Interesting places to explore in Mesa

Plenty of Mesa residents have driven past these places for years without stopping. Some are free and take ten minutes; others deserve a whole afternoon and a ticket. Together they cover more than a thousand years of the city's story, from an ancestral O'odham village to a pizza parlor built around a theater organ.

Sce:dagĭ Mu:val Va'aki, an ancestral village by the canals

On North Date Street sits an archaeological site that predates Mesa by centuries. Ancestors of today's O'odham built a large platform mound here near the head gates of one of the most sophisticated irrigation networks in the Americas, and the village is thought to have overseen more than 27,000 acres of farmland. The City of Mesa has protected the site since the 1980s and serves as its steward, working with the Arizona Museum of Natural History and in partnership with the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community and the Gila River Indian Community. In November 2024 it was given an O'odham name, Sce:dagĭ Mu:val Va'aki, meaning Blue Fly's place of dwelling, taken from songs of the Salt River community about a mile away.

The site is seasonal and ticketed, with admission included in a natural history museum ticket. The site closes for the hot months and reopens in the fall, so check the museum's page for this season's open days before you go. In the meantime, the museum's website has a 360-degree virtual tour.

Downtown's open-air gallery

Main Street is lined with sculpture and murals, and the Downtown Mesa Association publishes a free self-guided Art Walk guide, online or in print. A few to look for: two dinosaurs, an Acrocanthosaurus and a Dilophosaurus, outside the Arizona Museum of Natural History on North Macdonald; the Big Pink Chair and the Musical Playground at the idea Museum on Pepper Place; a Tokyo Giants lantern on North Center Street; and a series of murals at 137 W. Main St. that recreate lost neon signs. Along Main and Center you will also find pieces titled Zebulon Pearce and William H. Passey. The walk is free, outdoors and easy to break into short loops.

Two museums, two moods

The Arizona Museum of Natural History, at 53 N. Macdonald, is the ticketed, indoor choice for anyone curious about dinosaurs, mammoths, meteorites and the Native peoples of the Sonoran Desert, with a simulated flash flood that surprises first-time visitors.

A short walk away at Mesa Arts Center, the Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum has five exhibitions up this fall, including Perla Segovia's Retablo Sonorense and a show of work by Zarco Guerrero, the last of them closing January 24, 2027. Free one-hour guided tours run on Saturday afternoons, and the museum stays open late on the second Friday of each month.

Falcon Field and a B-17 you can climb into

Falcon Field, in northeast Mesa, was built in 1941 to train British pilots during World War II, and the city turned it into a municipal airport after the war. On the same grounds, at Greenfield and McKellips roads, the Arizona Commemorative Air Force Museum is run almost entirely by volunteers. Its collection traces combat aviation from World War I to the present, with a Bomber Alley, a working maintenance hangar, and climb-aboard tours of the B-17 Sentimental Journey and the C-47 Old Number 30. It is open Wednesday through Sunday and is ticketed, with free entry for young children and active-duty military. On-site aircraft can change with maintenance and tour schedules, so the museum suggests calling ahead.

Organ Stop Pizza and the Mighty Wurlitzer

Organ Stop Pizza has been in Mesa since 1975, and its present building at Stapley Drive and Southern Avenue was designed around the instrument inside. The restaurant describes its Wurlitzer as the largest theater pipe organ in the world, an instrument rebuilt and expanded from one that began in the Denver Theater in Denver. Each night the console rises on a rotating hydraulic lift above the 700-seat dining room, and the organ's keys and switches drive xylophones, glockenspiels, gongs and cymbals to sound like a full orchestra. Order a pizza and stay for a few songs; there is a nightly schedule of organists.

Old Main Street, still serving

Some of the best-kept history in Mesa is still open for lunch. Pete's Fish & Chips, at the southwest corner of Main Street and Mesa Drive, belongs to a family business that has fried fish in the Valley since 1947, when Pete Grant opened his first chip shack in Phoenix. The Nile Coffee Shop, at 105 W. Main St., sits in the front of the historic Nile Theater; it opened in 2015 with an all-vegan menu and shares the building with a live music venue. And the Original Blue Adobe Grille, at 144 N. Country Club Drive, hides a New Mexican-style kitchen inside an A-frame building a few blocks from downtown.

Plan your loop

A good half day might start at the natural history museum, take in the dinosaurs and murals along Main Street, stop at the Nile for coffee, and end with dinner and a concert at Organ Stop. Save Falcon Field and the village site for separate trips, and check each place's own page for its current schedule.