Field guide · Phoenix
A wedding-cake castle and a waterfall in a canal
Two pieces of Phoenix that make no sense until you stand in front of them.
Tovrea Castle is a tiered 1930s folly sitting on a hill in the middle of a cactus garden, wedged between the freeway and a stockyard — it looks exactly like a wedding cake and there is nothing else like it in the state. Then drive fifteen minutes to Arizona Falls, where the canal drops twenty feet through a working hydroelectric plant that doubles as a public art piece you can sit inside.
The stops
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1
Tovrea Castle at Carraro Heights
5025 E Van Buren St, Phoenix, AZ 85008
Interior tours sell out weeks ahead; the grounds view from the lot is free.
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2
Arizona Falls
5802 E Indian School Rd, Phoenix, AZ 85018
Free, always open, and genuinely loud — the water does the work.
This outing lives in Jaha
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