Fountain Hills
Northwest of the rivers, climbing.
The town runs from 1,520 feet at the lake to about 3,000 feet on Golden Eagle Boulevard, and nearly everything above that upper line belongs to a county, a town preserve or a national forest and is meant to stay empty. Shea Boulevard carries you east out of Scottsdale along the southern flank of the McDowell Mountains, and the range stays on your left the entire way and the road never crosses the ridge. When Shea rounds the end of the massif and turns north, the ground opens into a bowl, the town is laid out below you, and the mountains that were beside you now stand behind the town. The fountain runs about fifteen minutes at the top of the hour.
The setting
North, the town boundary runs directly against McDowell Mountain Regional Park, owned by Maricopa County. It carries a campground, a designated hunting area and a trail network, and it is the reason the ground above town stays empty. West are the McDowell Mountains themselves, with the town’s own McDowell Mountain Preserve on the near hillside and the City of Scottsdale’s McDowell Sonoran Preserve on the far one. East, across the Verde River, is the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation, a sovereign nation making its own development decisions. Beyond, to the northeast, the Tonto National Forest carries on toward the Rim. Dixie Mine Trail leaves the northern edge of the neighborhoods, crosses the town line and runs on into the county park, where it meets the Pemberton loop. You walk off the last street and keep going. South and a little east, across the Verde and standing over the Salt, is Red Mountain. The Geographic Names Information System lists it as Mount McDowell; the common name here is Red Mountain. It is one blunt peak rather than a ridge, 2,832 feet, with a notch in its western end that gets called the Gunsight, and it turns the color of its name in the last twenty minutes of light. The name is carried across the East Valley by the Loop 202, by Red Mountain High School and by the Red Mountain Ranch neighborhood in Mesa. From the higher ground along the town’s southern and western edges it is a real feature of the view, though like any landmark view it belongs to particular lots rather than to the town as a whole. It stands on Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community land and has been closed to hikers, climbers and photographers since the early 1980s. In January 2018 the town was certified an International Dark Sky Community, the seventeenth in the world and one of very few anywhere adjacent to a major metropolitan area. It is a measurable consequence of low density built against protected land, on a lighting code the town adopted decades before it applied for anything. At 1,520 feet the summer here is Valley summer, and the fifteen hundred feet of relief across town buy a few degrees on the high side, not a different season.
The homes
Fountain Hills is a set of distinct hillside communities. FireRock sits on the southern slope. Adero Canyon and Eagles Nest climb the western hillside toward the mountains. SunRidge Canyon runs the golf corridor, with Golden Eagle Estates and Courtside Villas above the town center. Closer to the lake the ground flattens into established neighborhoods on smaller lots. Horses are permitted on the right lot, in the R1-190, R1-43, R1-35H and R1-35 districts at one horse per 20,000 square feet, with the corral in the rear yard and forty feet off every lot line.
Lifestyle
The trails begin at the edge of the neighborhoods. Adero Canyon Trailhead sits at the top of the western edge, Golden Eagle Trailhead above the town center, and Dixie Mine runs off the northern boundary into the county park. The dark sky is there on any clear night. The International Dark Sky Discovery Center is under construction on La Montana Drive, and the operator’s current statement is early 2027, so it is not open. ADERO Scottsdale Resort, despite the name, stands inside the Fountain Hills town boundary. It is the former CopperWynd, the same property under a new flag, and it is the town’s principal resort address.
Who it fits
Buyers who land here have often been looking in North Scottsdale first, and they arrive having found the same hillside product on the other side of the same mountains. Buyers from coastal California recognize the trade quickly, because a hillside behind them has been built out. Families come for the schools and stay for the trailheads at the ends of the streets. If Fountain Hills has been on your mind, whether you are looking here or thinking about selling here, I would be glad to begin a quiet conversation.
