Bookable
An Apollonaut travel guide
A zoo in the desert.
An introduction to Papago Park in Phoenix, where the zoo lies among red rock buttes.
On this page
Read the land around it
Red rock buttes rise above the desert scrub around the zoo in Papago Park. From the zoo’s Bighorn Sheep Butte, the view reaches south towards Tempe and distant mountains.
A city guide can give context without turning a landscape into a backdrop. Notice how the zoo uses shade, water and planting to make a home for animals from very different climates.
Shade, water and stone
Look at the curved brick entrance and its shade canopy, the palms around the ponds and the rockwork of the habitats.
Begin with a detail and ask how it was made and maintained. A photograph alone cannot tell you who built it, who planted it or the conditions in which they worked.
A Phoenix Zoo chapter
The zoo opened in 1962 and has kept growing, from the World Herd of the 1960s to the Big Cats of Arizona habitat opened in 2025.
Look at the meeting of the two: a desert park on the edge of a large city, and a zoo whose work reaches as far as the deserts of Oman.
Make room for context
Pair this reading with the zoo’s history and the Journal. This is an introduction for visitors, not a claim that our team manages these places or represents the people who care for them.
Read at the source
Sources & further reading
Links lead to the original publishers.
