What was Big Surf?
In the 1960s a Phoenix engineer named Phil Dexter spent years making waves in his backyard. His models, and then a big test tank in an old pool hall on Van Buren, convinced Clairol to pay for a full-size version. The pitch, as he told it: “They make waves in hair, why can’t they make waves?” The result opened on October 24, 1969, on McClintock Drive in Tempe. It was Big Surf, a 2.5-acre lagoon where fifteen underwater gates threw a five-foot wave about once a minute. The American Society of Mechanical Engineers later called it the first inland surfing facility in North America.
For fifty years it was where the Valley went to swim in waves, fifteen minutes south of Old Town Scottsdale. Clairol sold it in 1971 to an El Paso family who kept it to the end. Slides came in 1979, Pink Floyd played there in 1972, and teenagers danced at its Rock Hop disco in the late 1970s. In 2013 it became the first water park named a national engineering landmark.
Its last season was 2019. It didn’t open in 2020, never reopened, and in 2022 the site sold for $49.97 million and was demolished for warehouses.
The machine and the park
How the wave worked. Pumps filled a reservoir behind fifteen gates at the lagoon’s deep end. When the gates opened, the water rushed out and broke over a reef-like baffle as one spilling wave, five feet at first. In the 1990s the pool was cut down and its sand beach replaced with concrete, and the waves dropped to about three feet. The lagoon held 3.8 million gallons at opening and about 2.5 million later.
Surf culture in the desert. Fred Hemmings, the Hawaiian champion, came to the opening, and for twenty years Big Surf held surf contests and dawn and dusk sessions for boards. Liability ended most of that by the early 1990s, and it became a family water park with slides, lounge chairs and bodyboards.
Close calls and the end. In 2009 it was reported to be closing for good after Labor Day. It came back in 2010 under Inland Oceans, the owning family’s company. The 2019 season was the last. The park didn’t open during the 2020 pandemic, hosted a drive-in movie and a couple of concerts in its parking lot, and in February 2022 auctioned off its boards and equipment. That April more than thirty bidders competed for the 35.5-acre site, and Overton Moore Properties bought it.
What’s there now
Nextwave Tempe, three industrial buildings totaling about 689,000 square feet, built by Overton Moore and Invesco from 2025. Nothing marks the wave pool.
The sources, and the disagreements
Main sources: Phoenix Magazine’s “Making Waves” (2015), the best account of Dexter and Clairol; the ASME landmark nomination and the Engineering and Technology History Wiki for the machine; Wave Pool Magazine for the cost; Wikipedia; and KJZZ and Phoenix New Times for the sale, demolition and redevelopment.
Where they disagree:
- Closing year. The last open season was 2019; New Times wrote that it “closed in March 2020.” Both describe a park that never reopened after 2019.
- Dexter’s background. A Del Webb construction manager (Phoenix Magazine) or a petroleum engineer (Wave Pool Magazine).
- The backyard models. 1964 (KJZZ) or 1966 (Wave Pool Magazine).
- “First.” Big Surf is called America’s first wave pool; ASME’s wording, the first inland surfing facility in North America, is safer.
- Films. North Shore is set at a Tempe wave pool but was filmed in Palm Springs. Lists credit Big Surf with Just One of the Guys (1985) and Storm of the Century (1999); we haven’t confirmed either.
Why it matters
Big Surf was a Valley invention and a first: inland surfing, in a desert, in 1969. The surf parks built around the world since are its descendants in idea, if not in machinery. It was also a place Scottsdale kids spent summers. It closed for the same reason as so many others in this archive: by 2022 the land was worth more than the business on it.