What it means
The East Valley is the half of metro Phoenix east of the city itself, mostly south of the Salt River: Mesa, Tempe, Chandler, Gilbert, Queen Creek, Apache Junction and the newer subdivisions spilling into Pinal County. It is the counterpart to the West Valley, and both are slices of the Valley, the word everyone uses for the whole metro.
You will hear it constantly on local news (“an East Valley man”), in job ads, and from anyone giving a commute: “she lives in the East Valley” usually means a long drive on the 202 or the 60. The argument starts when you ask whether Scottsdale is in it. Transit planners say yes. The original newspaper and business definitions mostly say no. North Scottsdale residents tend to say they live in Scottsdale, full stop.
Where you’ll meet it
Traffic reports, the Getting Around guide, real estate searches, school district debates, Valley Metro service maps, and in South Scottsdale, where Tempe is closer than Old Town and the label fits more comfortably.
Where the word came from
This one has a clear inventor. Charles “Chuck” Wahlheim, president of Cox-Arizona Publications, ran the Mesa Tribune, the Chandler Arizonan and the Tempe Daily News in the early 1980s, all small papers competing with the Phoenix giants, the Arizona Republic and the Phoenix Gazette. Around 1982, by his own account, he decided the area needed one name so advertisers would see one big market. He chose East Valley and told the Tribune’s editor, Max Jennings, to capitalize it and use it every time the paper talked about the area.
It worked. The same year, business, government and education leaders formed the East Valley Partnership, which Wahlheim co-founded, and the label went from marketing copy to policy vocabulary. In 1999 the Mesa Tribune renamed itself the East Valley Tribune.
Scottsdale’s place in it followed the newspaper. Cox bought the Scottsdale Progress in 1993 and folded it into the chain, and for fifteen years Scottsdale read an edition of the East Valley paper. In October 2008, Freedom Communications announced it would stop publishing in Scottsdale and Tempe. The paper drew its East Valley line south of Scottsdale, and that is roughly where most locals still draw it.
What it is not
It is not a city, a county or any legal unit; no government is called the East Valley. Nor is it the same as “east Phoenix,” and it does not reliably include the Northeast Valley towns of Fountain Hills, Cave Creek and Carefree, which appear on some lists and not others.
The fine print
Every institution draws its own East Valley. The East Valley Partnership’s 2017 fact sheet named ten communities: Apache Junction, Chandler, Florence, Fountain Hills, the Gila River Indian Community, Gilbert, Mesa, Queen Creek, the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community and Tempe. Other descriptions of the same coalition add Scottsdale, Carefree, Cave Creek, Guadalupe, Sun Lakes and the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation. The East Valley Tribune covers Chandler, Gilbert, Mesa, Queen Creek, San Tan Valley and Tempe. Valley Metro’s East Valley paratransit area puts Scottsdale in with Chandler, Gilbert, Mesa and Tempe, which is the strongest official case for membership.
The Community is the interesting edge. Its land lies between Scottsdale, Mesa and Fountain Hills, and it is on nearly every list, so a Scottsdale resident shopping at Talking Stick has arguably crossed into the East Valley without leaving the 101.
Population figures depend on the definition, too. Wikipedia’s count puts the region at about 937,638 in 2000 and 1,324,922 in 2011, a 41 percent jump, though the source does not say exactly which cities it counted. Regional planning at the Maricopa Association of Governments works by city and corridor and does not settle the question either.