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 Main Street and Recker Road. bit.ly/2vjeqUE

Nearby is the Vaqueros drive-in, one of many barrel-shaped A&W Root Beer stands built across America in the 1950s and 60s.

 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.

Tastes change. Carne asada is in while A&W Root Beer is out.

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: 508,958

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 a recent 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.