Tucson's Agua Caliente Park
December 9, 2007
After six years in Tucson, I figured I'd already explored every natural area worth the name. It's nice to be proven wrong.
![](https://www.desertlavender.com/southern-arizona/catalinas/images/agua01mm.jpg)
Suffering from acute trade show fatigue, we wandered over to Agua Caliente Park to see if we could salvage a Sunday afternoon of a cold and rainy weekend.
![](https://www.desertlavender.com/southern-arizona/catalinas/images/agua04mm.jpg)
We couldn't have been more surprised to find a good-sized lake fed by a warm spring and surrounded by hundreds of palm trees.
![](https://www.desertlavender.com/southern-arizona/catalinas/images/agua03mm.jpg)
The 110-acre park was purchased by Pima County in 1985 and has been open to the public since 1997, but it's been a popular recreation spot for at least 5500 years.
![](https://www.desertlavender.com/southern-arizona/catalinas/images/agua01dn.jpg)
From the 1850s to the 1870s, the spring was used as an army camp, and I'm guessing it was a stopover on the former military road that connected Tucson and Willcox via Reddington Pass.
![](https://www.desertlavender.com/southern-arizona/catalinas/images/agua03dn.jpg)
From 1873 through the 1920s, there were several attempts to establish a resort on the site under various names including "Agua Caliente Rancho" and "Fuller's Hot Springs," but mostly it served as a cattle ranch and orchard.
![](https://www.desertlavender.com/southern-arizona/catalinas/images/agua07mm.jpg)
There were originally two springs on the site — one hot, one cold — with a combined flow of about 500 gallons per minute. In a failed attempt to increase water flow, the two springs were blasted in the mid-1930s, creating one spring with a constant temperature of 72° F and a flow of 150-300 gpm.
![](https://www.desertlavender.com/southern-arizona/catalinas/images/agua08mm.jpg)
The spring was blasted again in the early 1960s by the Myriad Research & Development Corp., which cut the water flow to 100-125 gpm. During the drought of 2003-4, the flow declined to 14 gpm, which dried up two of the three ponds. So Pima County dug a well and installed a pump on the property to keep the one remaining lake full. A slightly increased flow rate combined with a wet winter (2004-5) raised the water level enough to fill two of the three ponds.
![](https://www.desertlavender.com/southern-arizona/catalinas/images/agua04dn.jpg)
Hundreds of ducks make their home here, and they're all ridiculously tame. For a good time, wait for a family to ignore the signs and toss scraps of bread to the ducks, who will prompty stampede and scare the crap out of them.
![](https://www.desertlavender.com/southern-arizona/catalinas/images/agua11mm.jpg)
The original spring is still crystal clear and populated by several goldfish.
![](https://www.desertlavender.com/southern-arizona/catalinas/images/agua09mm.jpg)
In the main pond, we saw one monster goldfish at least two feet long. What a great natural area just a few miles from downtown Tucson!