What was the first Out of Africa?
Before it was a Camp Verde safari park, Out of Africa was a big-cat park thirty-five minutes east of Scottsdale. Dean and Prayeri Harrison had spent years raising big cats from cubs in California and Oregon, and in 1988 they opened a park on 16 acres leased from the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation, off the Beeline Highway beside Fountain Hills. One account says it opened as Tigerville USA.
It grew into one of the Valley’s favorite day trips. By 2004 it held about 300 animals, tigers, lions and giraffes among them, on a site it had outgrown. The Harrisons were already planning a move when the lease ran into trouble.
In May 2004, after talks on a longer lease broke down, the Nation gave the park until June 30 to leave and return the land to its natural condition. The animals went north, and Out of Africa reopened in May 2005 on 104 acres in Camp Verde, where it’s still open.
The lease and the move
The land. The park advertised itself as Fountain Hills, and its founders’ history still says it “was formed in Fountain Hills in 1988.” The East Valley Tribune and Journal AZ both place it on the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation, east of Scottsdale, off the Beeline Highway. Like Beeline Dragway and the Scottsdale 6 Drive-In on Salt River land, it was a business on a tribal lease.
The end. The Tribune reported in May 2004 that the owners had decided to move to a bigger site. When the lease talks failed, the Nation served its eviction notice on May 5, with a June 30 deadline and a requirement to restore the land. The Nation said the park hadn’t submitted the exit and cleanup plans it needed; the park disputed that. The Nation said it would use the 16 acres for an RV park.
Camp Verde. The Harrisons and a new partner, Bill Jump, rebuilt on 104 acres in the Mingus Mountain foothills, and the new park opened in May 2005, sixteen years after the first. It’s still running. Monsoon flooding damaged more than 50 acres in July 2026 and shut it for about ten days, with the animals safe, before a partial reopening on August 1.
The sources, and the gaps
Main sources: the park’s own history of its founders; the East Valley Tribune’s May 11, 2004 story on the eviction; Indianz.com’s 2004 report of the RV-park plan; Journal AZ’s 2018 profile; and azfamily, FOX 10 and ABC15 on the 2026 flood.
What’s unsettled:
- The closing date. The eviction deadline was June 30, 2004, and the park counts “16 years” at the first site, which would run into 2005. We use 2004, the year the park had to leave.
- The exact site. No source we’ve found gives an address or a parcel. Our map point is approximate.
- Tigerville USA. One source says the park opened under that name; the park’s own history doesn’t use it.
- What’s there now. The Nation planned an RV park, but we haven’t confirmed whether Eagle View RV Resort, the Nation’s RV park by Fountain Hills, is on the same land.
Why it matters
For sixteen years Out of Africa was the big-cat park closest to Scottsdale. It belongs with the other attractions that ran on tribal land at the edge of the Valley, whose leases ended when the land’s owners decided to use it themselves.