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With a long and colorful history, Scottsdale, Arizona is today a busy and dynamic area in Phoenix’s Valley of the Sun. Ranked as one of Phoenix’s best suburbs by the real estate website Movoto.com, Scottsdale is a sprawling city encompassing over 30 miles of the Sonoran Desert and best known for its spa resorts and golf courses. U.S. Army Chaplain Winfield Scott (not to be confused with the famous general and presidential candidate of the same name) came to the Salt River Valley in the 1880’s, buying 640 acres of land and giving his name to what is now Scottsdale. In the early 1900’s the Ingleside Inn became the very first winter resort and golf course to open in the Phoenix area. With picturesque Camelback Mountain in the background, the Ingleside provided a haven for rich guests who would often stay the entire winter. Today, the Ingleside golf course is the Arizona Golf Club, host to the annual PGA Phoenix Open from 1955-1973. More resorts would follow so that today the greater Phoenix area is home to nearly 200 golf courses.

A Grade Potential Tutor will probably tell you that during the Great Depression and afterwards Scottsdale became a second home for many artists and architects, among them Frank Lloyd Wright who built Taliesin West as his winter home on the slopes of the McDowell Mountains. The design of the building tried to reflect its desert surroundings with plenty of natural light. Materials for Taliesin West included local desert rocks. Wright continued to build onto the structure until his death in 1959 at age 91. Taliesin West is now the main campus of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture. Famed and controversial Native American artist Fritz Scholder lived in Scottsdale for many years until his death in 2005. A photographer and painter, Scholder gained notoriety with his non-conventional paintings of Indians, often in the abstract. His paintings and photographs hang in Phoenix’s downtown Heard Museum and the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.

While the visual arts are well represented in Scottsdale, the city’s culinary arts also have high standing. Visitors and residents alike will want to show up in downtown Scottsdale at some of the world’s best restaurants. Cowboy Ciao offers a mix of American and Southwestern cuisine set in unique western surroundings and only a few steps from several other restaurants, kitschy wine bars and the Arizona Canal which runs through the center of town. The city also holds the annual Scottsdale Culinary Festival in April. Forty area restaurants, 30 local breweries and musical entertainment participate in the annual event.

Also in the spring, baseball fans descend on the desert for Major League Baseball’s spring training. The San Francisco Giants play at the downtown Scottsdale Stadium, originally built in 1956 and rebuilt on the same site in 1992. The hometown Arizona Diamondbacks and the Colorado Rockies call the state of the art Salt River Fields home in the spring. Visitors, and gamblers, can ride the shuttle from Talking Stick Resort, one of the valley’s many Indian casinos, over to the ball park on game days.