Papago Park () is a municipal park of the cities of Phoenix and

Tempe, Arizona , settlement_type = City , named_for = Vale of Tempe , image_skyline = Tempeskyline3.jpg , imagesize = 260px , image_caption = Tempe skyline as se ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

. It has been designated as a Phoenix Point of Pride. It includes Hunt's Tomb, which is listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

Description

Papago Park is a hilly

desert A desert is a barren area of landscape where little precipitation occurs and, consequently, living conditions are hostile for plant and animal life. The lack of vegetation exposes the unprotected surface of the ground to denudation. About on ...

park covering 1200

acre The acre is a unit of land area used in the imperial and US customary systems. It is traditionally defined as the area of one chain by one furlong (66 by 660 feet), which is exactly equal to 10 square chains, of a square mile, 4,840 square ...

s in its Phoenix extent and 296

s in its Tempe extent. Tempe refers to its section of the park specifically as ''Tempe Papago Park.'' Papago Park is notable for its many distinctive geological formations and its wide variety of typical desert plants, including the giant saguaro cactus. The park also features the Desert Botanical Garden, a large zoo (the Phoenix Zoo), picnic areas, several small lakes,

hiking Hiking is a long, vigorous walk, usually on trails or footpaths in the countryside. Walking for pleasure developed in Europe during the eighteenth century.AMATO, JOSEPH A. "Mind over Foot: Romantic Walking and Rambling." In ''On Foot: A Histor ...

trails, bicycle paths, a fire museum, as well as Hunt's Tomb, the pyramidal tomb of

Arizona Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Fou ...

's first governor, George W. P. Hunt. Tempe Papago Park includes

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding t ...

and

softball Softball is a game similar to baseball played with a larger ball on a smaller field. Softball is played competitively at club levels, the college level, and the professional level. The game was first created in 1887 in Chicago by George Hanc ...

fields, picnic

ramada Ramada is a large American multinational hotel chain owned by Wyndham Hotels and Resorts. As of December 31, 2018, it operates 811 hotels with 114,614 rooms across 63 countries under the Ramada brand. Name The ''Ramada'' name derives from t ...

s, a small lake and other features. Rolling Hills Golf Course is within the park between its Phoenix and Tempe extremities. The park includes the home baseball and softball stadium for North Pointe Preparatory.

History

The distinctive red

sandstone Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicat ...

geological formations of Papago Park were formed some 6–15 million years ago. One such formation, Hole-in-the-Rock, is a major landmark, thanks to the openings (''

tafoni Although various definitions can be found in the scientific literature, tafoni (singular: tafone) are commonly defined as small (less than ) to large (greater than ) cavity features that develop in either natural or manmade, vertical to steeply s ...

'') eroded in the formation over time. There is some evidence that the

Hohokam Hohokam () was a culture in the North American Southwest in what is now part of Arizona, United States, and Sonora, Mexico. It existed between 300 and 1500 AD, with cultural precursors possibly as early as 300 BC. Archaeologists disagree about ...

—a now-extinct aboriginal tribe that once lived in the Phoenix area—used the openings and

sunlight Sunlight is a portion of the electromagnetic radiation given off by the Sun, in particular infrared, visible, and ultraviolet light. On Earth, sunlight is scattered and filtered through Earth's atmosphere, and is obvious as daylight when ...

to track the

solstice A solstice is an event that occurs when the Sun appears to reach its most northerly or southerly excursion relative to the celestial equator on the celestial sphere. Two solstices occur annually, around June 21 and December 21. In many count ...

There are also some signs of

Precambrian The Precambrian (or Pre-Cambrian, sometimes abbreviated pꞒ, or Cryptozoic) is the earliest part of Earth's history, set before the current Phanerozoic Eon. The Precambrian is so named because it preceded the Cambrian, the first period of th ...

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies un ...

in the park. The

bedrock In geology, bedrock is solid rock that lies under loose material ( regolith) within the crust of Earth or another terrestrial planet. Definition Bedrock is the solid rock that underlies looser surface material. An exposed portion of be ...

is concealed by only a thin layer of

topsoil Topsoil is the upper layer of soil. It has the highest concentration of organic matter and microorganisms and is where most of the Earth's biological soil activity occurs. Description Topsoil is composed of mineral particles and organic matt ...

. Papago Park was designated a reservation for the local Maricopa and Pima tribes of Native Americans in 1879. It became the Papago–Saguaro National Monument in 1914, but this status was recalled by

Congress A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of ...

, April 7, 1930, because the area was not considered suitable for a national monument.Arizona Place Names, Will C Barnes, U of A Press, page 317 It was divided amongst the state of Arizona, the city of Tempe and the Water Users Association, later known as the

Salt River Project The Salt River Project (SRP) is the umbrella name for two separate entities: the Salt River Project Agricultural Improvement and Power District, an agency of the state of Arizona that serves as an electrical utility for the Phoenix metropolitan a ...

. The Federal government reserved all oil, coal or other mineral rights. Following the onset of the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

, Governor Hunt commissioned a bass fish hatchery to be established in Papago Park during 1932. The hatchery was built as a

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...

(WPA) project, and became successful, stocking

largemouth bass The largemouth bass (''Micropterus salmoides'') is a carnivorous freshwater gamefish in the Centrarchidae ( sunfish) family, a species of black bass native to the eastern and central United States, southeastern Canada and northern Mexico, ...

and other fish for Arizona's waterways. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, Papago Park housed a

POW camp A prisoner-of-war camp (often abbreviated as POW camp) is a site for the containment of enemy fighters captured by a belligerent power in time of war. There are significant differences among POW camps, internment camps, and military prisons. ...

and contained as many as 3,100 prisoners from 1942 to 1944. It was also the site of the largest mass escape from any United States prison camp in World War II. The Great Papago Escape occurred on December 23, 1944 when 25 prisoners, including German U-boat commander Jürgen Wattenberg, escaped the camp using a 178-foot tunnel and made their way to the Arizona desert. Many prisoners quickly realized that they knew nothing about the landscape or climate and turned themselves back in. Wattenberg was the last to be captured, on January 28, 1945. After the war the POW camp site served as a VA hospital from 1947 to 1951, then an Army Reserve facility. The state-owned portion of Papago Park was sold to the city of Phoenix on February 25, 1959. The fish hatchery was also shut down in 1959, as it was considered obsolete by that time. The City of Phoenix leased the hatchery grounds, including its man-made lakes, to the Arizona Zoological Society in 1962 to establish the Phoenix Zoo. A small stone cottage, used as the hatchery caretaker's residence, was retained as part of the zoo, and extensively renovated in the 1990s. A portion of the Tempe park was conveyed to that city in 1935, and a parcel within that portion was conveyed to the

in 1955. An 18-hole championship golf course was built by the city of Phoenix and completed in 1963. The park was also the Finish Line in the fourth season of ''

The Amazing Race ''The Amazing Race'' is an adventure reality game show franchise in which teams of two people race around the world in competition with other teams. The ''Race'' is split into legs, with teams tasked to deduce clues, navigate themselves in fore ...

''.

Hunt's Tomb

Hunt's Tomb is a small white pyramid behind a fence at the top of a hill within Papago Park. George W. P. Hunt (Arizona's 1st governor) had the tomb built in 1931 to entomb his wife. He was placed there after his death in 1934. Their daughter and his wife's family are also buried there.

Papago Ponds

The Ponds have a surface area of with an average depth of , the elevation of the area is .

Fish species

Rainbow trout The rainbow trout (''Oncorhynchus mykiss'') is a species of trout native to cold-water tributaries of the Pacific Ocean in Asia and North America. The steelhead (sometimes called "steelhead trout") is an anadromous (sea-run) form of the coast ...

Largemouth bass The largemouth bass (''Micropterus salmoides'') is a carnivorous freshwater gamefish in the Centrarchidae ( sunfish) family, a species of black bass native to the eastern and central United States, southeastern Canada and northern Mexico, ...

* Sunfish *

Channel catfish The channel catfish (''Ictalurus punctatus'') is North America's most numerous catfish species. It is the official fish of Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, and Tennessee, and is informally referred to as a "channel cat". In the United States, the ...

Tilapia Tilapia ( ) is the common name for nearly a hundred species of cichlid fish from the coelotilapine, coptodonine, heterotilapine, oreochromine, pelmatolapiine, and tilapiine tribes (formerly all were "Tilapiini"), with the economically most ...

Carp Carp are various species of oily freshwater fish from the family Cyprinidae, a very large group of fish native to Europe and Asia. While carp is consumed in many parts of the world, they are generally considered an invasive species in parts of ...

Other species living at Papago Ponds

Woodhouse's toad Woodhouse's toad (''Anaxyrus woodhousii'') is a medium-sized () true toad native to the United States and Mexico. There are three recognized subspecies. ''A. woodhousii'' tends to hybridize with '' Anaxyrus americanus'' where their ranges overla ...

* Mexican free-tailed bat * Red-eared slider turtle

References

External links

* {{authority control Parks in Phoenix, Arizona Parks in Maricopa County, Arizona Geography of Tempe, Arizona Reservoirs in Maricopa County, Arizona Phoenix metropolitan area Phoenix Points of Pride Native American history of Arizona Former American Indian reservations Buildings and structures completed in 1932 Pyramids in the United States Tourist attractions in Maricopa County, Arizona Reservoirs in Arizona Prisoner of war camps in the United States Closed installations of the United States Army