Current Time in Chandler, United States

Chandler lies in the East Valley of metropolitan Phoenix, in the Sonoran Desert of central Arizona. Flat, sunlit and framed by distant mountain ranges, it has grown from a farming town of thirty thousand people in 1980 into a city of around two hundred and eighty thousand, one of the largest in the state and a central part of one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the United States.

The city was founded in 1912 by Alexander John Chandler, the first veterinary surgeon of the Arizona Territory, who acquired desert land, brought water to it and laid out a townsite around a shaded central square. His San Marcos Hotel, opened in 1913 with a golf course attached, was among the first resorts in the region and drew winter visitors from the east. For decades the surrounding fields produced cotton and alfalfa, and for a brief period before the First World War ostriches were farmed here for their feathers, a curiosity still celebrated each spring at the Ostrich Festival.

Chandler's modern identity is technological. It hosts one of the largest semiconductor manufacturing campuses in the United States, where successive generations of advanced chip fabrication plants have been built, and it is the headquarters of a major microcontroller company. Aerospace, defence electronics, materials science and software cluster along the Price Road corridor, which locals call the Silicon Desert. The city was also the first place in the world where fully driverless taxis carried paying passengers on public roads, and autonomous vehicles have been a familiar sight on its wide, regular streets for years.

Downtown Chandler has been carefully revived around the original park square, with restaurants, breweries, galleries and a restored hotel, and it holds one of the country's more unusual holiday traditions, a Christmas tree built from tumbleweeds, first assembled in 1957 and repeated every year since. The Chandler Fashion Center is one of the largest shopping centres in Arizona, and the Chandler Center for the Arts hosts touring performances. Parks, aquatic centres and a well-used trail network along the canals suit the outdoor life, and desert preserves, the South Mountain range and golf resorts lie close at hand.

The Gila River Indian Community borders the city to the south, and its resorts, cultural centre and equestrian facilities are important neighbours. Chandler's population is notably diverse, with substantial Hispanic, Indian, Chinese and Filipino communities reflected in its restaurants, temples and festivals.

Freeway loops link the city to the rest of the metropolitan area, Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport is about twenty minutes away, and Chandler Municipal Airport is one of the busiest general aviation fields in the country. The public school district is among the highest performing in Arizona, a community college serves the East Valley, and Arizona State University is close by.

Prosperous, young and technologically ambitious, Chandler is a model of the modern American sunbelt city.