Beyond Scottsdale
Scottsdale is a long, thin city, and a good week here spills over its edges: a saloon in Cave Creek, a Cubs game in Mesa, the Botanical Garden at Papago, a Tuesday dinner in Arcadia, the Heard Museum downtown. These are the 182 places across the line that a Scottsdale visitor is glad to have driven to, sorted by which way you point the car, with the drive time from Old Town on every one.
182
Places
16
Areas
10 min
Closest drive
1 hr 15 min
Furthest we’ll send you
Which way, and why
The areas around Scottsdale that matter to a visitor, and the reason each one is worth the drive. Pick a direction and the places follow.
Cave Creek · Carefree · the Tonto National Forest
North of Scottsdale
Past the Preserve the city thins into the Desert Foothills: Cave Creek’s saloons and bull rides, Carefree’s sundial and galleries, then the lakes and high-desert trails of the Tonto. Visitors go north for the Western town Old Town’s storefronts are imitating, for a hike with nobody on it, and for a dinner that costs half what it does on Scottsdale Road.
- Cave Creek 15
- Carefree 7
- The Tonto National Forest & Bartlett Lake 3
Fountain Hills · the Salt River · Mesa · the Superstitions
East of Scottsdale
Across the Salt River reservation the desert opens up: Fountain Hills and its fountain, the Lower Salt River and Saguaro Lake with their wild horses, Mesa’s ballparks and museums, and the Superstition Mountains, the closest real wilderness to town. Go east for water, for the Cubs, and for the Apache Trail.
- Fountain Hills 6
- The Lower Salt River & Saguaro Lake 6
- Mesa 15
- The Superstitions & the Apache Trail 9
Papago · Tempe · Chandler & Gilbert · South Mountain
South of Scottsdale
Tempe is twenty minutes down the 101: a college town with a lake, a concert calendar and cheaper dinners, with Papago Park’s botanical garden and zoo on the way. Past it are the East Valley main streets and the Gila River resorts. Go south for ASU, the Desert Botanical Garden, a night out the students would pick, and the airport.
- Papago Park & the Airport Corridor 8
- Tempe 23
- Chandler & Gilbert 10
- South Mountain & Wild Horse Pass 9
Paradise Valley · Arcadia · the Biltmore · Central Phoenix · Desert Ridge
West of Scottsdale
West of the city line is Phoenix proper: Paradise Valley’s mountain, Arcadia’s restaurant row, the Biltmore, and downtown’s museums, ballpark and arena. Go west for the best neighborhood dining in the metro, the Heard Museum, a Suns or Diamondbacks game, and the Musical Instrument Museum.
- Paradise Valley 2
- Arcadia 18
- The Biltmore & the Camelback Corridor 7
- Central & Downtown Phoenix 37
- North Phoenix & Desert Ridge 7
Closest to Old Town
The places across the line a rideshare reaches in the time it takes to find parking in Old Town.
182 of 182 showing
North of Scottsdale
Past the Preserve the city thins into the Desert Foothills: Cave Creek’s saloons and bull rides, Carefree’s sundial and galleries, then the lakes and high-desert trails of the Tonto. Visitors go north for the Western town Old Town’s storefronts are imitating, for a hike with nobody on it, and for a dinner that costs half what it does on Scottsdale Road.
Cave Creek
The working Western town at the end of Cave Creek Road: saloons with live bands and a bull ring, a frontier main street, a mining museum, and the best close-in desert hiking north of the Preserve.
35–45 min from Old Town · 20 from North Scottsdale · Area guide →
Harold's Corral
The oldest bar in Cave Creek and still its living room: a 12,000-square-foot saloon with a dance floor, live country music most nights, a Pittsburgh Steelers club of three thousand members, and a plate of ribs at a price Old Town forgot.
A Saturday night of two-stepping, or a Steelers Sunday $$
Spur Cross Ranch
The one hike near Scottsdale with water in it: Cave Creek runs through the winter under cottonwoods, past Hohokam petroglyphs, an old guest ranch site and a mountain covered in saguaros, on 2,154 acres the town, county and state bought in 2001 to stop a subdivision.
A winter morning hike with a creek crossing $
The Horny Toad
Fifty years of fried chicken by the bucket in an old homestead with church-pew booths, run by the third family to own it; the Cave Creek dinner for anyone who finds the saloons too loud and still wants the West.
Fried chicken with grandparents, a patio lunch, meatloaf Monday $$
Watson's Hat Shop
A real hatter, not a hat store: Eric Watson blocks beaver-felt and panama hats by hand on machinery from the 1800s, in about 65 steps, for anyone willing to wait and pay; the best souvenir of the West you can buy within an hour of Scottsdale.
A custom hat fitting, a gift that outlives the trip $$$$
Big Bronco
The furniture store for the house you are picturing on the drive up: ranch tables from reclaimed wood, leather chairs, pottery and Western kitchenware, mostly American-made and shippable, next to Janey's patio so the other half of the party has somewhere to wait.
Furnishing a desert house, a Western gift that is not a T-shirt $$$
Big Earl's Greasy Eats
A real 1930s Standard Oil station, pumps still out front, serving the best cheap burger in the north Valley to bikers, ranch kids and Scottsdale families at the same picnic tables; the lunch stop that makes a Cave Creek day work.
Lunch with kids after a hike $
Black Mountain Trail
A mile and a quarter straight up to the 3,398-foot summit that stands over both Cave Creek and Carefree, with the whole north Valley, the Tonto and the McDowells laid out from the top; the Desert Foothills' answer to Camelback, with a tenth of the crowd.
A hard hour before breakfast on the strip
Cave Creek Museum
A volunteer-run town museum that owns the only surviving tuberculosis cabin in Arizona, a working 1880 ten-stamp gold mill and a 1947 church, and tells the Desert Foothills story Scottsdale's own museums skip: the mines, the ranches and the people who came here to breathe.
An hour of real history between the hike and the saloons $
Cave Creek Regional Park
The developed county park on Cave Creek's west side: 2,922 acres of saguaro hills with the Go John Trail, a six-mile loop around a mountain, a nature center with live desert animals and a campground, for the day you want a real desert hike with a ranger and a restroom at the start.
A long loop hike, or camping an hour from Old Town $
Frontier Town
A block of boardwalk storefronts that has sold turquoise, hot sauce and candles to visitors for more than fifty years, built around an 1880s leather mill that is one of Cave Creek's original buildings; the Old Town set, except some of it is real.
An hour of browsing between lunch and the saloons $$
Janey's Coffee Co.
A coffeehouse with a gravel patio that books local musicians most evenings of the week, usually for free, in a town where the alternative is a saloon; the gentlest version of a Cave Creek night out, and a good morning stop too.
A free patio show, coffee before Big Bronco, a Sunday afternoon $$
Local Jonny's
The place in Cave Creek where the town itself eats breakfast and drinks on a Friday: a proper coffeehouse that turns into a tavern with a band on the back patio, and the right first or last stop on a saloon-strip day.
Breakfast before a hike, a Friday patio band $$
Stagecoach Village
The planned, walkable end of Cave Creek Road: two dozen shops and galleries including the custom hat maker, a coffee shop and a pizza room, and the grounds for the town's Indian market, Taste of Cave Creek and the December Western Holidays.
A hat fitting, a Saturday browse, a festival weekend $$$
The Hideaway Grill
The bar the Valley's motorcyclists ride to on a Sunday: a small, loud, friendly roadhouse that Mark Bradshaw opened in 1998 and that has hosted most of the custom-bike world since; go for the patio, the people-watching and a beer that costs what beer should.
A Sunday afternoon beer and the parade of bikes $
Tonto Bar & Grill
The one Cave Creek dinner that is not a saloon: a Southwestern kitchen in the old Rancho Mañana dude-ranch buildings, with a latilla-shaded patio over the golf course and Black Mountain, owned by the same family as the Hermosa Inn; drive up for sunset and the short rib.
Sunset dinner on the patio after a day in Cave Creek $$$
Carefree
Cave Creek’s quiet neighbor: a 1950s planned town of boulders and galleries around the largest sundial in the hemisphere, with a few of the best small restaurants in the north Valley.
35–40 min from Old Town · 15 from Pinnacle Peak · Area guide →
Carefree Sundial & Desert Gardens
The strangest town square in Arizona, a 90-foot sundial from 1959 with a four-acre labeled cactus garden around it, free and walkable in twenty minutes, and the natural first stop before lunch on Easy Street or the drive on to Bartlett Lake.
A free half hour before lunch, grandparents, Octobers $
Black Mountain Coffee Shop
The breakfast Carefree has eaten since 1978: a diner at the corner of Ho and Hum roads with homemade cinnamon rolls, biscuits and gravy and huevos rancheros from six in the morning, the town's gossip at the counter, and, since new owners added a bar, live music most nights of the week.
Breakfast before a Black Mountain hike, the Friday fish fry $
Carefree Farmers Market
The Valley's prettiest farmers market setting, a Friday morning under a 90-foot sundial in a cactus garden, with the same produce growers, bakers and ranchers as the Old Town market and a fraction of the crowd; worth building a Friday in Carefree around, not a trip on its own.
A Friday-morning errand with a view, visitors with a kitchen $
English Rose Tea Room
The Valley's proper English afternoon tea, run since 2002 by an Englishwoman who moved to Arizona and could not find a decent cup: fifty loose teas in bone china, scones and finger sandwiches, a box of hats for anyone who wants one, in a town built for sitting still.
Mothers and daughters, a birthday, a rainy afternoon $$
Giordano's Trattoria Romana
A small, family-run Roman trattoria on Easy Street that has fed Carefree for more than 25 years: red sauce made every morning, cannelloni, a nightly special, tiramisu, and a check that reminds you what Italian dinner cost before Scottsdale discovered it.
A quiet weeknight dinner after a Boulders day $$
Keeler's Neighborhood Steakhouse
The serious steakhouse at the top of Scottsdale Road, run by an Omaha steak family in Carefree's oldest commercial building, with a rooftop that faces Black Mountain at sunset and a check that undercuts the Scottsdale Road rooms for the same prime beef.
A resort-week steak dinner, the Thursday rooftop $$$
Venues Café
The lunch and dinner room beside the sundial: American comfort food with a Southwest lean, a Sunday brunch with bottomless mimosas, a daily happy hour and a dining room built against a 30-foot natural rock wall, in a town that otherwise closes between meals.
Lunch after the sundial, Sunday brunch, Tuesday burger night $$
The Tonto National Forest & Bartlett Lake
The national forest begins where the pavement ends: Bartlett Lake for a boat day, Seven Springs for a creek and sycamores, and a Hohokam hilltop ruin, all on the far side of Carefree.
50–70 min from Old Town
Bartlett Lake
The closest real lake to Scottsdale: a 2,700-acre reservoir on the Verde River in the Tonto National Forest, an hour from Old Town on paved road, with a sandy swimming cove, a marina that rents pontoons and paddleboards, shoreline you can drive to, and a 1939 dam that is a monument in its own right.
A boat day, a swim in October, a dark-sky night $
Sears-Kay Ruin
The one Hohokam village near Scottsdale you can walk through: forty rooms of stacked stone on a hilltop above Camp Creek, built around 1050 and left around 1200, on a free one-mile loop with interpretive signs, 14 paved miles past Carefree, with the whole Valley laid out to the south.
An hour of real archaeology, the view, pairing with Seven Springs $
Seven Springs Recreation Area
Running water and shade trees an hour from Old Town: the upper reach of Cave Creek, where sycamores and cottonwoods line a creek you can put your feet in, at the end of a gravel forest road 20 miles north of Carefree; the Tonto's best cool-season picnic and the start of the real Cave Creek Trail.
A cool-season picnic, a creek walk, a dirt-road drive $
East of Scottsdale
Across the Salt River reservation the desert opens up: Fountain Hills and its fountain, the Lower Salt River and Saguaro Lake with their wild horses, Mesa’s ballparks and museums, and the Superstition Mountains, the closest real wilderness to town. Go east for water, for the Cubs, and for the Apache Trail.
Fountain Hills
Over the Shea Boulevard saddle: the 560-foot fountain, a dark-sky town with its own planetarium, the We-Ko-Pa golf and casino resort on the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation, and the back door to McDowell Mountain Regional Park.
25–35 min from Old Town · Area guide →
We-Ko-Pa Golf Club
Thirty-six holes of desert golf on the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation with no homes, roads or anything else in view, including a Coore and Crenshaw course built to be walked; the one public tee time in the Valley that beats the private clubs you cannot get on.
The best round of a golf trip, walkers, a sunrise tee time $$$$
Adero Canyon Trailhead
The east side of the McDowell Mountains from a trailhead that took twenty years to build and that almost nobody from Scottsdale has heard of, with trails that run up into McDowell Mountain Regional Park and a parking lot that is never full; the Preserve's quiet twin.
A hike when Gateway's lot is full, east-side views, sunrise $
Grapeables Wine Bar
A family-run wine bar with more than 150 bottles from small, often family-owned wineries, charcuterie built to pair, live music on weekend nights and a patio that looks straight at the fountain; the glass of wine at the lit 8 PM cycle is the best way to end a Fountain Hills day.
A glass at the lit fountain cycle, live music Fridays, couples $$
Phil's Filling Station Grill
The town diner of Fountain Hills, three rooms of Coca-Cola memorabilia, pancakes the size of the plate and a 20-ounce burger, with classic cars in the back lot on winter Sundays; the breakfast that turns a fountain visit into a morning out, and not worth the drive on its own.
Breakfast before the fountain, Sunday car show, kids $
River of Time Museum
An hour's worth of the story behind everything else you will see east of the McDowells, from the Yavapai and the fort to the dams that made the Valley and the one that was stopped; only worth the drive as part of a Fountain Hills half-day, and then genuinely worth the hour.
A rainy-day hour, history readers, pairing with the fountain $
Sofrita
The one restaurant on the Avenue of the Fountains worth planning around, small plates with a Spanish-Puerto Rican accent, sangria, and a patio a block from the fountain, with live Spanish guitar and flamenco on some evenings; the lunch that makes the Fountain Hills half-day a day.
Lunch between fountain cycles, sangria on the patio, a flamenco night $$
The Lower Salt River & Saguaro Lake
The Valley’s water: tubing and kayaking the Lower Salt, the wild horses at Coon Bluff, a paddle-wheel cruise on Saguaro Lake, and the Usery Mountain trails above it.
35–50 min from Old Town · Our note →
Coon Bluff & the Wild Horses
A herd of wild horses that comes down through the mesquite to drink and graze in the river at first and last light, watched from a bluff and a riverbank 40 minutes from Old Town; the single most memorable free thing within an hour of a Scottsdale resort, if you follow the rules.
Horses at dusk, birders at dawn, a riverbank picnic in the cool months $
Butcher Jones Recreation Site
The one place within an hour of Scottsdale where you can swim off a sand beach in a canyon lake with no motorboats allowed in the water, then walk a five-mile shoreline trail past the saguaros and the bighorn cliffs; a county-park price for a national-forest day.
A swim in a real lake, the shoreline hike, a picnic under mesquites $
Saguaro Lake & the Desert Belle
A 1,264-acre reservoir in a canyon of saguaros 45 minutes from Old Town, with a marina that rents pontoons, a restaurant on the shore and an 80-minute narrated cruise on a boat that has worked the lake since 1964; the one real lake day within reach of a Scottsdale resort.
A boat day, grandparents on the Desert Belle, October through April $$
Saguaro Lake Ranch
Twenty cabins in a cottonwood grove on the Salt River directly below Stewart Mountain Dam, built as the dam workers' camp in 1928 and run as a family guest ranch since the late 1940s, with a stable that rides the river bottom and a kayak shuttle on the water; the real dude-ranch night within an hour of Scottsdale.
A horseback ride on the river, a cowboy cookout, one night away from the resort $$$
Salt River Tubing
The thing every Valley local has done at least once: rent a tube at the headquarters on Bush Highway, ride the school bus upriver, and float two to four hours down a cold green river past cliffs, saguaros and wild horses in 105-degree heat; the only cheap, outdoor, daytime summer activity near Scottsdale that works.
A summer weekday float, groups, the under-30s $
Usery Mountain Regional Park
A Maricopa County park on the back of Pass Mountain with the Valley's best short destination hike, the Wind Cave Trail to an alcove at 2,840 feet with hanging gardens on its roof, a developed campground, an archery range and a nature center; the cool-season companion to a Salt River day.
The Wind Cave hike, a night in a tent, a sunrise over the Superstitions $
Mesa
The third-largest city in Arizona and the one visitors overlook: two spring-training ballparks, the Valley’s best performing-arts center, a dinosaur museum, a warbird museum, and a downtown that the light rail reaches.
20–35 min from Old Town
Mesa Arts Center
The largest arts campus in Arizona, seven acres of glass and shade at the head of Mesa's Main Street, with a 1,600-seat hall that gets the touring shows Scottsdale's theater is too small for and a free contemporary-art museum.
A touring show, a free museum, a light-rail evening $$
Sloan Park
Fifteen thousand people, most of them in Cubs blue, filling the largest spring-training park in baseball on a March weekday afternoon; the loudest, most big-league version of the Cactus League, twenty-two minutes from Old Town.
A Cubs game and a beer on the berm $$
Arizona Museum of Natural History
The only real dinosaur hall in the Valley, with a three-story indoor mountain that floods every half hour, a territorial jail and a Hohokam village, in a 1937 city hall two blocks from the light rail; the best hot-day museum for a child under twelve.
Kids who like dinosaurs, a 110-degree afternoon $$
CAF Airbase Arizona
A hangar of Second World War aircraft that still fly, including a B-17 Flying Fortress and a B-25 Mitchell you can buy a seat on, at an airfield the RAF built in 1941; the one museum in the Valley where the exhibits take off.
Anyone who has ever built a model airplane, a B-17 ride $$
Cider Corps
The state's first cidery, opened on Veterans Day 2017 by two brothers, one a Marine wounded in Afghanistan who took up cider on a doctor's advice; fifteen to twenty taps in a downtown Mesa taproom a half block from the arts center.
A flight before an arts-center show, the non-beer drinker in the group $$
Downtown Mesa Main Street
A real main street with a light-rail line down the middle, two museums, the state's largest arts center, a cidery and a sandwich shop within six blocks, at prices that make Old Town look like a resort; the downtown Scottsdale visitors have not found yet.
A museum day with kids, a cheap lunch, a second-Friday evening $
Golfland Sunsplash
The East Valley's water park since the 1980s: a 450,000-gallon wave pool, an 800-foot lazy river, a dozen serious slides and year-round mini golf, half an hour from Old Town; the answer for a family in June when the resort pool runs out of ideas.
Teenagers in summer, a mini-golf night any month $$$
Hohokam Stadium
The quiet Cactus League park: about 10,000 seats, a lawn, cheap tickets and the Athletics' prospects, half an hour from Old Town; the ballpark you choose when you want to watch baseball rather than be in a crowd.
A cheap weekday game with a real seat $
i.d.e.a. Museum
A city-run children's museum built around making art rather than pressing buttons, in a converted 1950s supermarket two blocks from the Mesa Arts Center; the calm, under-eight half of a downtown Mesa museum day, and a good answer to a hot afternoon.
Toddlers to about age eight, a hot or rainy afternoon $$
Mesa Market Place Swap Meet
Arizona's largest outdoor market, 600-plus vendors on 40 acres at Signal Butte and the 60, free to enter and park, where East Valley snowbirds buy hats, boots and massage chairs; worth it only on the way to the Superstitions, and then a good hour.
A Saturday morning on the way to the Superstitions, snowbird souvenirs $
Mesa Riverview & Bass Pro Shops
The errand district at the 101 and the 202: a Bass Pro Shops big enough to count as an attraction, a Walmart, a Home Depot and a Cinemark across from Sloan Park; what the resort does not sell, plus free parking on a Cubs day.
Supplies before a hike or a game, a kid who likes fish tanks $$
Organ Stop Pizza
A live organist playing a 1927 Wurlitzer theater organ with 6,000 pipes and a wall of percussion, every night, in a hall that serves ordinary pizza; the single most Arizona thing within an hour of Scottsdale and the dinner children talk about for years.
Kids, grandparents, anyone who likes a show with dinner $
Pete's Fish & Chips
Arizona's oldest fast-food chain, family-run since a 1947 roadside stand, still frying fish and shrimp in a paper boat, still cash only, still ordered through a walk-up window at the Mesa corner where it started; the cheapest piece of living history in the East Valley.
A cheap fish basket after a ballgame, nostalgia $
Republica Empanada
The largest menu of South American-style empanadas in Arizona, baked to order in a converted house in Mesa's Southside Heights, with a Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives visit behind it and a dessert empanada of Mesa-grown figs; the cheap, specific dinner Scottsdale lacks.
A casual dinner before an arts-center show, a cheap lunch for a group $$
Worth Takeaway
A fifteen-seat sandwich counter in an old downtown Mesa storefront that has been the East Valley's consensus best sandwich since 2016: Proof bread, a crispy chicken sandwich people cross the Valley for, and prices Scottsdale forgot; a fair reason to be in Mesa.
Lunch before or after the Mesa museums $$
The Superstitions & the Apache Trail
The closest real mountain wilderness: Lost Dutchman State Park under the Flatiron, a ghost town, a saloon at Tortilla Flat, a steamboat on Canyon Lake, and the arboretum at Superior. Cool-season only.
55–75 min from Old Town · Our note →
Boyce Thompson Arboretum
The state's oldest and largest botanical garden, 392 acres in a creek canyon under a volcanic peak with trails through desert plants from every continent, including the 13-acre Wallace Desert Garden that was dug up in North Scottsdale and trucked here; the Desert Botanical Garden's wilder, older cousin, worth the hour and a quarter in spring.
A spring day with a picnic, dog owners, the Botanical Garden's bigger sibling $$
Lost Dutchman State Park
The one place within an hour of Old Town where a real mountain wall rises straight out of the desert floor, with a trail for every ability from a flat loop under the cliffs to the Flatiron scramble that ends the day for most people who try it.
A winter morning under the Flatiron, first-timers to the Superstitions $
Tortilla Flat
The last stop on the paved Apache Trail is a 1904 freight camp with six residents, a saloon where you sit on a saddle and the walls are papered in dollar bills, a prickly pear gelato counter, and the best excuse to drive the twenty mountain miles past Canyon Lake; only worth it as the end of that drive, and then completely worth it.
Lunch at the end of the Apache Trail, a chili and a gelato on a winter Saturday $$
Canyon Lake & the Dolly Steamboat
A reservoir folded into the cliffs of the Superstitions, fifteen miles up the Apache Trail, with a paddle-wheel boat that runs a ninety-minute narrated cruise through the narrows and bighorn sheep on the walls; the one boat ride near Scottsdale where the scenery is the mountains rather than the shoreline houses. Closed for a dam inspection until early 2027.
A winter afternoon cruise with grandparents, the twilight dinner cruise $$
Goldfield Ghost Town
A reconstructed gold camp on the real site of an 1890s boom town, with an underground mine tour, a narrow-gauge train and hourly gunfights, all under the Superstition cliffs; the right stop between Lost Dutchman State Park and lunch, and the one Western town near Scottsdale where the mine is real.
Kids after a Treasure Loop hike, a saloon lunch with the mountain in the window $$
Hieroglyphic Trail
The easiest worthwhile hike in the Superstitions: a mile and a half of gentle climb from a suburban trailhead to a basalt canyon with hundreds of Hohokam petroglyphs above pools that hold water into spring, with the whole range in view; the rock-art walk the Preserve will not give directions to, an hour from Old Town.
Families, the petroglyphs the Preserve keeps secret, a two-hour Superstitions sampler
Peralta Trail
The best single hike in the Superstitions for a strong day hiker: four and a half to five miles round trip up a canyon of hoodoos to a saddle where Weaver's Needle, the thousand-foot spire at the center of the Lost Dutchman legend, fills the view; the hike the McDowells cannot offer, seventy minutes from Old Town.
The one serious Superstitions hike, a December morning with a thermos at the saddle
Superstition Mountain Museum
The place that takes the Lost Dutchman legend seriously enough to show you 23 treasure maps, a working-scale stamp mill and the chapel from the movie ranch where Elvis filmed, on twelve acres with the mountain itself as the last exhibit; an hour and a half well spent on the way to the park.
The legend before the hike, rainy-day Superstitions, a wedding photo in the Elvis chapel $
The Apache Trail
The best mountain road within reach of a Scottsdale resort: eighteen paved miles from Apache Junction past Lost Dutchman State Park and Canyon Lake to the saloon at Tortilla Flat, with the dirt grade of Fish Creek Hill beyond it for people with a four-wheel drive and a stomach; the drive the whole eastern section of this site is organized around.
A winter Sunday drive with lunch at the end, the one road trip from a Scottsdale resort
South of Scottsdale
Tempe is twenty minutes down the 101: a college town with a lake, a concert calendar and cheaper dinners, with Papago Park’s botanical garden and zoo on the way. Past it are the East Valley main streets and the Gila River resorts. Go south for ASU, the Desert Botanical Garden, a night out the students would pick, and the airport.
Papago Park & the Airport Corridor
The buttes on Scottsdale’s southern line hold the Desert Botanical Garden and the Phoenix Zoo, with a firefighting museum, a Hohokam platform mound and the Valley’s most talked-about brisket in the streets around them.
10–20 min from Old Town
Desert Botanical Garden
The desert you have been looking at from the resort pool, walked through with every plant named, in a garden that has been collecting it since 1939; the one attraction here that is better than the hike it replaces on a hot day.
First morning in the desert, grandparents, December luminarias $$
Phoenix Zoo
The Valley's zoo is a real one, 125 acres with four long trails, a herd descended from the Arabian oryx it helped save from extinction, giraffes, Komodo dragons and a stingray touch tank, next door to the Botanical Garden and twelve minutes from Old Town; the answer for a family's second morning, and for ZooLights in December.
A family morning, ZooLights, the day the kids have had enough desert $$$
Tovrea Castle
The four-tier wedding cake on a hill above the 202 that every arriving flight and every drive to the airport passes, finally open since 2012 and only on a docent tour you win in a lottery; a 1930 Italian immigrant's hotel that became a cattle baron's house, with 44 acres of cactus garden around it. Worth the effort precisely because the effort is required.
The ticket you plan a trip around, Phoenix history nerds, the cactus garden at eight in the morning $$
Arizona Heritage Center
The state historical society's Phoenix-area museum, a quiet building in Papago Park across the Crosscut Canal from the German POW camp, with the story of twentieth-century Arizona, from the dams and the war to the postwar boom that built Scottsdale, told in two hours; the museum for the new resident who wants to know how the place got this way.
New residents, the postwar-boom story, a cool afternoon between the zoo and dinner $$
Hall of Flame Museum
The largest museum of firefighting equipment anywhere, five galleries of hand pumpers, horse-drawn steamers and motor engines from 1725 to the present with a Hall of Heroes for firefighters killed in the line of duty, in a quiet building on the Papago Park edge; the best rainy-day hour in the Valley for a child, and better than it sounds for the adults.
A six-year-old who likes trucks, a rainy afternoon, firefighters on vacation $$
Little Miss BBQ
The barbecue the whole Valley lines up for, Central Texas style brisket, ribs and sausage sold by the pound from a counter in a warehouse strip south of the airport until it runs out; the one lunch in this section worth planning a morning around, eighteen minutes from Old Town, and still the measure every other smokehouse here is held to.
The brisket pilgrimage, a Tuesday lunch with nowhere to be at two $$
Papago Golf Club
The best public golf course within fifteen minutes of Old Town that does not charge resort money: a 1963 William F. Bell design with the Papago Buttes and Camelback in every sightline, rebuilt in 2008 and home to Arizona State's golf teams since 2018, with a clubhouse bar that is a decent lunch on its own.
A real round without a resort rate, a twilight nine with the buttes lit up $$
S'edav Va'aki Museum
The one place in the Valley where you can walk up to a Hohokam platform mound, stand at the headgates of the canal system that Scottsdale's canals still follow, and see a ballcourt and rebuilt houses on a two-thirds-mile trail, next to a light-rail stop and ten minutes from the airport; the short, cheap, essential prelude to understanding why anyone lives here.
The Hohokam in an hour, the layover between a flight and a resort check-in $
Tempe
Arizona State’s college town: Mill Avenue, a two-mile lake with a beach park, Frank Lloyd Wright’s last public building, a football stadium, a brewery district on 8th Street and the cheapest good dinners near Scottsdale.
15–25 min from Old Town
ASU Gammage
The round pink auditorium at the corner of Mill and Apache is where the national Broadway tours play when they come to Arizona, inside the last public building Frank Lloyd Wright designed; see a show here and you have seen the other half of the Taliesin West story.
A touring Broadway night, Wright pilgrims, a dressed-up date $$$
Tempe Diablo Stadium
The Los Angeles Angels' spring-training park since 1993, a 9,500-seat bowl with a desert butte behind the left-field line, the smallest and oldest ballpark in the Cactus League and the one where a March afternoon still feels like it did before the ballparks got big; 22 minutes from Old Town.
A March afternoon game, Angels fans, kids who want a foul ball $$
Tempe Town Lake & Tempe Beach Park
The only open water near Scottsdale you can paddle without a reservoir drive: a two-mile lake in the Salt River bed with a flat loop path, boat rentals at the beach park, and the Valley's best Fourth of July, twenty minutes down the 101.
A sunrise walk, a pedal boat with kids, the Fourth of July $
The Chuckbox
A third-pound burger grilled over an open mesquite fire, dressed at a fixings bar and eaten at a picnic table under a tin roof, for less than a Scottsdale appetizer; the oldest honest lunch within twenty minutes of Old Town.
A cheap lunch before a game or a campus walk $
ASU Tempe Campus
A 640-acre campus that doubles as an arboretum, with an 1898 brick hall, a palm-lined walk, a James Turrell skyspace and a free contemporary art museum, all walkable in a morning; the best campus stroll in the Southwest and nobody from Scottsdale does it.
A morning walk, the art museum, prospective students and their parents $
Casey Moore's Oyster House
The bar Tempe locals send you to instead of Mill Avenue: an Irish pub and oyster house in a 1910 brick house with a wraparound patio under old trees, a ghost couple upstairs, and the Valley's best neighborhood-bar award on the wall, twenty minutes from Old Town.
Oysters and a pint on the patio, a date that is not on Mill, ghost hunters $$
Changing Hands Bookstore
The best independent bookstore in Arizona, new and used under one roof since April 1974, with an author-event calendar that brings national writers to a suburban strip center in south Tempe; the one shop on this side of the river that a Scottsdale reader should drive 25 minutes for.
An author event, a rainy afternoon, used-book hunting $$
Cornish Pasty Co. (the original)
The small dark room on University Drive where a Cornishman started hand-crimping pasties for ASU students in 2005 and built an Arizona chain; the Old Town branch is closer, but the original is cheaper, rougher and the one locals mean when they say Cornish Pasty.
A cheap, filling late dinner, a pint of British beer, pasty pilgrims $$
Culinary Dropout at The Yard
The biggest and best of the Culinary Dropouts, built by Sam Fox in 2014 inside a converted garage two blocks off Mill Avenue, with a yard of lawn games out back, live music on Saturdays, free valet and a kitchen that does pretzels with fondue and 36-hour ribs for a crowd that is half ASU and half their parents; eighteen minutes from Old Town.
A loud, easy group dinner before a Mill Avenue night $$
Desert Financial Arena
The closest big-conference basketball to a Scottsdale hotel: Arizona State's Big 12 men's and women's games in a 14,000-seat 1974 arena next to the football stadium, with tickets for a fraction of a Suns game and a Tempe night around it.
A Big 12 basketball night, Sun Devil volleyball, a cheap date $$
Four Peaks Brewing Company
The brewery that started Arizona craft beer, still pouring Kilt Lifter in the red-brick 1892 Borden creamery where it began in 1996; a pint here is the origin story every Scottsdale taproom is quoting, twenty minutes down the road.
A Kilt Lifter in the original room, a post-game pint, Saturday brewery tours $$
Hayden Butte ('A' Mountain)
The easiest summit in the Valley: a 300-foot, twenty-minute climb from downtown Tempe to the painted A, with Hohokam petroglyphs on the way up and the lake, the stadium and the Phoenix skyline from the top; the warm-up or the consolation for Camelback.
A sunset climb after dinner on Mill, kids' first summit, game-day warmups $
Hayden Flour Mill
The white concrete mill and silos at the north end of Mill Avenue are the oldest industrial building in the Valley still standing where it worked and the reason the street has its name; you can walk around it, not into it, while a redevelopment approved in 2023 waits to start, and it is worth ten minutes on any Tempe visit.
A ten-minute history stop at the start of a Mill Avenue walk
Kiwanis Park
A 125-acre city park in south Tempe with a 13-acre lake you can pedal-boat and fish, an indoor wave pool, a fifteen-court tennis center and acres of lawn under old trees; the East Valley's answer to Chaparral and Eldorado, worth the 24 minutes only if the wave pool or the courts are the point.
A wave-pool afternoon, tennis, a lakeside picnic $
Mill Avenue District
The one real main street in the metro with a university at the end of it: six blocks of brick storefronts from the 1890s between the lake and the campus, with the cheapest decent dinners near Scottsdale and a crowd thirty years younger than Old Town's.
A cheap dinner and a walk, a Sun Devils weekend, the arts festival $$
Mountain America Stadium
The Valley's football stadium is still the one wedged between two buttes in Tempe, not the dome in Glendale: Arizona State's Big 12 Saturdays, a rebuilt 53,000-seat bowl, and the only big-game atmosphere within twenty minutes of a Scottsdale hotel.
A fall Saturday, the Territorial Cup, a Pat Tillman pilgrimage $$$
Omni Tempe Hotel at ASU
The newest full-service hotel in the East Valley, 330 rooms on the corner of Mill Avenue and University Drive with a rooftop pool over the Arizona State campus, a rooftop restaurant and the biggest ballroom in Tempe; the place to stay for a game, a graduation or a Gammage show when Scottsdale's resorts are the wrong side of the river.
ASU weekends, a Gammage night, a rooftop drink over the campus $$$
Pedal Haus Brewery
The biggest patio in downtown Tempe with its own brewery behind it: German and Belgian-style lagers and ales from Arizona's 2023 Brewery of the Year, a dog-friendly beer garden on Mill Avenue, and the easy table before a game or a show at Gammage, twenty minutes from Old Town.
A pre-game or pre-Gammage table, a beer garden with the dog, a Sunday brunch on Mill $$
Snakes & Lattes Tempe
The Toronto board-game café chain's Arizona outpost, a block off Mill Avenue, where six dollars buys all evening with a library of more than a thousand games, a staff that teaches them and a bar with a dozen local drafts; the best rainy-night or too-hot-afternoon plan within twenty minutes of Old Town.
A group night out that is not a bar crawl, a hot afternoon with teenagers $$
Tempe Center for the Arts
A $65 million lakeside arts center with a 600-seat theater, a black-box studio, a free gallery and a folded steel roof you can see from the freeway, where the East Valley's theater and orchestra companies play for a third of a Scottsdale ticket price; twenty minutes from Old Town.
A play or concert at a reasonable price, a free gallery stop $$
Tempe History Museum
A free, well-made city museum next to the Tempe library that tells the East Valley's story in four galleries, from the Hohokam canals and Hayden's mill to the college town and its bands, in about an hour; the right rainy-afternoon or history-minded stop when you are already south of the river, 22 minutes from Old Town.
An hour of local history, free, with the kids $
Tempe Marketplace
The Valley's biggest open-air shopping center, with a courtyard stage, a Harkins with a Cine Capri screen and every chain store Scottsdale Fashion Square does not carry, sixteen minutes down the 101; worth it for a movie night or a practical errand, not as a destination.
A movie, a chain-store errand, a cheap dinner on the way to the airport $$
Yucca Tap Room
A fifty-year-old dive on a strip of Southern Avenue with a stage that has hosted every Tempe band worth hearing, 29 taps, a pinball arcade with a hidden tiki bar and a pizza kitchen, open from six in the morning to two at night; the live-music room Scottsdale does not have, 22 minutes from Old Town.
A cheap night of local bands, a pinball afternoon $
Chandler & Gilbert
The East Valley’s two main streets: Gilbert’s Heritage District, which became the metro’s best small-town restaurant row, a 1913 resort hotel in downtown Chandler, a water-ranch bird preserve and a railway museum.
30–45 min from Old Town
Gilbert Heritage District
Four blocks of a 1920s hay-shipping town that filled up with the Valley's better restaurants under a 1927 water tower; the one East Valley main street worth a thirty-five-minute drive for dinner, and the closest thing the metro has to a small town that works.
A long dinner, a Saturday farmers market, patio weather $$
Riparian Preserve at Water Ranch
A town's treated wastewater turned into seven recharge ponds and a fishing lake that drew some 300 bird species, with flat trails, an observatory and a library at the gate; the best birding in the metro and a free cool-season morning no Scottsdale park matches.
Birders, a winter sunrise walk, kids with a net $
Agritopia & Barnone
A working organic farm inside the neighborhood built around it, with a burger grill in the family's old house, a coffee shop in the tool shed and a winery, a brewery and ten makers in a 1950s grain barn; the East Valley's best family afternoon.
A family afternoon, farm produce, a winery in a barn $$
Arizona Railway Museum
A volunteer-run yard of full-size locomotives and passenger cars in south Chandler, a dozen of them open to walk through, including Santa Fe dome and observation cars and a 1910 coach; the real-train answer to the Railroad Park's miniature one, on cool-season weekends only.
Train-mad kids, a Santa Fe dome car, a cool-season Sunday $
Chandler Fashion Center
A 1.3-million-square-foot enclosed mall at the 101 and 202 that lost Sears and Nordstrom and replaced them with a 250,000-square-foot Scheels, a Round1 arcade and Arizona's first Seafood City; the closest indoor mall to south Scottsdale, and the answer to a 112-degree afternoon with teenagers.
A hot-day afternoon, teenagers, the Scheels Ferris wheel $$
Downtown Chandler
A planned 1912 town square with the 1913 San Marcos on one side, breweries and restaurants on the others, a Saturday farmers market and a Christmas tree made of tumbleweeds; the East Valley's quieter main street, best for a hotel bar and a history walk.
A brewery crawl, the tumbleweed tree, a night at the San Marcos $$
Joe's Real BBQ
The restaurant that started the Heritage District: counter-service barbecue smoked over Arizona pecan in a 1929 brick grocery with a picnic park out back, worth the drive on its own for the brisket and the right first stop in Gilbert regardless.
Brisket with kids in tow, a Sunday lunch, a Gilbert first-timer $$
Liberty Market
The Heritage District's all-day room, breakfast to a late dinner with an espresso bar and a full bar in a 1936 grocery, from the family behind Joe's Real BBQ; the dependable table in Gilbert at an off hour, not a destination on its own.
Breakfast before the farmers market, a 3 PM lunch, a family dinner $$
San Marcos Hotel
The oldest resort hotel in Arizona, a 1913 Mission Revival landmark on a 1912 town square with the state's first grass golf course behind it and a speakeasy beneath; sleep in the building that invented the Arizona winter resort, for less than a Scottsdale room.
A history-minded night away, a round on the 1913 course, a lobby drink $$$
SanTan Village
Westcor's last mall and Macerich's open-air East Valley showpiece, about 1.2 million square feet of streets and plazas with Dillard's, Macy's, Apple and a Harkins at the Loop 202; worth a Scottsdale visitor's drive only as the shopping half of a Gilbert day.
A Gilbert day's shopping stop, a movie, a chain dinner $$
South Mountain & Wild Horse Pass
The largest city park in the country, a water-park resort at its foot, and, on the Gila River Indian Community beyond, a Forbes five-star Native restaurant, the Western town that used to be in Scottsdale, and the outlets.
30–45 min from Old Town
Kai
The only Forbes Five-Star restaurant in Arizona, cooking from the crops and traditions of the Akimel O'otham and Pee Posh on the Community's land, forty minutes south of Old Town; the one dinner in the Valley that justifies the drive, the price and a jacket.
The anniversary dinner, a long tasting menu $$$$
South Mountain Park & Dobbins Lookout
One of the largest city parks in the country and the only summit in the Valley you can drive to, with the metro below Dobbins Lookout at sunset; worth the forty minutes for the view alone, and for a hike the Preserve cannot give you.
Sunset from the lookout, a winter hike, cyclists
Arizona Grand Resort & Oasis Water Park
The only real water park in the metro that comes attached to a resort: seven acres of slides, a wave pool and a tubing river under South Mountain, half an hour from Old Town; worth it with children in the hot months, and only then.
Kids who have outgrown the resort pool, a summer weekend $$$
Carolina's Mexican Food
A bare-walled counter south of the airport that has made the Valley's best flour tortillas since 1968, with a machaca burro locals plan a flight around; twenty-five minutes from Old Town, cheaper than anything on Scottsdale Road, and the right first or last meal.
Breakfast burros, the airport run, a cheap great lunch $
Gila River Resorts & Casinos – Wild Horse Pass
The Gila River Indian Community's flagship casino hotel, 446 rooms in two towers with a rooftop steakhouse and a 24-hour floor; Scottsdale has Talking Stick for the same thing closer, so come for a show, Kai next door, or a Wild Horse Pass weekend.
A casino weekend, a show, the rooftop steak $$$
Koli Equestrian Center
An hour on a horse across open Community desert under the Sierra Estrella, led by a Gila River member, with a real chance of the wild horses the pass is named for; the best trail ride within an hour of Scottsdale.
A sunset ride, children six and up, first-timers $$
Los Dos Molinos
Hatch-chile New Mexican cooking, the hottest plate in the metro, served in the adobe-style ranch house of the silent-film cowboy Tom Mix, just short of South Mountain Park; worth the drive for the heat alone, and the right lunch before Dobbins Lookout.
Chile heads, a pre-hike lunch, big margaritas $$
Phoenix Premium Outlets
Simon's open-air outlet center on the Gila River Indian Community, eighty-some stores at the Wild Horse Pass exit of I-10; worth the forty minutes only if outlet prices are the point, or you are already down here for Kai, the casino or Rawhide.
Coach and Polo at a discount, a cloudy-day errand $$
Rawhide Western Town
Scottsdale's own 1880s cowboy town, dismantled on Halloween 2005 and rebuilt on Gila River land, now a 160-acre event venue that opens for festivals, rodeos and Halloween; worth the drive only on a night the gates are open, and then mostly for the memory.
Festival nights, a rodeo, lost-Scottsdale nostalgia $$
West of Scottsdale
West of the city line is Phoenix proper: Paradise Valley’s mountain, Arcadia’s restaurant row, the Biltmore, and downtown’s museums, ballpark and arena. Go west for the best neighborhood dining in the metro, the Heard Museum, a Suns or Diamondbacks game, and the Musical Instrument Museum.
Paradise Valley
The town of resorts between Camelback and Mummy mountains. Most of what matters here already has a guide on this site; these are the places that fall between them.
10–15 min from Old Town · Area guide →
Barry Goldwater Memorial Park
A pocket park at the busiest corner in Paradise Valley with a nine-foot bronze of Barry Goldwater, camera in hand, below the hill where he lived for half a century; worth ten minutes on the way to Camelback, not a destination of its own.
A ten-minute stop, Goldwater completists, a photo
Franciscan Renewal Center (the Casa)
A Franciscan retreat campus under Camelback that has opened its gates to anyone since 1951: Sunday Mass, quiet grounds between the resorts, a bookstore and real weekend retreats; ten minutes from Old Town and the one calm place on resort row.
A quiet hour, Sunday Mass, a weekend retreat
Arcadia
The citrus-grove neighborhood of east Phoenix under Camelback, and the best restaurant row in the metro: the places Scottsdale locals actually eat at on a Tuesday, strung along the Arizona Canal.
10–15 min from Old Town
Arizona Falls
The only waterfall on the Arizona Canal, where Phoenix's first power plant stood in 1902 and a working SRP hydro plant now shares the drop with a shaded public room of falling water; the best free stop on the canal path west of Scottsdale.
A canal walk or ride with a destination, a hot afternoon
Chelsea's Kitchen
A low ranch-style roadhouse at 40th and Camelback whose patio sits right on the Arizona Canal, with a fireplace, an outdoor bar, real trees for shade and a menu of short-rib tacos, smoked meats and a whole branzino; the dinner Arcadia people are proudest of.
A winter patio dinner, Sunday brunch on the water $$$
La Grande Orange Grocery
The corner store that taught the Valley what a neighborhood café could be: breakfast on a house-baked English muffin, a wine aisle, a pizzeria at the back and the whole of Arcadia standing in line, a dozen minutes from Old Town.
Breakfast before Camelback, a picnic on the canal $$
Postino Arcadia
The first Postino, in the brick post office where the bruschetta board, the $6 glass before five and the whole Arizona wine-café idea were invented in 2001; the Scottsdale branches are good copies, and this is the original, twelve minutes away.
A long afternoon glass, a first date, a Monday bottle deal $$
Tarbell's
Phoenix's longest-running chef-owned dining room, where Mark Tarbell has cooked the same honest, French-trained American food on Camelback Road since 1994, with a wine list that built the place; the dinner Scottsdale locals drive west for when they want a grown-up room and no scene.
A quiet anniversary dinner, wine people, a table for parents $$$
Beckett's Table
A chef-owned neighborhood dining room on Indian School Road that has cooked seasonal American comfort food, short ribs, pot pies, biscuits, since 2010 with an open kitchen, a walnut community table and a wine list its sommelier-owners run themselves; the Arcadia dinner locals keep for themselves.
A real dinner without a scene, short ribs, wine people $$$
Buck & Rider
The Valley's best casual seafood room, built in 2015 on a Camelback corner for Arcadia: a raw bar, hand-rolled sushi, fish flown in daily, a $2.50 oyster at happy hour and a patio that looks at the mountain, eleven minutes from Old Town.
Oysters at happy hour, a seafood dinner with a Camelback view $$$
Doughbird
Fox Restaurant Concepts' most useful idea, a dozen pizzas and a rotisserie turning chicken and prime rib under one roof at the Arcadia Gateway corner, ten minutes from Old Town; the family dinner that settles the pizza-versus-real-food argument without anyone driving far.
Families who cannot agree, a weeknight dinner, a patio in March $$
Ingo's Tasty Food
A single curved counter and a wrap-around patio a block north of the LGO corner, where the Arcadia restaurant family built the neighborhood's burger in 2013 on buns from its own bakery; a cheap, good lunch on the best restaurant block in Phoenix, twelve minutes from Old Town.
A burger and a frozen Greyhound after Camelback $$
Nook Kitchen
The neighborhood Italian-American that Arcadia keeps to itself: house pasta, a Neapolitan oven imported from Naples, an espresso-rubbed filet and a reverse happy hour that runs to 2 AM on weekends, on Indian School Road twelve minutes from Old Town.
A late pizza, a weeknight bolognese, a reverse happy hour $$
O.H.S.O. Brewery Arcadia
The 2011 original of the Valley's most dog-friendly brewery, backed right onto the Arizona Canal path at 48th and Indian School, with a misted patio, a water bar for dogs, spent-grain biscuits and a home-brewers' program still running; the best stop on a canal ride from Scottsdale, ten minutes from Old Town.
A canal-path beer with the dog, weekend brunch and a pint $$
Original ChopShop (Arcadia)
The Phoenix-born healthy counter's Arcadia room at 32nd Street and Campbell, where the protein bowls, chopped salads, cold-pressed juices and shakes are the same as at the Old Town original and the crowd is the neighborhood's gym traffic; only worth the drive when you are already on this side of 44th Street.
Breakfast before the Biltmore, a post-hike bowl, a quick lunch between Arcadia errands $$
Shemer Art Center
A Santa Fe-style house from Arcadia's first year, donated to the city in 1984 and run as a free gallery, art school and sculpture garden under Camelback Mountain; the quietest hour of culture you can have within fifteen minutes of Old Town.
A free hour after the Echo Canyon hike, local artists, a quiet garden $
Steak 44
The steakhouse the Mastro family opened after selling the Mastro's name, in a warren of rooms at 44th and Camelback with a hundred-seat sunken bar, in-house butchery and a Camelback view; the best prime steak dinner within ten minutes of Old Town that is not in Scottsdale.
A celebration dinner, a bar steak on a weeknight $$$$
The Henry
The restaurant Sam Fox built under his own headquarters in 2013, a big handsome all-day room at 44th and Camelback where Arcadia takes its meetings, its brunches and its first dates; the model for every Fox room in Scottsdale, ten minutes from Old Town.
A working breakfast, a big-group dinner, a Camelback view with a cocktail $$$
The Porch (Arcadia)
A big patio bar in a former Chinese restaurant at 40th Street and Indian School, the loud, young end of Arcadia's restaurant row: screens and a long bar by day, weekend brunch, and DJs after dark; worth knowing when you want the Old Town bar night without the Old Town bar prices.
A game on the patio, a weekend brunch, the under-35 bar night $$
The Vig Arcadia
The first Vig, the 2006 Arcadia tavern whose patio with a bocce court, Adirondack chairs and a weekend DJ became the template for the McCormick Ranch Vig and five others; a lawn, a burger and a beer on the neighborhood's southern corner, twelve minutes from Old Town.
Bocce and a beer, a lazy weekend brunch, dogs on the lawn $$
Zipps Sports Grill (Arcadia)
The Arcadia outpost of the Valley's own sports-bar chain, a brick room with 27 televisions in the Gaslight Square strip on Indian School Road, serving the same golden wings and cheap pitchers as the Old Town Zipps; worth it only when you are already west of 44th Street on a game day.
A game day west of the line, wings and a pitcher, a cheap table for eight $
The Biltmore & the Camelback Corridor
Phoenix’s money street: the 1929 Arizona Biltmore, the Wrigley Mansion on its hill, an open-air fashion mall, steakhouses, and the Phoenix Mountains Preserve with the Piestewa Peak summit trail behind it.
15–20 min from Old Town
Arizona Biltmore
The Valley's original grand resort, built of patterned concrete block in 1929 with Frank Lloyd Wright consulting, is a drink at the Wright Bar and a walk through the lobby away; it is the building every Scottsdale resort has been quoting for ninety years.
A cocktail in the lobby, architecture nerds, a splashy anniversary $$$$
Biltmore Fashion Park
The open-air mall Scottsdale's shopping centers were built to compete with: a 1963 garden mall at 24th and Camelback with Macy's, a Life Time club, a dozen restaurants including the first True Food Kitchen, and the Arizona Biltmore two minutes up the road.
A long lunch and a browse, the Capital Grille set, pre-Biltmore afternoon $$$
Dreamy Draw & the Phoenix Mountains Preserve
The back door to the Phoenix Mountains: a trailhead off the 51 with the 10.7-mile Charles M. Christiansen Trail 100 running east and west through the whole range, the Freedom Trail loop around Piestewa Peak, leashed dogs allowed, and a tenth of the crowd on the summit side.
A dog walk with a view, trail running, the hike when Piestewa's lots are full
Piestewa Peak Summit Trail
The Valley's second-most-climbed summit and the honest alternative to Camelback: 1,200 feet of gain in 1.2 miles of built stone steps to a 2,608-foot peak with a 360-degree view, twenty minutes from Old Town, with none of Echo Canyon's hand-over-hand and none of its parking fight.
A pre-dawn workout, Camelback's view without Camelback's scramble
The Gladly
The Phoenix room of Scottsdale chef Bernie Kantak, who invented the Original Chopped Salad at Cowboy Ciao and carried it here in 2013 along with a whiskey list past 350 bottles; the Camelback corridor's grown-up lunch and the bar to know in the Biltmore.
A business lunch, the chopped salad, a whiskey flight $$$
True Food Kitchen (Biltmore)
The first True Food Kitchen, opened at Biltmore Fashion Park on October 27, 2008, by Scottsdale restaurateur Sam Fox and the integrative-medicine doctor Andrew Weil; the chain is everywhere now, and the Kierland branch is closer, but this is the room where the idea was tested.
A guilt-free lunch, the kale salad, a vegetarian in the group $$
Wrigley Mansion
A 16,000-square-foot Spanish-Mediterranean house on a knoll above the Arizona Biltmore, built by William Wrigley Jr. for his wife, saved from the condo bulldozer by a Hormel heir in 1992, and open now for an hour-long tour, a glass at Jamie's Wine Bar or Christopher Gross's tasting menu.
Sunset drinks with a view, an anniversary dinner, a rainy-day tour $$$$
Central & Downtown Phoenix
The city’s museums, ballpark and arena: the Heard, the Phoenix Art Museum, the Diamondbacks and Suns, Roosevelt Row’s First Friday, the pizza everyone flies in for, and the bars and concert halls Scottsdale doesn’t have.
20–30 min from Old Town
Bacanora
The most talked-about restaurant in the metro is a small room on a scruffy stretch of Grand Avenue where everything comes off a mesquite fire, and its chef won the 2024 James Beard award for Best Chef: Southwest; nothing in Scottsdale cooks like this.
The one dinner you drive for $$$
Bitter & Twisted
The best cocktail bar in the metro by most national rankings, on the ground floor of the 1924 Luhrs Building in rooms that once housed Arizona's Prohibition enforcement office; a book-length drinks menu and a real kitchen, 25 minutes from Old Town and in a different league from Scottsdale's speakeasies.
Serious cocktails before a game or show $$$
Crescent Ballroom
The best mid-sized concert room in Arizona, in a brick 1917 garage a block off the light rail, with a scratch Mexican kitchen and a free lounge stage; it is where the touring bands Scottsdale never gets actually play.
A touring band, tacos and a late drink $$
Heard Museum
The best museum of Native American art in the country sits twenty minutes from Old Town, and an hour in its jewelry and katsina galleries will change what you buy, and what you pay, on Main Street that afternoon.
Before you buy anything on Main Street $$
Pizzeria Bianco
Chris Bianco's six pizzas have been called the best in America for twenty-five years by people who eat pizza for a living, and the room they come out of is a 1920s brick machine shop on a Victorian square; the line is part of it.
The Rosa, a weekday lunch, a pilgrimage $$
The Fry Bread House
The best-known Native American restaurant in the country, a Tohono O'odham family kitchen since 1992 that won a James Beard America's Classic and a place in the first Michelin Guide to the Southwest, serving fry bread tacos, red and green chile and posole from a small room on Seventh Avenue; the one meal in the Valley that is only possible here.
Fry bread tacos, a lunch with a story $
Arizona Capitol Museum
The 1901 territorial capitol, with its copper dome and Winged Victory weather vane, kept as a free museum of how Arizona governs itself, with the USS Arizona's silver service and the restored rooms where statehood was signed into law; the one stop that explains the government that overrules Scottsdale.
A free hour of Arizona history
Arizona Science Center
Four floors of hands-on science in Antoine Predock's 1997 concrete building, a five-story giant-screen theater and, since October 2025, the Dorrance DOME, an 8K LED planetarium with 194 seats; the one museum in the Valley a ten-year-old asks to go back to.
A 110-degree afternoon with kids $$$
Burton Barr Central Library
The best modern building in Phoenix and it is free: Will Bruder's five-story, 280,000-square-foot library of 1995, with a glass atrium the architect called the crystal canyon and a one-acre reading room on top; a half hour inside explains the desert architecture Scottsdale talks about.
Architecture, a cool hour, the solstice $
Changing Hands Phoenix
The Valley's best general bookstore, from the Tempe shop that has sold books since 1974, in a 2014 Phoenix location with a real bar in the middle of it; Scottsdale's bookstore is for mysteries, this one is for everything else, and the author events are the ones people drive across town for.
An author event, a rainy afternoon, a glass of wine with a book $$
Chase Field
Spring training ends in March and the real thing starts a week later, twenty-five minutes from Old Town, under a roof that closes in four and a half minutes; it is the only way to watch baseball in Arizona in July without suffering for it.
A summer night game, a Dodgers series, the pool $$$
Children's Museum of Phoenix
Three floors of climbing, building, splashing and pretend in a 1914 neoclassical school, built for children from babies to about ten; on a hot or wet day it is the single best indoor morning for small kids within thirty minutes of Scottsdale.
Toddlers to ten-year-olds, any weather $$
Cibo
The other great downtown pizza: a 2005 Neapolitan room in a restored 1913 brick bungalow with a tree-shaded front patio that Phoenix keeps voting the best in the city, and, unlike Pizzeria Bianco, it takes reservations.
A date, a patio in March, dessert crepes $$
Cobra Arcade Bar
Downtown Phoenix's arcade bar: a dark room of restored cabinets and a dozen pinball machines, cocktails with video-game names and a crowd that is there to play; the kind of bar Scottsdale does not do, and the right loud hour between dinner on Roosevelt Row and a late set.
A group night with quarters $$
Durant's
Scottsdale's steakhouses are newer, bigger and brighter; Durant's is the one with red flocked wallpaper, a 1950 bar, a back door through a working kitchen and seventy-five years of Phoenix deals cut in its booths, and it has not changed because it did not need to.
A martini, a prime rib, an anniversary $$$$
Encanto Park
The city park Phoenix built in the Depression and never improved upon: 222 acres of lawn and old trees around a 7.5-acre lagoon, with paddle boats, a 1948 carousel in a small-child amusement park, two golf courses and a pool, surrounded by the prettiest 1930s neighborhood in the Valley.
Small children, a picnic, a cheap round of golf $
Federal Pizza
A midcentury bank by Al Beadle, the architect Scottsdale's modernists revere, turned into a wood-fired pizzeria with a patio, a lunch deal and a pizza-and-a-bottle night; the building is the reason to cross the city line and the pizza is good enough that you will not mind.
Pizza in a landmark, a cheap Monday dinner $$
Gallo Blanco
A chef-run taco cantina in a historic downtown Phoenix neighborhood, with street tacos, a weekend brunch, a real vegetarian menu and a patio built for families; cheaper and more interesting than the Scottsdale cantinas it resembles, and 22 minutes from Old Town.
Tacos and brunch with the whole table $$
Hanny's
Downtown Phoenix's best-looking room: a 1947 International Style men's store, gutted and reopened as a bar with thin-crust pizza, classic cocktails and a kitchen that serves until late, two blocks from the arena; the pre-game and post-show dinner that Scottsdale visitors downtown keep landing in.
Dinner before a show or a game $$
Hotel San Carlos
The oldest continuously operating hotel in downtown Phoenix, an Italian Renaissance tower from 1928 with Hollywood names on the sidewalk and ghost stories upstairs; a place to walk through, have a drink in, or sleep in if you want downtown at a 1920s price.
Downtown history, a haunted night $$
Japanese Friendship Garden
A 3.5-acre stroll garden designed and built by craftsmen from Himeji, Phoenix's sister city, with a stone-and-water landscape, a tea house and more than 300 koi, on the edge of downtown; the quietest hour you will spend in the Valley, and the right size for it.
A slow hour, a tea ceremony, winter mornings $$
Lux Central
Phoenix's coffeehouse of record, with beans roasted in the back, a pastry case that fills all day, a bar that opens when the laptops close, and a crowd that is the city's creative class on any given morning; Scottsdale's coffee shops are quieter and smaller, and none of them is this.
A long breakfast, a laptop morning, a nightcap before Durant's $$
Matt's Big Breakfast
A short, scratch-cooked breakfast menu that has had a line out the door since 2004, in the original downtown room; worth the drive on a morning you are already headed to the museums or a Diamondbacks day game, and the standard every Scottsdale breakfast place is measured against.
Breakfast before a downtown day $$
Melrose District
A mile of Seventh Avenue lined with midcentury storefronts full of vintage furniture, clothes and oddities, with the Fry Bread House, a converted-gas-station coffeehouse and Phoenix's gay bars along it; the antiques hunt Scottsdale's shops price out of reach, twenty minutes west.
A Saturday of vintage shopping and lunch $$
Mortgage Matchup Center (formerly Footprint Center)
The Suns, the Mercury and every arena-sized concert tour that comes through Arizona play in this 1992 building two blocks from the ballpark; Scottsdale has nothing bigger than a theater, so when the show is big, this is where you drive.
A Suns game, a Mercury game, an arena tour $$$
Orpheum Theatre
The only 1920s vaudeville palace left in the Valley, a Spanish Baroque room with a painted sky for a ceiling and 1,364 seats, where the touring Broadway, comedy and concert bills Scottsdale's halls are too small for play; worth the drive for the building alone.
A touring show in a room worth looking at $$$
Phoenix Art Museum
The Valley's one encyclopedic art museum, with a Monet, a Kusama infinity room, a fashion collection and the Western paintings Scottsdale's galleries descend from, and it costs nothing on Wednesday evenings.
A Wednesday evening, a rainy day, the Kusama room $$
Phoenix Symphony Hall
The metro's only full-size orchestra hall, home to the Phoenix Symphony, Ballet Arizona and Arizona Opera, 25 minutes from Old Town; Scottsdale has fine small theaters, but a symphony, a Nutcracker or an opera happens here.
The Symphony, the Nutcracker, an opera $$$
Roosevelt Row & First Friday
Scottsdale's ArtWalk is a Thursday stroll past galleries selling finished art; Roosevelt Row is where the art gets made, a mural-covered half mile of studios, bars and bungalows that comes alive on the first Friday of the month, with the caveat that the big street market is on hold.
First Friday evening, murals by daylight, a bar crawl $
Rosson House & Heritage Square
The only block of territorial Phoenix left standing, anchored by an 1895 Queen Anne mansion you tour room by room, with Pizzeria Bianco in the machine shop next door; the one place downtown where a Scottsdale visitor can see what the Valley looked like before Scottsdale existed.
History before pizza, a downtown hour $$
Tacos Chiwas
The Valley's best-loved taqueria, cooking the food of Chihuahua rather than Sonora: tacos on fresh corn tortillas, gorditas split and stuffed, burritos in thin flour tortillas, montados; a cheap, fast lunch twenty minutes west of Old Town that is better than anything comparable in Scottsdale.
A cheap lunch, tacos worth the drive $
The Churchill
A courtyard of nineteen shipping containers at the edge of Roosevelt Row, each holding a small local bar, kitchen or shop, with misters and fans over the patio: the easiest place downtown for a group that cannot agree on dinner, and the natural end of a First Friday.
A group with different tastes, a First Friday, a Suns pre-game $$
The Nash
A real jazz room, nonprofit and all ages, named for a Phoenix-born drummer and programmed nearly 300 nights a year on Roosevelt Row; Scottsdale's jazz lives in two speakeasies, and this is where the musicians who play them go to play for each other.
A late set after dinner downtown $$
The Van Buren
The Valley's best mid-size rock room, about 1,800 standing in a restored 1930 Phoenix Motor Company showroom with a bowstring-truss roof, booking the touring acts that skip Scottsdale entirely; the show is the reason, and the building is the bonus.
A touring band you would otherwise miss $$
Valley Bar
A 250-capacity music hall, a cocktail lounge named for a governor and a billiards room, all in the basement of a 1940s office building reached through an alley off Central: the touring indie acts Scottsdale's rooms never book, in the Valley's best small venue, with a bar that stays open after the show.
A touring band, a late night downtown, a free Rose Room show $$
Welcome Diner
A scratch-cooked diner with biscuits, fried chicken and a cocktail list, grown from a 200-square-foot prefab diner into a bright corner building in the Garfield neighborhood east of Roosevelt Row; the brunch that downtown Phoenix locals pick, and nothing like a Scottsdale brunch.
Brunch, a biscuit, happy hour on the patio $$
Windsor & Churn
The neighborhood tavern the Postino people built for the streets around Central and Camelback: a shaded backyard patio, American comfort food, cheap drinks until five, and an ice-cream and cookie counter attached; the Phoenix equivalent of a Scottsdale local's Tuesday, without the valet.
Patio dinner, weekend brunch, ice cream after $$
North Phoenix & Desert Ridge
Across the Tatum line from Kierland: the Musical Instrument Museum, Mayo Clinic, a big resort with a lazy river, two outdoor shopping districts and the Phoenix Sonoran Preserve trailheads.
15–25 min from North Scottsdale · 35 from Old Town
Musical Instrument Museum
The best museum in the Valley and one of the best of its kind anywhere: a 200,000-square-foot building where more than 7,500 instruments from every country on earth play through your headphones as you walk up to them, with a 299-seat theater that books world-class musicians most nights.
A whole day indoors, music people, kids who can hit things, summer afternoons $$$
Desert Ridge Marketplace
Not a destination from Old Town, but the useful center for anyone staying in Kierland, the Princess or the JW Marriott: a 1.2-million-square-foot open-air complex with the big-box errands on the outside, a walkable restaurant-and-cinema District in the middle, a splash pad for the kids and free live music on winter weekends.
A movie and a casual dinner, errands from a North Scottsdale resort, kids on a hot evening $$
High Street
A four-block urban street with restaurants, bars, apartments and offices stacked on it, opened in 2008 as the first piece of a downtown for north Phoenix that the recession never finished; worth knowing as the grown-up dinner street near the Desert Ridge and Kierland resorts rather than as a trip from Old Town.
Dinner near the JW Marriott, a first-Saturday car show, the Sunday farmers market $$$
JW Marriott Phoenix Desert Ridge
The biggest resort in Arizona sits a mile across the Scottsdale line in Desert Ridge: 950 rooms on 316 acres, a 140,000-square-foot water park with a lazy river, two Wildfire golf courses by Palmer and Faldo, a 28,000-square-foot spa and seventeen pickleball courts; the Scottsdale-style resort week for families who want the pool to be the point.
Families with a pool-first agenda, a golf buddies' trip, convention week $$$$
Ocean Prime
The one white-tablecloth dinner within five minutes of the JW Marriott Desert Ridge: Cameron Mitchell's polished steak-and-seafood house on High Street, with a shellfish tower that arrives smoking, private-label Cape Cod oysters, a weekday lounge happy hour that halves the bill, and a Sunday surf-and-turf menu.
A resort-week anniversary dinner, happy hour oysters, the Sunday surf and turf $$$$
Phoenix Sonoran Preserve (Apache Wash Trailhead)
Phoenix's answer to the McDowell Sonoran Preserve, newer and emptier: more than 9,600 acres of rolling Sonoran Desert north of Desert Ridge with 36 miles of trail from three trailheads, and at Apache Wash a 5.6-mile loop, a half-mile climb to a hilltop view and a flat paved paseo, all with leashed dogs and mountain bikes welcome and a lot that is never full.
A mountain-bike loop, a dog hike, the trailhead when Brown's Ranch is full
Reach 11 Sports Complex
Only because your kid's bracket sent you: 18 regulation soccer fields and four baseball diamonds on the Central Arizona Project canal corridor, the city of Phoenix's dedicated tournament facility and the overflow venue for the club tournaments that fill North Scottsdale's fields every cool-season weekend.
Tournament parents, a canal-side walk between games
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How to use this section
Drive times are from Old Town with no traffic and are optimistic on a Friday afternoon; add ten minutes from the resorts on the Camelback corridor and twenty from North Scottsdale for anything south or west. The day-trips note covers Sedona, Tucson and the places further than an hour; the tours hub has the guided versions. For what is inside the city line, start with the neighborhood guides, the restaurants and the parks and hikes.
182 of 182 places are open; the rest are kept as history. Each guide carries the date its facts were last checked.