What it is
Bartlett Lake is the Verde River stopped. In 1936 the Bureau of Reclamation began a dam in the hills northeast of Carefree, a concrete multiple-arch structure of ten arches and nine buttresses, 287 feet high when it was finished in 1939. The Salt River Project paid most of the bill and still operates it; a surveyor named Bill Bartlett gave it his name. Behind it the river backs up into a long basin of saguaro-covered mountains, and at full pool the lake covers roughly 2,700 acres, which makes it the second-largest lake near Phoenix after Lake Pleasant and about two and a half times the size of Saguaro. The dam was raised 21.5 feet in the mid-1990s for safety and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2017.
The paved road ends at the marina, where the rentals, the fuel dock and a small restaurant are. North from there, on North Lake Road, the Forest Service sites run along the western shore: Rattlesnake Cove, the swimming beach, with 41 ramadas, stairs to the water and a no-motor rule; Jojoba, a boating site; Yellow Cliffs, a day-use area and boat launch under the cliffs that name it; SB Cove and Bartlett Flat, where you can park on the shoreline when the water is low. Riverside Campground, below the dam on the river, is closed at this writing. The lake is open all year; the water level is not constant, and a spring full pool can be a long sandy walk from the ramadas by autumn.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Because Scottsdale has pools and no water. Bartlett is the nearest lake you can swim in, boat on and sit beside, an hour from Old Town on paved road, and it is far emptier than the Salt River lakes to the east on any weekday. It is also the dark-sky night our stargazing note sends you to, and the drive out Bartlett Dam Road, with Four Peaks ahead and the Verde valley opening below, is one of the best hours of desert within reach of a resort.
The practical version
Scottsdale or Pima Road north to Cave Creek Road, east through Carefree about seven miles, right on Bartlett Dam Road at the ranger station, thirteen miles to the lake. Buy the Tonto pass at the ranger station. Marina daily nine to five. Day-use sites six in the morning to ten at night. Bring everything, including water; there is none to drink at the sites, and glass is banned.
When to go
October and April are the lake’s two perfect months: water you can swim in, air you can sit in, and the Phoenix boat crowd elsewhere. Spring after a wet winter is the full-pool season, when the Verde is running, the coves are brimming and the marina’s rentals are at their best; this is also the busiest season on weekends, when the day-use lots fill by mid-morning and boat launching can queue. Summer is a boat and early-morning proposition: on the water by eight, off by noon, and the shoreline is for people with canopies and coolers. Winter is the anglers’ season, cold water and quiet coves, and the dam area below the lake is a good birding stretch of cottonwood and willow.
The level is the variable. SRP draws the lake down for irrigation through summer and fall, and a dry winter can leave the beach a long way from the ramadas. Check before you promise a swim.
What to do
- Swim at Rattlesnake Cove. The sandy slope is gradual, the stairs make it easy, and no motors are allowed inside the cove, which is why families choose it. Forty-one ramadas with tables and grills; claim one early. The fishing dock is closed for construction at this writing.
- Rent a pontoon. The marina’s 20-footers seat eight and are the right boat for a day of coves; book ahead. Kayaks and paddleboards for the shoreline, jet skis through the marina’s on-site partner.
- Drive the shore. North Lake Road is paved to Yellow Cliffs and good dirt beyond to Bartlett Flat, where you can park at the water when the lake is down. Travel on the lake itself is counterclockwise and the northern end is closed to waterskiing.
- Fish. Smallmouth, largemouth, flathead catfish and carp; the state-record smallmouth came out of here in 1977 and the Fish City project near Bartlett Flat is where fish habitat has been built.
- Stay for dark. The basin is one of the darkest skies an hour from Scottsdale.
With kids
Rattlesnake Cove is the answer: shallow water, no boats, tables and shade. Bring more water and shade than seems reasonable, and shoes for the rocks. The Cove restaurant at the marina handles lunch when the cooler runs out. Our desert wildlife guide will tell you what the lizards are.
The story
The Verde was the last of the Salt River Project’s rivers to be dammed. The Salt had Roosevelt Dam by 1911 and three more by 1930; the Verde, which joins it just above the Valley, ran free until the 1930s, when SRP and the federal government agreed to a storage dam in the hills north of what would become Carefree. Reclamation chose a multiple-arch design, thinner and lighter than a gravity dam and cheaper in concrete, and built it in about a thousand days between 1936 and 1939, paying four-fifths of the cost from SRP’s water users and the rest from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The crews lived in camps on the river and drank in Cave Creek, where Johnny Walker opened the Corral Bar in 1935 to serve them; it is Harold’s today. Horseshoe Dam, upstream, followed a few years later to add more storage. In the 1990s a federal dam-safety program raised Bartlett 21.5 feet and added a fuse-plug spillway; the work finished in 1996. Reclamation has studied raising it again to replace storage lost to silt at Horseshoe, a plan that has been argued over for years.
The Scottsdale connection
Scottsdale’s water comes partly from this lake: the city takes Central Arizona Project water and SRP water, and SRP’s share is the Salt and the Verde stored behind these dams and sent down the canals that our Hohokam and canal notes trace through the south of the city. More immediately, Bartlett is the north’s lake the way Saguaro is the east’s. The Cave Creek saloons have been the lake’s gateway since the dam crews, Bartlett Dam Road is a classic motorcycle run from Scottsdale on Saturday mornings, and the far north Scottsdale neighborhoods along Pima Road treat the lake as a 40-minute backyard. Our Salt River note covers the other direction.
Getting there
Pima Road north from the 101 for about twelve miles to Cave Creek Road, east on Cave Creek Road about four miles to the Bartlett Dam Road turnoff and the Cave Creek Ranger Station, then thirteen paved miles east and down to the lake; the road forks at a stop sign near the end, with the marina straight ahead and North Lake Road, for Rattlesnake Cove and the shoreline sites, to the left. From Old Town, Scottsdale Road north through Carefree to Cave Creek Road is the alternative. An hour either way with no traffic, and there is no fuel after Carefree.