What it means
The Crosscut is the canal that runs down Scottsdale’s western edge, roughly along the line with Phoenix, from the Arizona Canal south through Papago to the Grand Canal in Tempe. It is short, straight and concrete-lined, and for most of its length it is somebody’s back fence.
Locals rarely mean the water. “Take the Crosscut” is bike-and-run talk for the paved path on its bank, the car-free route from south Scottsdale into Papago Park’s red buttes and on to Mill Avenue. You will hear it from cyclists planning a loop, from parents pushing strollers toward the zoo fence, and occasionally from someone at Salt River Project who means the canal and its power plant.
The ride itself, with parking, shade and the loop that ties it to the Greenbelt, is in the Crosscut Canal Path guide. This page is about the word and the waterway.
Where you’ll meet it
Bike maps and the Arizona Canal path junction near 64th Street and Indian School Road, the trails around Hole in the Rock, Salt River Project history, and real estate listings in South Scottsdale that boast of “canal access.”
Where the word came from
The name is plain description. The Valley’s north-side canals run east to west, each taking water off the Salt River and carrying it along the contour. A crosscut cuts across between them, moving water from a high canal down to a lower one, so that a supply on the Arizona Canal can serve fields along the Grand Canal.
There have been two. The Old Crosscut was dug in 1888 to tie the Arizona Canal to the Grand Canal and the other canals north of the river, part of the private canal era before federal reclamation. After the Reclamation Act and Roosevelt Dam reorganized the Valley’s water, the farmers’ new Salt River Valley Water Users’ Association took on the job properly. Under a 1910 contract with the U.S. Reclamation Service, it built the New Crosscut in 1912 and 1913, a few miles east of the old line. Sources differ on the distance, with the National Park Service saying three and a half miles and an engineering summary saying two. The new canal replaced the old one.
The association saw a second use for the drop. Water leaving the Crosscut falls 112 feet to the Grand Canal, so it was sent through penstocks into a hydroelectric plant, built in 1913 and 1914 and completed by 1915. Its six custom Pelton wheels gave the young system about 3,000 kilowatts, nearly 40 percent of its generating capacity at the start. That is why “Crosscut” also turns up in Salt River Project power history, not just irrigation.
What it is not
The Crosscut is not the Arizona Canal, the long canal that runs past the Scottsdale Waterfront and Old Town; the two meet near 64th Street. It is not the CAP canal, which brings Colorado River water and runs far to the north. And “Old Crosscut” on a historic map is the 1888 ditch, not the canal you can ride beside.
The fine print
The power plant is the quiet star. Salt River Project’s history site describes 2,240-foot penstocks feeding a brick building from 1914 that it calls the only hydroelectric structure of its kind left in the Salt River Valley. The National Park Service notes a neo-classical concrete design of 12 bays on the long sides and three on the ends. A diesel and steam plant was added beside it around 1937 to 1939 for backup and removed in 1974. By the late 20th century the hydro units ran mostly at summer peaks, when air conditioning pushed demand up; today the plant runs on water orders only, generating when enough water is moving down the canal.
The water does more than spin wheels. The Crosscut supplies Tempe’s water treatment plant, fills the ponds at Papago Park, feeds the Phoenix Zoo, and makes a little recreational stream through Moeur Park near the river.
The path on its bank came decades later. One caution if you are reading old documents: engineers and historians write “New Crosscut” for the 1913 canal, while everyone else just says the Crosscut, because the old one has been out of service for more than a century.