What it is
The Salt River through Tempe was a dry wash with a sand-and-gravel bed for most of the twentieth century, since the dams upstream took its water for the canals. In 1999 the city put two inflatable dams across the riverbed, filled the two miles between them with Colorado River water from the Central Arizona Project, and called it Tempe Town Lake. It is 224 acres of water, about sixteen feet deep on average, with a paved path all the way around, a row of office towers and apartments on the north bank, and the Mill Avenue bridges, one from 1931 and one from 1994, crossing the middle of it.
Tempe Beach Park is older than the lake. The city built it in 1931 as a riverside park with a public pool, and rebuilt it in 1999 as the lake’s front porch: the boat-rental concession, a splash playground, a stage and lawn for festivals, and the best view of the bridges and the butte with the A on it. When Tempe says an event is “at the lake,” it means here.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Because Scottsdale has no open water. The Greenbelt has its ponds and the resorts have their pools, but the nearest place to put a kayak in and paddle for an hour without a forty-minute drive to a reservoir is this lake, eighteen minutes down the road. It is also where Scottsdale has always gone for the Fourth of July, since the city does not shoot its own fireworks, and it is the far end of the Indian Bend Wash path, which means a cyclist can leave McCormick Ranch and arrive at the north shore without crossing a road.
The practical version
Scottsdale Road south to the 202, west one exit, off at Mill Avenue or Priest to Rio Salado Parkway. Downtown garages charge; the north-shore lots are often free. The lake is open from early morning to midnight. Rentals at the beach park are by the hour and the pedal boats and ten-person electric “donut” boats are the family answer; kayaks and paddleboards are the adult one. Swimming is prohibited. From May through September go at sunrise and be off the water by nine.
When to go
October through April is the season: the loop at any hour, the rentals all afternoon, and most of Tempe’s festival calendar on the beach-park lawn. November brings Ironman Arizona, when the swimmers go into the lake at dawn and the paths close for the bike and run courses; a good day to watch and a bad day to ride. Fourth of July is the biggest single night of the year here and the fireworks are the Valley’s best, with the butte and the bridges as the backdrop; arrive by late afternoon or watch from the north shore. Summer mornings are fine until about nine; the water does not cool the air much and the path has long stretches without shade.
What to do
- Walk or ride the loop. The full loop over both Mill Avenue bridges and back by the arts-center pedestrian bridge is about five miles of flat pavement. The short loop, crossing at the arts center only, is a mile and a half. Dawn and dusk are the hours, for the light and the temperature.
- Get on the water. Boat Rentals of America runs the concession from the beach park with pedal boats, kayaks, stand-up paddleboards and the electric donut boats that seat ten and go about as fast as a brisk walk. Mornings are calmer; the afternoon westerly puts a chop on the lake.
- Watch the trains. The Union Pacific bridge at the west end still carries freight, and the rowing clubs practice under it in the early morning.
- The butte. Hayden Butte is the hill with the A directly behind the beach park; the climb is twenty minutes and the view back over the lake is the reason.
With kids
The splash playground at the east end of the beach park is the warm-month answer, free and shaded. A pedal boat holds a family. The Tempe Center for the Arts on the west end has a free gallery. Our Scottsdale with kids note treats the lake as the alternative to a resort pool on the day the pool gets old.
The neighborhood
Mill Avenue is a two-minute walk south, uphill, which is where lunch is; Pedal Haus at 7th Street is the nearest patio with its own beer.
The story
Tempe’s downtown grew up on a river crossing: Charles Hayden’s ferry and flour mill at the foot of the butte, from the 1870s, were there because the Salt River could be crossed at this spot. Then Roosevelt Dam and the ones after it, from 1911 on, took the river’s water into the canals and left Tempe with a dry wash a quarter mile wide and a sand-and-gravel operation in it. The idea of putting water back dates to an ASU architecture studio in the 1960s, the Rio Salado Project, which imagined a greenbelt the length of the Valley. Voters rejected the county-wide version in 1987. Tempe went ahead alone, and the lake filled in the summer of 1999.
It has had one bad night. On July 20, 2010, one of the inflatable rubber bladders that formed the western dam split in the heat, and nearly a billion gallons of lake went down the riverbed toward Phoenix in a matter of hours. The city refilled it that October and, in 2016, replaced the rubber with a dam of seven steel gates downstream, built to last longer than the bladders’ warranty. In 2020 a freight train derailed on the rail bridge and burned, closing the beach park and the boat concession for the better part of a year. The lake came through both, and the office towers and apartments that now line the north bank were built on the bet that it would.
The Scottsdale connection
The lake is where the Indian Bend Wash ends. The flood-control greenbelt that Scottsdale built in the 1970s instead of a concrete channel drains into the Salt River here, and the paved path that runs its length from Shea Boulevard comes down the east side of Tempe to the north shore. Our Greenbelt cycling note has the route; it is the one long ride in the Valley with no traffic on it. The Fourth of July is the other tie: for most of Scottsdale’s history, the fireworks its residents watched were these.
Getting there
Scottsdale Road south across McKellips to the westbound 202, one exit to Priest Drive or Mill Avenue, then north to Rio Salado Parkway. The Valley Metro light rail stops at Mill Avenue and Third Street, a five-minute walk uphill from the beach park, which makes this one of the few places on this site you can reach from Sky Harbor without a car. Our getting around note covers the rail and the 101.