Mesa

Mesa has long been associated with Cactus League baseball as the spring training home of the Chicago Cubs. That link includes the now closed Buckhorn Baths where ballplayers, starting in the 1940s,  soaked away aches and pains.  bit.ly/2vjaZNy

Now, a beautiful stadium, Sloan Park, that opened in 2014, hosts the Cubs while the Oakland A's play at refurbished Hohokam Park. 

Buckhorn Baths, built between 1935-47 by Ted and Alice Sliger, is at Recker Road and Main Street, formerly U.S. 60. The mineral baths closed in 1999 and the motel in 2007. A new owner, who bought the property in 2017, has plans for a renovation. 

Nearby, is the now-vacant drive-in that was one of many barrel-shaped A&W Root Beer stands built across America in the 1950s and 60s. Vaqueros taco stand is no longer in business.

The Mesa Preservation Foundation spent more than $120,000 restoring the Starlite Motel's Diving Lady sign on East Main Street at Lindsay . Sign maker Paul Millet created the sign in 1960, two years after the Starlite opened. It stood for 50 years before a storm blew it over. Larry Graham, an apprentice of Millet, refurbished the 70-foot neon sign in 2013.

Vaqueros is no longer in business at this former A&W root beer stand.

Other neon signs and architectural relics of midcentury Arizona are spread along East Main Street. A major construction project to extend light rail along Main Street  from Mesa Drive to Gilbert Road was completed in May 2019.

​Founded: 1878
Elevation: 1,234
​Population: 528,159

Buckhorn Baths was a hit with spring training ballplayers as a soothing spot to soak their sore muscles in mineral baths from a 112-degree hot spring.

Sloan Park hosts the Chicago Cubs and Oakland A's play at Hohokam Park.

A sign painter works on a mural at Sloan Park before the 2015 season.

Bill Johnson's Big Apple restaurant chain started in 1956 and it went under in 2015. This Mesa store was on East Main Street.

The Ham Bone bar is a fixture on Main Street.

Starlite Motel opened in 1958. It added the Diving Lady neon sign two years later to lure travelers. The sign was restored in 2013.

One of our favorite Mesa businesses is Mesa Typewriter Exchange. Bill Wahl's father and grandfather started fixing typewriters in 1949.

Freddie Munoz opened El Charro in 1958 at Country Club and First Street.