Chandler is a suburb on the east side of Phoenix. Tempe is to the west and north, Mesa to the north, Gilbert to the east and the Gila River Indian Community to the south.

The first veterinary surgeon in what was then Arizona Territory was a Dr. Alexander John Chandler. He arrived and set up shop on a ranch south of Mesa in 1891. By 1900 he had acquired some 18,000 acres in the area and folded it all into the Chandler Ranch. It was about then that he started to draw up a plan for a townsite on the property and finally opened the townsite office in May, 1912. By that time, the project had grown to the point that the first Chandler High School was also opened that same year. In 1913, the Hotel San Marcos was opened in the town center as the first golf resort in Arizona.

Back in those early days, the big money was in cotton and it stayed that way until the big cotton crash several years into the Great Depression. Chandler was also a big contributor of ostrich plumes to the women's hat industry in the early 1900's, and still commemorates that with an annual Ostrich Festival. Chandler grew really slowly with a small surge in population happening when Williams Air Force Base was established in the area in 1941. Population didn't start to boom until 1980, when Chandler got on board with the general surge in population throughout the Phoenix area.

These days there are several manufacturing plants in town for companies like Intel and Motorola but Chandler is still mainly a bedroom community for the greater Phoenix Metro area.

AJ Chandler Park in downtown Chandler, Arizona
AJ Chandler Park in downtown Chandler