page_title: Phoenix, Arizona
section_title: Geography
hierarchical_section_title: Phoenix, Arizona / Geography
context_page_description: Phoenix is the capital and the largest city in the U.S. state of Arizona. The city is the county seat of Maricopa County. It is the largest capital city in the United States and the only capital with over more than million people. The city is along the normally dry Salt River. It became a city on February 25 1881. People who live in Phoenix are known as Phoenicians.
  Phoenix had about 1,475,834 people in 2005. It is the fifth-largest city in the United States in the 2000 census. Phoenix is a very large city. It has an area of 515 square miles. This makes it the 10th largest city by area. As of 2006, the Phoenix Metropolitan Statistical Area was the 13th-largest in the United States, with an estimated 4,039,182 people.
context_section_description: Phoenix is at 33°26'54" North, 112°4'26" West (33.448457°, -112.073844°) in the Salt River Valley, or "Valley of the Sun", in central Arizona. It is at a mean elevation of 1,117 feet (340 m), in the northern reaches of the Sonoran Desert.
  Other than the mountains in and around the city, the topography of Phoenix is mostly flat. This allows the city's main streets to run on a precise grid with wide, open-spaced roadways.
  The Salt River runs westward through the city of Phoenix. The riverbed is often dry or just a trickle due to large irrigation usage. The river is full after infrequent rainstorms or when more water is released from upstream dams. The city of Tempe has built two inflatable dams in the Salt River bed to create a year-round recreational lake, called Tempe Town Lake. The dams are deflated to allow the river to flow unimpeded during releases. Lake Pleasant Regional Park is in Northwest Phoenix in the suburb of Peoria, Arizona.
  As with most of Arizona, Phoenix does not observe daylight saving time. In 1973, Gov. Jack Williams argued to Congress that energy use would increase in the evening. Refrigeration units were not used as often in the morning on standard time. He went on to say that energy use would rise "because there would be more lights on in the early morning." He was also concerned about children going to school in the dark, which indeed they were. Navajo Nation lands in Northeastern Arizona observe daylight saving time in conjunction with the rest of their tribal lands in other states.
caption: Satellite image of the Phoenix Metro Area in 2002.
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