Tonopah is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

and

census-designated place A census-designated place (CDP) is a Place (United States Census Bureau), concentration of population defined by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes only. CDPs have been used in each decennial census since 1980 as the counte ...

(CDP) in western

Maricopa County Maricopa County () is a county in the south-central part of the U.S. state of Arizona. As of the 2020 census the population was 4,420,568, or about 62% of the state's total, making it the fourth-most populous county in the United States and ...

Arizona Arizona is a U.S. state, state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region of the western United States with Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It also borders Nevada to the nort ...

, United States, west of downtown Phoenix off

Interstate 10 Interstate 10 (I-10) is the southernmost transcontinental highway in the Interstate Highway System of the United States. It is the fourth-longest Interstate in the country at , following I-90, I-80, and I-40. It was part of the origina ...

. The community is near the

Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station The Palo Verde Generating Station is a nuclear power plant located near Tonopah, Arizona about west of downtown Phoenix. Palo Verde generates the most electricity of any power plant in the United States per year, and is the largest power pl ...

, the largest power producer in the country, nuclear or otherwise. As of the 2020 census, the population of Tonopah was 23, down from 60 at the 2010 census. It is located on the

Tonopah Desert The Tonopah Desert is a small desert plains region of the Sonoran Desert, located west of Phoenix, Arizona. It is adjacent north of Interstate 10 and lies at the southwest intersection of the Hassayampa River with the Gila River. The Tonopah Dese ...

. Many wells in Tonopah are warm, in the to range, and many are hot; to wells are common. Prior to being called Tonopah, the settlement was known as "Lone Peak". The area is also known to have been inhabited by groups of people for resource gathering, including the

Hohokam Hohokam was a culture in the Indigenous peoples of the North American Southwest, North American Southwest in what is now part of south-central Arizona, United States, and Sonora, Mexico. It existed between 300 and 1500 CE, with cultural p ...

Patayan Patayan refers to a group of precontact and historical Native American cultures residing in parts of modern-day Arizona, extending west to Lake Cahuilla in California, and in Baja California. This cultural grouping also included areas along t ...

, and

Yavapai The Yavapai ( ) are a Native American tribe in Arizona. Their Yavapai language belongs to the Upland Yuman branch of the proposed Hokan language family. Today Yavapai people are enrolled in the following federally recognized tribes: * Fort ...

Demographics

As of the

census A census (from Latin ''censere'', 'to assess') is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording, and calculating population information about the members of a given Statistical population, population, usually displayed in the form of stati ...

of 2010, there were 60 people living in the CDP. The

population density Population density (in agriculture: Standing stock (disambiguation), standing stock or plant density) is a measurement of population per unit land area. It is mostly applied to humans, but sometimes to other living organisms too. It is a key geog ...

was 1.13 people per square mile. The racial makeup of the CDP was 87%

White White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no chroma). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully (or almost fully) reflect and scatter all the visible wa ...

, 2% Native American, 3% Asian, and 8% from other races. Twenty-three percent of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.

Schools

* Crossroads Academy * Ruth Fisher Middle School * Tonopah Valley High School * Winters Well Elementary School

Incorporation efforts

In 2009, a

political action committee In the United States, a political action committee (PAC) is a tax-exempt 527 organization that pools campaign contributions from members and donates those funds to campaigns for or against candidates, ballot initiatives, or legislation. The l ...

named Tonopah United for Our Future (TUFF) filed paperwork with the county, proposing the incorporation of the area into a town. The proposal ran into difficulties when the neighboring town of Buckeye voted to publicly oppose the measure. State law forbids the incorporation of a new city or town within a specified distance of existing municipalities without their approval, and the proposed boundaries for Tonopah would abut the corporate boundaries of Buckeye, essentially giving Buckeye veto power over any incorporation efforts. In 2003, Buckeye had passed a measure approving of any future incorporation effort by Tonopah, but the town council rescinded the measure, citing concerns that the proposal would extend the new town's boundaries east of the

Hassayampa River The Hassayampa River (Yavapai language, Yavapai: Hasaya:mvo or ʼHasayamcho:) is an intermittent river, the headwaters of which are just south of Prescott, Arizona, and flows mostly south towards Wickenburg, Arizona, Wickenburg, entering the Gila ...

and into area Buckeye intends to annex. Council members did indicate that they were open to future incorporation efforts using the river as a boundary. Residents also expressed concern that the proposal was too ambitious and that the new town would be incapable of managing the of land included in the proposal. Geographically it would be among the largest in the state, while estimates placed the population of the proposed town at approximately 6,000. Additionally, a number of residents opposed the plan because they believed large tax increases would be necessary to fund a new government. Ultimately the measure was defeated on March 10, 2009, by a vote of 523 against incorporation versus 356 in support. In 2023, The Tonopah Incorporation Committee again initiated a voter referendum, that would allow Tonopah to incorporate in fall 2024. If incorporated as planned, Tonopah would have a population of 4,300

Belmont

In November 2017, media outlets reported that a company associated with billionaire

Bill Gates William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American businessman and philanthropist. A pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, he co-founded the software company Microsoft in 1975 with his childhood friend ...

purchased between Buckeye and Tonopah for $80 million. At the time, Gates's company announced plans to create a "smart city" called Belmont on the site. As of 2023, no construction has begun.

Climate

Image gallery

Includes: * The ruins of the house of John Beauchamp, a major landowner in the area and Tonopah's first postmaster. The house and homestead were built in 1920. The ruins of the house are located near the corner of Indian School and 411th Avenue . * The Saguaro Sanitarium (which became the Motel Saguaro Mineral Wells), whose groundbreaking ceremony was on June 17, 1934, attended by

George W. P. Hunt George Wylie Paul Hunt (November 1, 1859 – December 24, 1934) was an American politician and businessman. He was the first governor of Arizona, serving a total of seven terms, along with President of the convention that wrote Arizona's con ...

, the first elected governor of Arizona. * The ruins related to the Tonopah-Belmont mine workers camp.