engineering

Papago Park

Papago Park is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Papago Park rather than just read about it. In short: Papago Park () is a municipal park of the cities of Phoenix and Tempe, Arizona, United States. It has been designated as a Phoenix Point of Pride.

Key takeaways

Papago Park belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Papago Park to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Papago Park from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Papago Park () is a municipal park of the cities of Phoenix and Tempe, Arizona, United States. It has been designated as a Phoenix Point of Pride. It includes Hunt's Tomb, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Description

Papago Park is a hilly desert park covering 1200 acres in its Phoenix extent and 296 acres in its Tempe extent. Tempe refers to its section of the park specifically as Tempe Papago Park. Papago Park is notable for its many distinctive geological formations and its wide variety of typical desert plants, including the giant saguaro cactus. The park also features the Desert Botanical Garden, the Phoenix Zoo, the Arizona Heritage Center, picnic areas, several small lakes, hiking trails, bicycle paths, a fire museum, as well as Hunt's Tomb, the pyramidal tomb of Arizona's first governor, George W. P. Hunt. Tempe Papago Park includes baseball and softball fields, picnic ramadas, a small lake and other features. Rolling Hills Golf Course is within the park between its Phoenix and Tempe extremities. The park includes the home baseball and softball stadium for North Pointe Preparatory.

History

The distinctive red sandstone geological formations of Papago Park were formed some 6–15 million years ago. One such formation, Hole-in-the-Rock, is a major landmark, thanks to the openings (tafoni) eroded in the formation over time. There is some evidence that the Hohokam—a now-extinct aboriginal tribe that once lived in the Phoenix area—used the openings and sunlight to track the solstices.

There are also some signs of Precambrian granite in the park. The bedrock is concealed by only a thin layer of topsoil. Papago Park was designated a reservation for the local Maricopa and Pima tribes of Native Americans in 1879. It became the Papago–Saguaro National Monument in 1914, but this status was recalled by Congress, April 7, 1930, because the area was not considered suitable for a national monument. It was divided amongst the state of Arizona, the city of Tempe and the Water Users Association, later known as the Salt River Project. The Federal government reserved all oil, coal or other mineral rights. Following the onset of the Great Depression, Governor Hunt commissioned a bass fish hatchery to be established in Papago Park during 1932. The hatchery was built as a Works Progress Administration (WPA) project, and became successful, stocking largemouth bass and other fish for Arizona's waterways. During World War II, Papago Park housed a POW camp and contained as many as 3,100 prisoners from 1942 to 1944. It was also the site of the largest mass escape from any United States prison camp in World War II. The Great Papago Escape occurred on December 23, 1944, when 25 prisoners, including German U-boat commander Jürgen Wattenberg, escaped the camp using a 178-foot tunnel and made their way to the Arizona desert. Many prisoners quickly realized that they knew nothing about the landscape or climate and turned themselves back in. Wattenberg was the last to be captured, on January 28, 1945. After the war the POW camp site served as a VA hospital from 1947 to 1951, then an Army Reserve facility. The state-owned portion of Papago Park was sold to the city of Phoenix on February 25, 1959. The fish hatchery was also shut down in 1959, as it was considered obsolete by that time. The City of Phoenix leased the hatchery grounds, including its man-made lakes, to the Arizona Zoological Society in 1962 to establish the Phoenix Zoo. A small stone cottage, used as the hatchery caretaker's residence, was retained as part of the zoo, and extensively renovated in the 1990s. A portion of the Tempe park was conveyed to that city in 1935, and a parcel within that portion was conveyed to the Salt River Project in 1955. An 18-hole championship golf course was built by the city of Phoenix and completed in 1963. The park was also the Finish Line in the fourth season of The Amazing Race.

Hunt's Tomb Hunt's Tomb is a small white pyramid behind a fence at the top of a hill within Papago Park. George W. P. Hunt (Arizona's 1st governor) had the tomb built in 1931 to entomb his wife. He was placed there after his death in 1934. Their daughter and his wife's family are also buried there.

Papago Ponds The Ponds have a surface area of 6 acres (2.4 ha) with an average depth of 8 ft (2.4 m), the elevation of the area is 1,100 ft (340 m).

Fish species Rainbow trout Largemouth bass Sunfish Channel catfish Tilapia Carp

Other species living at Papago Ponds Woodhouse's toad Mexican free-tailed bat Red-eared slider turtle

Incidents In February 2021, Joel Brotherton was fatally injured when he fell 30–40 feet while hiking Papago Park's Hole-in-the-Wall trail. In May 2021, two bodies were found in the park on the same day, one a victim of a homicide and another a victim of drowning. In November 2024, a Phoenix police began a homicide investigation after a dead body was found in the park.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Papago Park

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Papago Park claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Papago Park before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Papago Park ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Papago Park

In research: Papago Park appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Papago Park in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Papago Park is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Buildings and structures completed in 1932, Former American Indian reservations, Former installations of the United States Army, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Papago Park outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Papago Park in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Papago Park means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Papago Park out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Papago Park in simple terms?

Papago Park () is a municipal park of the cities of Phoenix and Tempe, Arizona, United States. It has been designated as a Phoenix Point of Pride.

Why does Papago Park matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Papago Park?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Papago Park.