What is the Appaloosa Library?
For thirty-four years, people drove up Scottsdale Road to this spot to watch staged gunfights. Now they come to return library books.
The Appaloosa Library opened on November 4, 2009, at Scottsdale Road and Pinnacle Peak Road, on grounds that were once part of Rawhide, the 1880s-style western town that ran here from 1971 until it closed on Halloween 2005 and moved to Wild Horse Pass. The rest of the land became the Silverstone development. It’s the newest of the Scottsdale Public Library’s three branches, at 21,242 square feet, and the only city library certified LEED Gold. Like the others, it’s named for a horse breed.
The reason to make a trip is the art. Hanging over the reading room is Golden Alchemy, Anna Skibska’s cloud of ninety glass orbs. Mayme Kratz’s Shedding Light is a resin panel with material from an old landfill embedded in it. In the patio courtyard, Roger Phillips’s Untitled, 1983 is a 10½-foot steel piece with red discs that spin in the wind. Outside stands Bill Barrett’s LV III, an aluminum abstract that won a 300-entry competition in 1979 and stood downtown for years before moving here.
How to visit
Hours. As of fall 2026: Monday–Thursday 9 a.m.–7 p.m., Friday 10 a.m.–6 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m.–5 p.m., Sunday 1–5 p.m., with a drive-up window that closes an hour earlier on weekdays. The library also lists early-morning hours for its Pony Express @ Appaloosa hold pickup, before the building opens. All city libraries close on library holidays and staff days, posted on the library’s locations page. It’s free.
The art, in order.
- LV III (Bill Barrett, 1977), outside. Welded and brushed aluminum. In 1979 it won the Anita J. Welch memorial competition out of 300 entries, which came with $10,000 and a permanent place in the city’s collection. Welch co-founded and edited Phoenix Magazine. The sculpture stood first on the Civic Center Mall, then on the south side of the Center for the Performing Arts. Scottsdale Public Art says it consulted Barrett about moving it here, and he agreed it was a more prominent site.
- Untitled, 1983 (Roger Phillips), in the patio courtyard. Stainless steel, 126 inches tall, with red-painted aluminum discs that turn in the wind. Phillips (1930–2022) started as a blacksmith’s helper on Long Island at 12 and later served as president of the Artist-Blacksmith’s Association of North America. John and Judith Ellerman gave the piece to the city in 2018, and it was installed in September 2019. Come on a windy day.
- Golden Alchemy (Anna Skibska, 2009), in the reading room. Ninety glass orbs, nearly all amber, meant by the artist to recreate sunlight coming through desert air. One green orb and one blue are mixed in, for growth and sky. Skibska trained at the Academy of Art in Wrocław and works in Seattle. The piece is dated 2009, the year the library opened.
- Shedding Light (Mayme Kratz, 2007). Resin, organic material and paper. It was commissioned for the Scottsdale Cultural Council’s annex offices (the Cultural Council is now Scottsdale Arts) and moved here soon after the library opened. Kratz made it at the same time as her commission for the Tempe Center for the Arts, and it contains some of the same material taken from the landfill that used to occupy that center’s site.
Our public art on the road guide covers the rest of the art along Scottsdale and Pima roads in the north. The Civic Center sculpture field guide covers where LV III and other pieces were before the 2021–23 renovation.
Nearby. WestWorld is a short drive southeast. For the western town itself, Rawhide is now at Wild Horse Pass, about forty minutes south.
From Main Street to the reading room
Rawhide opened in 1971 at 23023 N. Scottsdale Road, far north of the city’s built-up edge. For thirty-four years it was a stage-set 1880s town of false fronts, a steakhouse, stagecoach rides and gunfights at noon. North Scottsdale grew up around it. In 2004 the sale of its 160-acre site was announced, reported at about $46 million. Rawhide closed in Scottsdale on Halloween 2005 and reopened in 2006 on the Gila River Indian Community at Wild Horse Pass, where it still operates. The Scottsdale land became Silverstone, a mixed-use development of offices, homes and shops, and the city built its fourth branch library on part of it. The library’s Wikipedia entry says only that it opened “on the grounds previously occupied by the Rawhide Wild West Town.” The record we found doesn’t say which part of the old town the building sits on, how the city got the parcel, or what it paid. City Council minutes from 2006–08 and the Silverstone development agreement would.
A branch for the far north
Appaloosa finished a twenty-two-year building program. Mustang (1987) served the Shea corridor, Palomino (1995) and Arabian (1996) started as shared libraries on school campuses, and Arabian moved into its award-winning building across the street in 2007. Appaloosa, at the north end of the Scottsdale Road corridor, was the last. It’s the only city library certified LEED Gold. Arabian is listed as LEED Silver. According to the library’s Wikipedia entry it has won “multiple architecture awards.” Neither the entry nor the library’s own page names them or the architect.
That’s a real gap for a public building only seventeen years old. The research behind this guide found a suggestion that the Phoenix firm behind the Arabian Library might also have designed Appaloosa, but no source confirmed it, so we’re leaving it out. The city’s permit and plan records (searchable through the city’s eServices building-records viewer) and the library’s opening-day materials in the Scottsdale Heritage Connection at the Civic Center Library would answer it.
Art that arrived from three directions
The four works here arrived in different ways, which says something about how a city art collection grows. Golden Alchemy was made for the building. Shedding Light came from an office: it was made for the Cultural Council’s annex and moved to the library, which Scottsdale Public Art calls a more public space. LV III came from downtown, from the city’s 1979 competition, after stops on the Civic Center Mall and beside the Center for the Performing Arts. Scottsdale Public Art says Barrett himself agreed the library was a more prominent site. Untitled, 1983 came as a private gift, a kinetic piece by a New York blacksmith-sculptor that was acquired in 2018 and installed in the courtyard the next year.
Why it matters
Scottsdale has turned a lot of its manufactured western past into real estate. Rawhide’s site went the same way, but a piece of it became a free public building with good art in it. A city that once sold visitors an 1880s Main Street now lends books there and hangs glass over the reading tables. Rawhide did survive by moving south, and our Rawhide guide tells that story. What’s left in Scottsdale is a library, and it’s a good one.