ABOUT AGUA CALIENTE PARK
By: Don Carter

Agua Caliente Park is located in Tucson, Arizona, on the northeast side of town.  The park is composed of roughly 101 acres, about 10 of which are used by the public in the form of paths and picnic areas.  There are three ponds in the park.  The largest of theses is found in the main park area.  Access to the large pond is limited to the north, south, and east sides.  There are two lower ponds that have footpaths completely around them. 

The desert vegetation community surrounding the park is upland desert shrub composed of four-winged saltbush, burro weed, creosote bush, alkali sacaton, Engelmann prickly pear cactus, barrel cactus, cane cholla, chain fruit cholla, cat claw, saguaros, and a velvet mesquite bosque with gray thorn and desert hackberry bushes in the understory.  Around the ponds one can find Fremont cottonwood trees, Goodding willows, and narrow-leaf cattails.  There are a number of non-native plant species found in the park including eucalyptus trees, salt cedar, fan and date palm trees, Bermuda grass, California pepper trees, and several others.

Due to the diversity of the park’s vegetation and its water, many different animal species claim the park as their year-round home, and many more live in and around the park on a seasonal basis.  Some of the park’s mammals include gray fox, hooded skunk, striped skunk, bobcat, ring-tailed cat, pocket gopher, pocket mouse, raccoon, javelina, mule deer, desert cottontail rabbit, rock squirrel, several bat species, and an occasional mountain lion.

The reptile and amphibian species of Agua Caliente include whiptail lizards, Gila monster, desert tortoise, Woodhouse toad, spade-foot toads, red-eared slider, bullfrog, diamondback rattlesnake, garter snakes, gopher snake, spiny lizards, and many others.

One activity that attracts visitors to the park is bird watching.  Because there is water at the park, just about every type of waterfowl that visits or inhabits southern Arizona can be found there at one time or another.  Also, due to the mesquite bosque and the upland desert area, many terrestrial birds are found in the park as well.  The birds most often found include Gila woodpecker, cactus wren, owls, curve-billed thrasher, black-throated sparrow, black phoebe, bewick’s wren, mocking bird, western kingbird, morning dove, white-winged dove, warblers, gambel’s quail, vermilion flycatcher, red-tailed hawk, Cooper’s hawk, American kestrel, osprey, great blue heron, great egret, green heron, belted kingfisher, mallard duck, ring-necked duck, wood duck, gadwall duck, ruddy duck, grebes, American coot, mergansers, and, on rare occasion, pelican.  There are other bird species in the park as well.

The average precipitation at Agua Caliente Park is about eleven inches annually.  The nearby Catalina and Rincon Mountain average about 30 inches annually.  As for the temperature in and around the park, the summer is hot (with the highs in the 100’s) and the winter is mild (with the lows in the 20’s).

People have used the Agua Caliente spring for perhaps as many as 5500 years (all the way back to the Archaic period).  It is believed that Hohokam communities started utilizing the spring for agriculture from 0 – 700 A.D.  By the early classic period (around 1150 A.D.), the Hohokam flourished in the vicinity of the spring. 

The earliest historic record comes from a newspaper article, which noted that there was any Army encampment at Agua Caliente sometime after the Gadsden Purchase of 1853.  The encampment served as a link for Camp Lowell near Tucson (to its west) and Soldier’s Camp in the Santa Catalina Mountains (to its north).  This ring of camps was established to protect against Apache raids.  The camp stayed there until the establishment of the ranch in the 1870’s.  After 1870, the valley’s rivers and streams no longer ran year-round.  This lack of surface water in other parts of the valley made Agua Caliente an important place for watering livestock. 

In 1873 John D. Fuller established a cattle ranch and orchard near the spring.  He built the first structure on the site:  a one-room adobe ranch house.  In 1878, Agua Caliente spring became known as Fuller’s spring and the water was said to be a tonic.  An assayer by the name of W. T. Rickard said that the water was of  “…a high order of the same character as the celebrated Harrogate water of England.”  The water was said to be a cure for kidney problems and rheumatism, and probably many other ailments.  In the 1880’s, Fuller developed the ranch as a health resort.  More structures were built, but they have long since vanished.    The spring became quite an attraction for those living in Tucson.   The water maintains a temperature of about 87 degrees Fahrenheit year-round, and people would visit the ranch and partake of Mrs. Watson’s Sunday dinners (which apparently were all the rage). 

Early in the 1920’s, Willard W. White bought Agua Caliente.  In 1922, a group of businessmen headed up by Mose Drachman invested in the land and named it “The Tucson Hot Springs Hotel Company”.  The businessmen planned many great things for Agua Caliente, but no evidence can be found to support any major changes to the area in fulfillment of those plans.  In 1935, Gibson De Kalb Hazard purchased Agua Caliente and ran it as a working ranch.  In 1951, the Fuliatrault family bought Agua Caliente.  They built the last addition to the old ranch house, and added five more lakes. 

After 1959, development companies owned the property.  The Myriad Research and Development Company planned to build a $15 million lakeside development with more than 300 homes; it never materialized.  In 1979, another development company, Geodecke, purchased the site.  In preparation for another lakeside community, Geodecke excavated two lakes at the west end of the property.  They defaulted on their loan, and Myraid took ownership again.  In 1984, a local businessman named Roy P. Drachman donated more than $200,000 towards the purchase of the site (which was ultimately named Roy P. Drachman Agua Caliente Park).  On January 19th of the following year, the park was opened to the public under the management of what is now Pima County’s Natural Resources, Parks, and Recreation Department.

How to Get There