Slide Rock State Park: A Water Slide on a Century Old Apple Farm

North of town, where Oak Creek runs over a natural chute of slick red sandstone, generations have come to slide down the water on the seat of their swimsuits. But Slide Rock State Park began as a working farm. In nineteen oh seven a homesteader named Frank Pendley arrived in the canyon, and by nineteen ten he held title to the land under the Homestead Act.

Water was the challenge, so between nineteen ten and nineteen fifteen Pendley built an ingenious gravity fed irrigation system, blasting tunnels through solid sandstone to carry Oak Creek to his fields without a single pump. Parts of it still run today. In nineteen twelve he planted his first apple orchard, and apples became his cash crop, hauled out to market like so much of what this canyon grew.

The state of Arizona bought the Pendley homestead in nineteen eighty-five and opened it as Slide Rock State Park in nineteen eighty-seven, preserving the historic orchard, the packing shed, and the old cabins alongside the swimming hole. So when you slip down that natural water slide, you are playing in the middle of a century old apple farm that the creek itself made famous.