Mesa has grown a lot faster than I thought

The city of Mesa, Ariz., is a lot bigger than I thought. Thanks to Dwain Cluff, our local State Farm insurance agent in Kuna, who pointed out to me that I was way off on Mesa’s population in last week’s Editor’s Notebook. I said Mesa was 250,000 people. It’s more like 462,000. Yikes. Dwain also pointed out that Mesa has had big-box amenities for a long time, dating back to at least 1986. He ought to know. He’s from there.
In my column last week, I wrote that Mesa had only recently started getting big-box amenities. I guess I should have qualified that by saying that parts of Mesa had recently started getting big-box amenities. My mother-in-law lives on the outer edges of Mesa and has only seen in the past few years an extension of the freeway out to her part of the city along with big-box stores like Home Depot and Walmart.
But I think the point is still the same. Even in 1986, Mesa was around 200,000 people. Kuna — at population 16,000 — still has a long ways to go, in my estimation, before we start getting our own Walmarts and Targets. But next time I write about Mesa, I’ll be giving Dwain a call first.