What is the Greening of the Fountain?
Chicago dyes a river. Fountain Hills dyes the sky. At noon on March 17, crews feed several 55-gallon drums of food coloring into the pump house at Fountain Park, and when the hour strikes the town’s fountain, the tallest in the United States at up to 560 feet, throws a column of emerald green over the lake and the Avenue of the Fountains for its usual fifteen minutes. After dark it is lit green. There is no event attached to the greening itself, no ticket and no stage; the town says so on its own notice. People stand on the grass and watch water turn a color.
It started as a bet. In 1978, by the town’s telling, a young homebuilder wagered friends at a local tavern that they would dye the fountain green on St. Patrick’s Day and water-ski around it, with a $250 forfeit for anyone who did not show. In March 1979 they did it; one of the bettors never managed to get up on his skis. The dye job has been repeated every year since: an invented tradition by any honest accounting, a stunt that a town founded on a marketing stunt adopted as liturgy.
Around it the Town of Fountain Hills has built the Irish Fountain Fest, a free festival in the park on the Saturday before St. Patrick’s Day, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., with pipe bands, Celtic rock, a kids’ zone, food trucks and a beer garden, and the fountain greened at noon and 4. The 2026 fest was Saturday, March 14, and the town said the 2025 edition drew more than 10,000. It is thirty minutes from Old Town over Shea, and it is the only thing in March that gets a Scottsdale resident to Fountain Hills on purpose.
Two ways to see it
The fest, Saturday. Fountain Park, 12925 N Saguaro Boulevard. The festival spreads over the lawn between the Avenue and the lake. Music runs from 11; the 2026 lineup had the Kilted Spirit Band, the Mesa Caledonian Pipe Band and Dancers at 2, and the Celtic rock band Traveler from 3. The kids’ zone, with rock walls, inflatables, crafts and face painting, is free. Food trucks each carry an Irish item, corned beef sliders to shepherd’s pie in a bread bowl, and the Crescent Crown beer garden sells $8 tickets for Guinness and the rest, wristband and ID required, no outside alcohol. The fountain goes green at noon and again at 4.
Parking is free and the town is honest that it fills. Come in on Shea, turn north on Palisades and use the Town Hall and library lots, or park on the El Lago side of the lake for the far-shore view with the McDowells behind the column, which is the photograph. Sunscreen, a hat and a chair; mid-March in the hills is 75 and bright.
The greening, March 17. Drive out for noon on the day itself: a few hundred locals on the grass, the fountain at full green and nothing to buy. The Avenue’s restaurants and Grapeables, the wine bar that pours green beer and wine that day, make lunch. The fountain is wind-sensitive: the town shuts it down in gusts, sometimes mid-cycle, so check the webcam at experiencefountainhills.org before leaving Scottsdale and give yourself the 1 p.m. cycle as a fallback.
Which one. Families and anyone who wants the full day take the Saturday; adults who want the ritual take the 17th. The Fountain Festival art fair is two weekends earlier on the Avenue, and our quiet calendar notes that Scottsdale itself marks St. Patrick’s Day commercially in Old Town, with no civic event, which is one more reason to drive east.
A stunt that became a tradition
Fountain Hills exists because of a sales device. Robert McCulloch, the chainsaw manufacturer who had moved London Bridge to Lake Havasu, built the fountain in 1970 so that buyers touring his new town would see something from every lot. At 560 feet it was the tallest fountain in the world. Eight years later a few residents decided it would look better green, and the town, which did not incorporate until 1989, inherited the gag along with the fountain.
What makes it a tradition rather than a prank is the repetition. The town says the greening has happened every St. Patrick’s Day since 1979, more than 45 years, and it has become the one date on which Fountain Hills is the center of the Valley’s attention, with every Phoenix station sending a camera. The Irish Fountain Fest is newer. The town’s recreation manager, Ryan Preston, put its age at “almost 20 years” in 2025, which places its start in the mid-2000s; we could not find the first year. In 2026 it added a larger beer garden and a non-alcoholic Guinness, which tells you who is coming.
We label this one an invented tradition without any disrespect. Every St. Patrick’s Day ritual in America is an invention of some kind, and this one is honest about its origin: a bet, a tavern, some water skis. The town retells the story on its own site, down to the man who could not get up on his skis.
Why Scottsdale should care
Scottsdale has no civic St. Patrick’s Day. Old Town’s bars do the holiday the way bars do, and the city’s March belongs to spring training. Fountain Hills, thirty minutes east, has spent nearly half a century turning the tallest fountain in the country green at noon because someone once said they would. The 17th on a weekday, with a few hundred neighbors on the grass and the column going up against the McDowells, is the best free quarter hour in the East Valley that month. Check the wind, leave by 11:15, and bring somebody who has not seen it.