What it means
Pinnacle Peak is the pile of granite boulders that rises out of far north Scottsdale like a broken tooth, topping out at 3,169 feet. It is not the tallest thing around; the McDowells to the south are much higher. It is the most recognizable, a sharp, knobby silhouette you can pick out from miles away, from Troon’s fairways and from half the patios north of Happy Valley Road.
Locals use the name far beyond the rock. “Up by Pinnacle Peak” is a direction for the whole far north. Pinnacle Peak Road is an east-west artery. For almost sixty years “Pinnacle Peak” also meant a restaurant, the Pinnacle Peak Patio, where a necktie was a mistake. And for hikers it means the city park and its trail, one of the most popular short hikes in the Valley.
The trail itself, with parking, hours and the full reopening story, is in the Pinnacle Peak Park guide. This page is about the name and what it covers.
Where you’ll meet it
Trail lists like best hikes in Scottsdale, real estate listings in Pinnacle Peak and Troon, road signs for Pinnacle Peak Road, climbing guidebooks, and stories about the cowboy steakhouse era.
Where the word came from
The name is plain description, a pinnacle on a peak, and nobody has claimed it. We found no record of who first called it Pinnacle Peak or when. The land had a much longer history before it had a name in English: the Hohokam hunted and gathered around the peak, and later settlers ran cattle and prospected nearby.
The name spread through the 20th century the way names do in the desert, attached to whatever stood nearby. The Pinnacle Peak Patio opened at its foot in 1957 and became one of the biggest western steakhouses anywhere, famous for cutting off customers’ neckties and stapling them to the rafters; it closed in 2015. The Pinnacle Peak General Store followed in 1977. When Scottsdale annexed the northern desert in the 1980s and the golf communities arrived, the name went onto a country club, subdivisions and street signs.
Then the mountain itself became contested ground. Hikers and climbers had always crossed private land to reach it, and in 1995 home construction around the base closed it off. After seven years of negotiation with the surrounding developments, the city opened Pinnacle Peak Park on April 20, 2002, around 150 acres with public access guaranteed.
What it is not
It is not Tom’s Thumb, the other famous granite knob, which stands in the McDowell Sonoran Preserve to the southeast. It is not the top of a hike: no trail reaches the summit. And “Pinnacle Peak” in an address usually means the area or the road, not the mountain.
The fine print
The trail numbers depend on who is counting. The city’s park page lists the main trail at 2 miles one way, starting at 2,570 feet, dipping to 2,366 and climbing to a high point of 2,889, with 1,300 feet of cumulative gain because it rolls up and down the far side. The 2002 opening and most guidebooks say 1.75 miles one way, 3.5 out and back. Either way it ends at a turnaround, not a summit, and the hardest climbing is on the way back.
The summit is for climbers. The granite carries long-established routes, the South Crack among them, and the city permits experienced climbers with proper gear in three designated areas. Slacklining is banned. Dogs and bikes are not allowed on the trail at all, a stricter rule than most of the Preserve, and the city sends dog owners to Brown’s Ranch instead.
The park’s quiet significance is civic. Pinnacle Peak was Scottsdale’s early test of whether the public could keep a landmark inside a ring of private golf communities, and the answer, signed in agreements with the neighbors, was yes. The much larger Preserve was being assembled at the same time on the same principle.