Visitors drawn to Mesa for its culture, nature, and regional food will find several distinct highlights: art and performing arts, natural history, outdoor trails, and water activities. The offerings vary by location and character, making it easy to plan a trip around your interests.
Art and Performing Arts
The free-to-visit Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum at the Mesa Arts Center has five exhibition galleries. The Mesa Arts Center is considered Arizona’s largest and most comprehensive arts campus. Throughout the year, it hosts national touring productions, including classical concerts, Broadway productions, comedy shows, and dance performances.
The museum is part of the arts center, but it is not the only cultural offering there: the galleries showcase visual art, while the program complements them with a variety of live performances. This gives visitors two distinct ways to experience culture during a stay in Mesa.
Natural History at the Museum
Natural history is the focus at the Arizona Museum of Natural History. The museum has a collection of nearly 60,000 objects. Dinosaur Mountain features life-size animatronic dinosaurs and simulates a flash flood every 23 minutes. In addition to the size of its collection, the museum offers a dramatic attraction: the figures and recurring flood event give Dinosaur Mountain a character distinct from a straightforward collection display.
Trails in Usery Mountain Regional Park
Usery Mountain Regional Park offers more than 29 miles of trails for hiking, mountain biking, and horseback riding. The mileage refers to the park’s total trail network, not to a single route. The Merkle Trail is accessible. The Nature Center provides information about the flora and fauna of the Sonoran Desert. The park therefore offers both trails for a range of activities and natural history information as separate points of interest.
Mountain Biking on the Hawes Loop
The Hawes Loop offers mountain bikers a different kind of experience: the route is 7.3 miles long, traverses technical terrain, and includes fast, flowing descents. Here, the length refers to a single route. Unlike Usery Mountain Regional Park, where the mileage covers the entire trail network, the Hawes Loop is one specific route. When comparing biking options, it’s worth keeping these different measurements in mind.
Shared Trails
The Hawes Trail System is a shared-use trail system. Cyclists must yield to hikers.
Water Activities and Regional Food
Water activities in and around Mesa include boating, fishing, rafting, kayaking, waterskiing, wakeboarding, jet skiing, and tubing on the Salt River. The activities are found in and around Mesa; tubing is specifically associated with the Salt River. This distinguishes the broad range of options from the particular river activity.
There are several ways to enjoy locally produced food, too: farms, farmers markets, neighborhood restaurants, and outdoor dining. So if you plan to make local cuisine part of your trip, you needn’t limit yourself to restaurants. The food scene also includes farms and markets, as well as outdoor dining, adding a culinary perspective to Mesa’s cultural and natural attractions.
More Destinations
Explore more destinations: Rio Verde, Sun City, Scottsdale, Paradise Valley, Phoenix, Carefree, New River, Litchfield Park
Back to the main travel overview: Maricopa.
