Scottsdale

Scottsdale is a city in the Phoenix area of central Arizona, United States, at the foot of the McDowell Mountains in the Sonoran Desert. It bears the name of Winfield Scott, an army chaplain who bought land on the site in the 1880s and drew other settlers to it.

The Hohokam people dug irrigation canals across the valley centuries before, and the new settlers farmed citrus and cotton along the Arizona Canal. The small town promoted itself as The West's Most Western Town and gained city status in 1951. In 1937 Frank Lloyd Wright began Taliesin West on the desert slopes, his winter home and school of architecture built of desert rocks set in concrete. Arts and crafts shops opened in the old town in the late 1940s and made the city a center for Western and Native American art.

Barrett-Jackson, based in Scottsdale, holds a collector car auction each January where classic and custom cars are sold before a live television audience. Discount Tire, the tire retailer, runs its company from the city, and Taylor Morrison builds houses across the country from its head office here.

Old Town keeps adobe buildings and the Little Red Schoolhouse from the early 20th century among its galleries. Scottsdale's Museum of the West shows paintings, saddles and sculpture of the American West. The McDowell Sonoran Preserve protects desert land with saguaro cactus and trails in the north of the city. The Phoenix Open golf tournament is played each February at TPC Scottsdale, where crowds fill the grandstands around the 16th hole.