Cascading from the high Colorado plateaus, the cold waters of Oak Creek meanders   through a granite and sandstone canyon carving out one of the best swimming holes to be found anywhere. Slide Rock is Mother Natures ‘Water Park’ Wonderland. The natural rock formations provide a series of water slides over slick red sandstone.

Slide Rock is a portion of Oak Creek where the creek bed is a sloping chute of slippery sandstone rock, making it a natural water slide. Along the way are little shallows for wading and deeper pools for a bona fide swim. Granite cliff ledges boarder the canyon walls offering cliff jumpers a brief flight into the crisp sixty five degree water from its previous life as snow on neighboring mountains.

Big slabs of natural red sandstone rock line the creek to make an ideal picnic or sunbathing spot. But to escape the crowds and enter an idyllic world of cottonwood and granite boulders along Oak Creak Canyon, just hike a little upstream to enjoy some peace and solitude, and for trout fishing enthusiasts, to wet your lines.

Cool off at a natural rock slide in an area so scenic it has been listed by Life Magazine as one of America's ten most beautiful swimming holes. In addition as one of the most photographed places in the Country. This area has become so popular it was designated a park, partially to keep it from being loved to death.

Slide Rock State Park, originally the Pendley Homestead, is a 43-acre historical apple farm located in Oak Creek Canyon. Frank L. Pendley, having arrived in the canyon in 1907, formally acquired the land under the Homestead Act in 1910. Due to his pioneering innovation, he succeeded where others failed by establishing a unique irrigation system still in use by the park today. As one of the few homesteads left intact in the canyon today, Slide Rock State Park is a fine example of early agricultural development in Central Arizona.

Slide Rock and Oak Creek Canyon together have seen the making of many Hollywood movies such as "Broken Arrow" with James Stewart, "Drum Beat" with Alan Ladd and Charles Bronson, "Gun Fury" with Rock Hudson and Donna Reed, and a scene from "Angel and the Badman" with John Wayne. But you can make your own movies and memories in the most amazing water park made by Mother Nature, inside of Mother Natures Southwest Wonderland.