Tempe Town Lake

8 Locations | Curated by Shannon Maki

This tour looks at locations on and around the Tempe Town Lake that have been in the past or are currently vital to the development of the Tempe Town Lake area.

The creation of the Tempe Town Lake began as an exercise by James Elmore, dean of the College of Architecture at Arizona State University, for his students in 1966. He assigned his students to recapture the Salt River Channel. Not only was the dry river bed not aesthetically pleasing, but…
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In 1966, Dean James Elmore and his Architecture students at Arizona State University decided that something needed to be done about the large and barren dry bed of the Salt River; which had become somewhat of an eye-sore for the town of Tempe. The architecture students begin working on design…
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Tempe Beach Park was been entertaining locals for almost ninety years. Built in 1931, Tempe Beach Park is one of the oldest recreational parks in Tempe. The park established one of Arizona’s first Olympic-sized pools which accommodated many national swimming meets during the 1930’s. In 1934, an…
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The current Tempe Town Lake was not the first time that Tempe attempted to create a lake. Due to the combination of an arid dry desert with little access to water, the first lake was unsuccessful and has largely been forgotten.
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The Tempe Town Lake was completed in the summer of 1999. Water is a scarce resource in Arizona so the water for the Tempe Lake comes from the Colorado River though a chain of canals. Since this is an unnatural, man-made lake in the middle of the desert, the Tempe Lake West Dam has become an…
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Groundbreaking for Hayden Ferry Lakeside was on April 18, 2001 in Tempe, Arizona. Hayden Ferry Lakeside is a commercial development project that was constructed along the shore of the Tempe Town Lake. The man-made lake, which was completed in the summer of 1999, was created in hopes of bringing…
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There was an appeal in 1928 to replace the closed down Ash Street Bridge in Tempe, Arizona. The State Highway Commission’s solution was the creation of the Mill Avenue Bridge. The first Mill Avenue Bridge (also referred to as the Old Mill Avenue Bridge) was designed by the Arizona Highway…
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Proposition 400: To fund a Tempe Visual and Performing Arts Center. Many Tempe residents pushed for proposition 400 to be passed because they believed they needed more culture in their city. There was a call for more art, music, theater, painting, dance, and sculpture within the Tempe community. It…
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