What it is
The Phoenix Zoo sits in the red buttes of Papago Park on Scottsdale’s southern line, 125 acres of lagoons and desert laid out as four long trails, with about 3,000 animals and the standing claim to be the largest privately owned nonprofit zoo in the United States. It opened on November 21, 1962, as the Maytag Zoo, the project of Robert Maytag of the appliance family, who put together the Arizona Zoological Society and the money and then died a few months before the gates opened; the name changed to Phoenix Zoo the next year and the society became the Arizona Center for Nature Conservation, which still runs it without a cent of city operating money.
The trails are the organizing idea. The Africa Trail has the giraffes and their feeding deck, the lions, the rhinos and the savanna. The Tropics Trail has the Komodo dragons in the Land of the Dragons, the Monkey Village walk-through and the shade. The Arizona Trail is the one visitors skip and should not: the desert’s own animals, the javelina, the mountain lion, the Mexican wolves, the animals you were hoping to see on the hike and did not. The Children’s Trail has the farm, the splash pad and the carousel. Stingray Bay, a touch tank of cownose and southern rays, sits near the entrance and absorbs children for as long as you let it.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Because Scottsdale does not have a zoo, OdySea is an aquarium, and the Phoenix Zoo is twelve minutes from Old Town inside Papago Park, sharing a parking lot with the Desert Botanical Garden. For a family on its second or third day, when the pool has worn thin and the desert has been seen, this is the morning. It is also, every December, ZooLights.
The practical version
Twelve minutes from Old Town down Scottsdale Road and Galvin Parkway. Free parking, timed tickets online, three hours at a child’s pace. Open daily at nine in the cool months, at seven in summer with an early close, and shut on Christmas Day. Our Scottsdale with kids note has the two-day Papago plan.
When to go
October through April mornings, at opening. The animals are active in the first two hours, the school groups arrive around ten, and by noon on a warm day the big cats are asleep. Weekdays are quieter than any weekend; the spring-training weeks in March are the busiest the zoo gets outside December.
Summer is a seven-o’clock errand. The zoo opens early and closes by early afternoon from June through August, and the first ninety minutes are genuinely pleasant, with the giraffes and the elephants out and the misters running. Think of it the way our summer resort playbook thinks of every outdoor errand in July: done by eleven.
December is ZooLights, the zoo’s annual light show since 1991, which fills the trails and the lake with millions of lights on evenings from late November through the holidays. It sells out on the weekends before Christmas; the holiday season note pairs it with the Botanical Garden’s luminarias as the two December nights to book first.
The trails, in order
- Africa Trail. First, for the giraffe feeding and the animals before they retreat to shade.
- Tropics Trail. The Komodo dragons, Monkey Village, the orangutans, and the trees; do it as the sun gets high.
- Stingray Bay. Near the entrance; the touch tank is the single best thing for a child under eight.
- Arizona Trail. The desert’s own animals, and the one trail with an idea behind it. Last, when the kids are tired and the javelina are worth a sit.
- Children’s Trail. The farm, the splash pad and the carousel; the reward.
With kids
The whole place is built for them, from the stroller-grade paths to the splash pad. Rent a wagon at the gate for anyone under six. The giraffe feeding is a small extra charge and worth it. The tram runs in the cool months and is a good way to get a tired four-year-old from the far end of the Africa Trail back to the car.
The story
Papago Park had been a federal bass hatchery in the 1930s and a prisoner-of-war camp in the 1940s before the state sold a large piece of it to Phoenix in the 1950s, and when Robert Maytag, grandson of the washing-machine founder, began organizing a zoo for the fast-growing city in 1961, the hatchery ponds were the obvious site. He formed the Arizona Zoological Society, raised the money privately and brought the first animals in, then died in 1962, months before the opening. The Maytag Zoo opened that November without him; the name became the Phoenix Zoo the following year, and the society became what is now the Arizona Center for Nature Conservation. The zoo has never taken city operating funds, which is the basis of its claim to be the largest privately owned nonprofit zoo in the country.
Its place in conservation history came almost immediately. The Arabian oryx, a white antelope of the Arabian deserts, had been hunted nearly to extinction by the early 1960s, and a handful of the last animals, caught in the wild and gathered from private collections, were sent to Phoenix because the climate matched. The zoo bred them into what became known as the world herd, and from 1982 oryx descended from the Phoenix animals were returned to the wild in Oman and later elsewhere in the Gulf. It remains the textbook case of a zoo saving a species, and the oryx are still here on the Arizona Trail’s edge.
The exhibits grew in the way of a well-run American zoo: Monkey Village in 2004, Stingray Bay in 2006, the Komodo dragons in 2009, and a long run of trail rebuilds, with a quarantine and rescue center the organization is fundraising for now. ZooLights, begun in 1991, became the money-maker and the Valley’s second December institution.
The Scottsdale connection
The zoo sits inside Papago Park, which is technically Phoenix and Tempe but sits under South Scottsdale closely enough that our park page claims it. Scottsdale’s own answer to a zoo is OdySea Aquarium and Butterfly Wonderland on the Salt River reservation, which are fine and indoors; the Phoenix Zoo is the one with a herd of giraffes. Our museums and attractions note puts the two side by side.
Getting there
Scottsdale Road south to McDowell Road, where it becomes Galvin Parkway inside Papago Park; the zoo entrance is on the left past the Desert Botanical Garden, with the big free lot ahead of you. About twelve minutes from Old Town. From the Camelback corridor take 64th Street south to McDowell. The Valley Metro bus on McDowell leaves a long walk, so this is a car or rideshare trip; our getting around note has the math.