US Map / Cities / Gilbert

Gilbert Map

Gilbert had fewer than 6,000 residents in 1980 and nearly 289,000 in 2024, and after all that it is still legally a town rather than a city.

Where is Gilbert?

Gilbert occupies the southeastern corner of the Phoenix metropolitan area in south-central Arizona, roughly 20 miles from downtown Phoenix and hard against the boundaries of Mesa to the north and Chandler to the west. It is a little over 100 miles northwest of Tucson and about 300 miles southeast of Las Vegas. The street grid is inherited from the section lines of the old irrigation district, which is why the arterial roads run dead straight at one-mile intervals.

Gilbert at a glance

Gilbert in Arizona

Six of the country's hundred largest cities are in Maricopa County — Phoenix, Mesa, Gilbert, Chandler, Glendale and Scottsdale — a concentration that shows up plainly on the Arizona county map, where 15 counties hold the whole state and one of them holds most of the people. Gilbert never voted to reincorporate as a city, so it is run by a town council and its legal name is still the Town of Gilbert. Arizona keeps Mountain Time year-round without daylight saving, so for half the year Gilbert clocks match Los Angeles rather than Denver. The Arizona state page has the rest.

Desert floor, canals and the San Tan Mountains

The town sits on the flat floor of the Salt River Valley, on ground that was farmed because canal water could be run across it almost without grading. Those canals still cross the town, and the Riparian Preserve at Water Ranch — a set of recharge basins that double as a bird sanctuary — is what a modern groundwater bank looks like when it is landscaped. The land is Sonoran Desert: creosote and saguaro outside the irrigated ground, summer highs well over 100°F, and rain arriving mostly in monsoon storms. The San Tan Mountains rise a few miles southeast, and the Superstition Mountains close the horizon to the northeast.

Cities near Gilbert

The East Valley neighbors are Mesa, Chandler and Scottsdale; Phoenix and Glendale anchor the western half of the metro. For the wider Southwest, open the Mountain division page.