Ten things worth knowing about Surprise

Every resident of Surprise eventually gets the same question from a visiting friend: why is it called that? The answer is a good story, and it is only the start. Here are ten things about Surprise worth knowing, each one easy to pass along at the next backyard dinner or Spring Training game.

How it started

1. The name began as a joke. Flora Mae Statler founded the town in 1938 on one square mile of farmland. According to her daughter, Elizabeth Wusich Stoft, Statler once said she would be surprised if the town ever amounted to much. The city, which now has about 173,000 residents by the Census estimate for July 2025, likes to say she would be surprised indeed. The city historian's account of the early days notes that Statler marketed her lots under the spelling "Surprize."

2. Surprise was founded by a woman, and the city has a trail to prove it. Statler is recognized on the Arizona Women's Heritage Trail, and in April 2013 Surprise dedicated its own Surprise Women's Heritage Trail through the Original Town Site. The self-guided route honors women who built the community, from club founders to a town clerk who served for two decades. Some of the buildings are gone, but maps are available at City Hall and the City Clerk's office.

3. Town hall was once a root beer stand. From 1965 to 1973, the town council met in a building at 12731 W. Grand Avenue that had started out as the Saylor family's root beer stand. The council leased it and remodeled it, and the town's volunteer fire department answered calls from that same town hall in its early years.

4. The fire department is as old as the city. Surprise incorporated in 1960, and that same year the new town organized an all-volunteer fire department to protect its one square mile. The department bought its first truck, a 1946 International, in 1967, and did not have full-time paid firefighters until 1986.

Cotton and baseball

5. Cotton was king. Before the subdivisions, Surprise was a farming town, and the city's own history project describes the days when cotton ruled and Grand Avenue and the railroad tied the community to the rest of the world. One local family ran a cotton contracting business that, by the heritage trail's account, employed most of the town's residents of the day.

6. You can see the cotton at the ballpark. At Surprise Stadium's first base entrance, an artwork called Bounce traces the arc of a home run, and its overhead panels carry a waterjet-cut cotton pattern that honors those farming roots. Across the stadium, Swing uses more than 200 baseball bats arranged like a ball's stitching. In 2026 the pair picked up three awards, including a spot in the CODAawards Top 100, and both can be seen year-round on Bullard Avenue.

7. The 2027 season is the stadium's 25th of Spring Training. The Kansas City Royals and Texas Rangers both train at Surprise Stadium, and the 2027 home schedule runs 30 games, from February 19 to March 20. The city notes that USA Today readers voted Surprise Stadium the nation's top Spring Training ballpark for 2026.

Big courts and big views

8. The tennis complex is the largest in the Southwest. That is the city's claim for the Surprise Tennis and Racquet Complex, which this fall hosted players from across the country for United States Tennis Association national championships. It sits on the same civic campus as the stadium, City Hall and the aquatic center.

9. Mountains on one side, a lake on the other. The White Tank Mountains rise along the city's western edge, and the Sonoran Desert and Lake Pleasant Regional Park open up to the north, close enough that the city puts hiking, fishing and camping within about a 20-minute drive. Summers are another matter: Arizona's official monsoon season runs from June 15 to September 30, the hottest stretch of the year, which is why so much of Surprise's calendar is packed into the months from October to April.

Something new

10. The Original Town Site has a new heart. On September 3, 2026, the city opened the Surprise Community and Resource Center at 12641 W. Santa Fe Drive, on the same street where the town hall moved in the early 1970s. The 35,000-square-foot building brings the senior center, resource center and Hollyhock Library together, with veteran services, Head Start classrooms and after-school programs. For more of the story, the history wall in the atrium outside the City Clerk's office at City Hall displays photos from the founding families, street signs and a stained glass window from the original town hall.

If you are taking a visitor around, the stories travel well over coffee. Spencer's Place, with shops on Waddell Road and Cotton Lane, serves coffee and bistro food while giving adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities paid work and training, a Surprise story in its own right. The Boyer Bakery on Litchfield Road, run by a West Valley family, keeps a rotating case of house-made pastries that pairs nicely with a retelling of how a root beer stand became town hall.