starlite opened. It stood for 50 years before a storm blew it over. Larry Graham, an apprentice of Millet, refurbished the 70-foot neon sign in 2013. |
Other neon signs and architectural relics of midcentury Arizona are spread along East Main Street. A major construction project to extend light rail along Main Street from Mesa Drive to Gilbert Road was completed in May 2019.
Founded: 1878 Elevation: 1,234 Population: 528,159 |