The Capital in the Desert
The capital of the U.S. state of Arizona is Phoenix. It is also the largest city in Arizona and one of the most populous cities in the entire United States. Phoenix sits in the south-central part of the state, in a wide desert valley known as the Valley of the Sun.
A City Named for Rebirth
The name Phoenix carries meaning. The area was once home to the ancient Hohokam people, who built an extensive network of irrigation canals before their civilisation faded. When settlers founded a new town on the same land in the nineteenth century, they named it after the phoenix - the mythical bird that rises reborn from the ashes of the old - because their city was rising on the remains of an ancient one.
From Territory to State Capital
Phoenix became the capital of the Arizona Territory in 1889, and remained the capital when Arizona officially became a U.S. state in 1912. Sitting in the hot Sonoran Desert, the city grew slowly at first, but expanded dramatically after modern air conditioning made its scorching summers far more comfortable.
Source
This article was written using information from Wikipedia.