Maricopa County

Surprise was little more than a gas station
and few small houses in 1938. It was originally
El Mirage 2, where those who “made good” could
move up to a nicer neighborhood.

No surprises when the City incorporated in 1960 with
a population of about 1,000, and even when Del Webb’s
highly successful Sun City swelled westward, Surprise
stayed a sleepy square-mile stop on Grand Avenue. The
boundaries stretched a little when Happy Trails and Sun
Village opened in the early 1980s and Bell Road was
widened to make way for development, but it was the
slingshot growth of the 1990s that brought Surprise
to 72-square-miles.