Welcome to Tempe: A Butte, a Lake and a City You Can Learn by Its Mile Roads

Tempe began with a river crossing. In the early 1870s Charles Trumbull Hayden ran a ferry across the Salt River at the narrows below a rocky butte, built a flour mill beside it, and a town grew up around the landing. More than 150 years later the butte, the mill and the river are still the first things to learn about Tempe, even if the river is now a lake and the ferry landing is the north end of Mill Avenue. Whether you have just signed a lease or have lived here for years, here is a short guide to how the city fits together.

A compact city in the middle of the Valley

Tempe sits in the center of the Phoenix metro, south of the Salt River and east of Phoenix, with Sky Harbor about ten minutes away by the city's own reckoning. It is small by Valley standards: the city describes itself as 42 square miles, home to more than 180,000 people, with a median age just over 28. Annexation brought Tempe to its present boundaries by 1974, which means the city grows up and inward rather than outward.

The landscape is easy to read. Hayden Butte, which nearly everyone calls A Mountain, rises beside Mill Avenue at Fifth Street, at the north end of downtown. Its 25-acre preserve holds about 500 Hohokam petroglyphs, and the short Leonard Monti Trail climbs it for a view across the city. To the north is Tempe Town Lake, which opened on November 7, 1999, and fills two miles of the old riverbed. Papago Park's red buttes mark the northern edge.

Downtown, the corridors and getting around

Downtown and Arizona State University's Tempe campus sit side by side at the north end of the city, and Mill Avenue is the main street that ties them together. South of downtown the city settles into a grid of mile roads, University, Broadway, Southern, Baseline, Guadalupe, Elliot and Warner, that most residents use as their address book. Apache Boulevard carries the light rail east toward Mesa, and the neighborhoods change character as you head south toward the Lakes and the Kyrene corridor.

Tempe takes transit seriously for its size. The city counts 13 bus routes, nine light rail stops and the 3.1-mile Tempe Streetcar with 14 stops. Its six free Orbit neighborhood shuttles are named after planets, Mercury through Saturn, and on neighborhood streets they stop wherever a rider waves them down safely. More than five miles of paths circle Town Lake and connect to Papago Park and the Indian Bend Wash greenbelt.

Living by the seasons

November is when Tempe moves back outdoors. The National Weather Service's 1991 to 2020 normals for nearby Sky Harbor put the average November high in the mid-70s and the average July high above 106, so summer days start early and end late. July and August bring most of the year's thunderstorms, with dust and sudden downpours, and the National Weather Service lists flash floods, high winds and heat among the hazards to plan around. Many households get their air conditioning checked before May. Accurate Air, a family-owned heating and cooling company working from Tempe since 1965, is one local option for repair, installation and maintenance.

The city even keeps its own weather station at Town Lake, which reports the water temperature along with the air. Storms elsewhere in the watershed matter here too: on November 1 the city paused boating on the lake while the Salt River Project released water from upstream reservoirs. The parks around the lake stayed open, and the city says it reopens the water once conditions are safe.

Places that define the city

Tempe's history is unusually easy to visit. The Tempe History Museum on Southern Avenue, next to the main library, has free admission and is showing Ranfla Vida, an exhibit on local lowrider history, through December 31. The city's museum also opens four historic houses for free self-guided visits, including the 1892 Petersen House and the adobe Hayden House at the foot of Mill Avenue. ASU Gammage, which opened in 1964, is the only public building in Arizona designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

Daily life has its anchors too. In the Maple-Ash neighborhood just south of downtown, Cartel Roasting Co. runs a coffee bar on Ash Avenue, a natural first stop on a walk through the area's older houses. Perfect Pear Bistro, a family-owned restaurant on University Drive west of Mill, serves soups, salads, sandwiches and seasonal plates. Far to the south, Pier 54 is a family-run, outdoor-only restaurant and bar on the shore of the lake in the Lakes neighborhood, built for sunset dinners in the cooler months.

New this fall, the Tempe City Hall Farmers Market began on October 11 and runs most Sundays downtown, with produce, baked goods, prepared food and handmade goods from small vendors.

Where newcomers start

The city's New Community Member Directory lists who to call for water, trash and recycling, schools and utilities. Tempe Public Library is at 3500 S. Rural Road in the Tempe Community Complex, at the southwest corner of Rural and Southern. Tempe is served by the Tempe Elementary, Kyrene Elementary and Tempe Union High School districts, depending on your address.

For news, the city's newsroom posts announcements and a weekly Tempe This Week roundup, and the city's directory points residents to the Tempe Tribune and Wrangler News for local reporting. The Downtown Tempe Authority keeps the calendar for Mill Avenue, from the Tempe Festival of the Arts on December 4 to 6 to the 2nd Sundays street market.

A good first week in Tempe might be as simple as a Sunday at the City Hall market, a walk up A Mountain and a coffee on Ash Avenue. The rest of the city reveals itself one mile road at a time.