Interesting places to explore in Tempe, from a Hohokam village to a Victorian ranch house

It's easy to drive past a 650-year-old Hohokam village in Tempe without knowing it, or to wonder about the pink house on the hill by Papago Park. The city keeps a surprising number of these places open to the public, most of them free, and a few open only on certain days. Here are eight worth a closer look, with how to visit each.

Loma del Rio Ruins

On a small rise at 715 N. Mill Ave., just north of Tempe Town Lake, the city has stabilized the remains of a Hohokam settlement occupied between about A.D. 1300 and 1450. The site held a block of six connected rooms with stone-and-adobe walls, a separate room likely used for cooking, a paved patio between them and crescent-shaped farming terraces on the slope. Archaeologists think fifteen to twenty people, probably an extended family, lived here. A wheelchair-accessible interpretive trail with plaques and a shade ramada makes it an easy, free stop, open on regular park hours.

Hayden Butte and the old mill below it

Hayden Butte, the hill everyone calls A Mountain, is a 25-acre preserve at Mill Avenue and Fifth Street with Sonoran desert plants, wildlife and archaeological sites on its slopes. The city asks hikers to stay on the designated trail, and bikes aren't allowed. At its foot stands the Hayden Flour Mill, part of the settlement Charles Trumbull Hayden built here in the 1870s along with his store, his ferry and his home. On select weekends from November through April, the city's Milluminate program turns the mill's north wall, facing the lake, into a free nighttime screen for animation and digital art by local artists, from 7 to 10 p.m.

Across the way, Hayden's adobe home, long known as La Casa Vieja, is the oldest continuously occupied building in Maricopa County, according to the Tempe History Museum. It opens for a free self-guided open house in spring 2027; the museum has not yet announced the date.

Petersen House

The 1892 Petersen House on West Southern Avenue is the oldest Queen Anne Victorian brick home still standing in the Salt River Valley, according to the city, and it has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1978. It was the center of a working ranch when this part of Tempe was countryside. The Tempe History Museum opens it for free events through the year, and its best-known is Christmas at Petersen House, decorated in the family's Danish tradition, on the first three December weekends. The first floor has ramp access; the second floor is reached only by the original stairs.

Elias-Rodriguez House

Look for the sharply pitched roof at 927 E. Eighth St. Beneath it is a modest adobe built in the Sonoran style, in one of the oldest neighborhoods in town. The museum uses the house to follow its women, who farmed and worked the surrounding land and helped a neighborhood take root around it. This fall a new exhibit added more about the two families who called it home. Free Saturday open houses come a few times a year, and the museum's historic houses page posts the next one.

Eisendrath House, closed for now

You can't miss the pink adobe at 1400 N. College Ave., up on the slope beside Papago Park. It looks remote even now, yet the household that lived there was anything but cut off: the museum describes a family active in Jewish community life and the arts, with friends among the Valley's well-to-do. Adobe restoration keeps it closed until April 2027, so for now it is a drive-by. Once it reopens, the museum's Saturday open houses are the way in; the house also serves as the office of Tempe's public art staff.

The Lo Piano Mesquite Bosque

On a 13-acre strip north of the Loop 202 between College and Mill avenues sits a habitat most drivers never notice. The habitat dates to 1993, when volunteers drawn from 26 different schools created it on land the Salt River once flooded. Today it shelters quail, roadrunners, jackrabbits, falcons, coyotes and many other birds. It is named for former Mayor William LoPiano, who served on the council that approved the first concepts for Tempe Town Lake. It is open from sunrise to dusk.

Tempe History Museum

For the bigger picture, the Tempe History Museum on Southern Avenue near Rural Road is free, open Tuesday through Saturday, and recently named Best Museum in the Tempe Tribune's Best of Tempe 2026. Its main gallery covers desert survival, community building and the college town. Through December 31, its featured exhibit, Ranfla Vida, traces local lowrider history. Most museum events are free; a few, like its Curated Sundays talks, are ticketed.

Public art and a cemetery walk

The city's public art collection is easiest to explore with its printable Downtown and Town Lake art maps, or the searchable online map. And on Sunday, November 22, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., the museum leads a free self-guided tour of Double Butte Cemetery, nearly as old as the city, with docents at five gravesites telling the stories of Tempe residents. The paths there are unpaved.

Where to stop along the way

The Chuckbox, on University Drive just east of Mill Avenue, has cooked burgers over an open mesquite fire since 1972, and it is still cash only. North of the lake, Glenrosa on North Mill Avenue serves Sonoran food cooked over live fire. Casey Moore's Oyster House, at Ninth Street and Ash Avenue in Old Town Tempe, pours Irish-pub pints alongside oysters and seafood. And on West University Drive, family-owned Cafe Lalibela has served Ethiopian food, with many vegetarian dishes, for more than two decades.