Visiting in the summer isn't for the faint of heart, as temperatures can hover around 115 degrees Fahrenheit.

People brush off Scottsdale's extreme heat by saying that it's dry, but don't let that fool you into thinking it's not scorching there in the summer months. After all, ovens use dry heat and have no problem cooking things. 

During Scottsdale summers, temperatures routinely hover around 115 degrees Fahrenheit for weeks on end, which makes outdoor activities difficult at best and downright dangerous at worst. 

Sure, you'll find some of the best hotel deals during the low season — rates at five-star resorts can drop up to 60% from peak-season prices — but the savings come with some seriously sweaty tradeoffs.

Also, if you're traveling with your dog, be sure to protect their paws from the steaming hot pavement and have water on hand to keep them well-hydrated.

If you want a true taste of Scottsdale, focus on local options. 

Mexican and Southwestern flavors are staples in this region, so you'll find no shortage of restaurants offering tantalizing tacos, prickly pear margaritas, and tableside guacamole presentations. 

For example, Old Town Tortilla Factory is known for its homemade tortillas and tequila bar with 120 premium options. It's located in a historic adobe house with a charming patio. 

Scottsdale also offers world-class eateries serving global cuisines, along with James Beard Award-winning chefs and restaurants.

As one of the warmest spots in the country, Scottsdale's high season runs from October through April, the opposite of most US cities.

During this timeframe, snowbirds flee their primary residences in colder states in favor of their second homes in our warmer climate, and plenty of first-time tourists come here to enjoy the weather too. 

Plus, winter is when Scottsdale hosts some of its most popular annual events, including the Barrett-Jackson auction in January, the Waste Management Phoenix Open in February, and the Cactus League spring training games in February and March.

Hotels, Airbnbs, spas, golf courses, and restaurants book up weeks or months in advance during these events, so you'll need to make reservations ahead of time in order to enjoy your dream itinerary. 

This town runs on reservations, so those who don't plan ahead get left behind.

There aren't a ton of public-transportation options in Scottsdale, so I advise renting a vehicle to explore the entire city, which is about 31 miles long and 11 miles wide.

You'll find epic hiking trails and award-winning golf courses up north and many art galleries and museums further south. 

If you plan on visiting without a car and don't want to rent one, your best bet is to spend time in Old Town Scottsdale, where you'll find hotels, restaurants, wine-tasting rooms, breweries, museums, public art installations, art galleries, and shops within walking distance. 

Here, you can rent electric scooters and bicycles, make use of golf-cart services and the free trolley, or book traditional rideshare options.

If people aren't on the lookout for wildlife, they might be in for a painful surprise. After all, the desert is full of venomous and predatory creatures.

Scottsdale is home to Arizona bark scorpions, the most venomous scorpions in North America. They're notorious for hiding in shoes, so always check before slipping your feet inside. Their stings are rarely fatal for humans, but they do hurt for days. 

The Sonoran Desert is also home to Gila monsters, black widow spiders, rattlesnakes, coral snakes, coyotes, bobcats, and javelinas. 

You could certainly see any of these on a hike, but they're also not strangers to residential and touristy areas.

Scottsdale is known for its miles of incredible hiking trails, many of which lead travelers through stunning desert preserves or up steep mountains. 

But one of the biggest mistakes tourists make is thinking a hike through the desert is the same as a hike through the woods. It's not. 

There's often very little, if any, shade, so you'll want to wear a hat and plenty of sunscreen. You'll also need to wear proper footwear, which means no flip-flops, since the landscape is rocky and dusty. 

Bring a lot more water than you think you'll need, too. A good rule of thumb is to always turn back when you've run through half your water supply, advice you'll probably see displayed at some trailheads.

On the trails, be on the lookout for rattlesnakes, which blend into the landscape, and avoid brushing up against sharp cactus needles. 

Hiking Camelback Mountain, one of the most iconic landmarks in Scottsdale, is like a badge of honor. However, few visitors realize that both trails, Echo Canyon and Cholla, are seriously challenging. You have to climb on your hands to scramble to the top.

Once you summit, the view is well worth the climb. If you choose to hike Camelback in the summer, start at sunrise and finish by mid-morning to avoid heat exhaustion.

Scottsdale has 400 impressive miles of hiking trails, but there's plenty more to see and do here. 

Bike on the paved Indian Bend Wash Greenbelt, go off-roading in the Sonoran Desert, or trail run in the McDowell Sonoran Preserve.  

Other options include riding a train at McCormick-Stillman Railroad Park and tubing or stand-up paddleboarding on the Lower Salt River. 

If none of those activities excite you, book a Segway tour of Old Town, explore the beauty of Butterfly Wonderland, or take a tour of Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West.

Take some time to explore Scottsdale's pedestrian-friendly Arts District, which is right in the heart of Old Town and offers a little something for everyone.

The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art showcases contemporary art and is free every Thursday and the second Saturday of each month. 

To enjoy art outside, take the self-guided Scottsdale Public Art Walking Tour, which winds you through more than 70 public artworks — including bronze statues, fountains, and interactive installations — in the span of about an hour. There are also dozens of galleries to pop into along the way. 

Finally, don't miss Western Spirit: Scottsdale's Museum of the West, a Smithsonian affiliate.

As you stroll around Scottsdale's shops, you're likely to encounter plenty of wares that look like they're made by the local tribes in Arizona. Don't be fooled.

Native Art Market is the first and only Indigenous-owned shop in Old Town Scottsdale, bringing cultural awareness to tourists and allowing visitors to immerse themselves in the state's indigenous culture and art. 

All the vendors are of Native American descent and provide quality handmade items — including turquoise jewelry, carved wood-handled knives, kachina dolls, dream catchers, paintings, baskets, and pottery.

Scottsdale has more than 330 sunny days each year, but it's not all sunshine and rainbows here.

Speaking of rainbows, they typically only come out during Arizona's monsoon season, which runs from June to September. This accounts for a large chunk of the area's annual precipitation. These storms can be intense, with high winds, flash floods, and even damaging hail. 

Unless you're really familiar with the roads, I don't recommend getting on a motor-powered vehicle during one. What seems like a little dip in the road can actually be a lake, and any dry washes can quickly transform into raging rivers. 

We also have haboobs, or massive dust storms, that can stretch as far as 100 miles wide and thousands of feet high. They sweep across the desert landscape, flinging debris and reducing visibility to nearly zero. 

This story was originally published on August 1, 2023, and most recently updated on March 11, 2025.

Chile's Tarapacá region sits near the borders with Bolivia and Peru. The region's hyperarid Atacama Desert has been compared to Mars.

The desert soil contains a mix of chemicals carried by groundwater, ocean spray, or fog. A lack of rainfall helped preserve beds of sodium nitrate, or saltpeter.

In the early 19th century, Europeans on the hunt for saltpeter to use in gunpowder turned their attention to the desert.

Companies were mining saltpeter in the region by the early 1800s. When Charles Darwin visited during his voyage on the HMS Beagle in 1835, he dismissed the Chilean version of saltpeter.

"This saltpetre does not properly deserve to be so called; for it consists of nitrate of soda, and not of potash, and is therefore of much less value," he wrote.

The desert's sodium nitrate was more prone to dampness and burned at a higher temperature than potassium nitrate, another type of saltpeter commonly used in gunpowder, John Darlington wrote in "Amongst the Ruins: Why Civilizations Collapse and Communities Disappear."

Extracting nitrate and valuable byproducts like iodine quickly became industrialized. It required a slew of machinery, including hoppers, leaching tanks, and troughs.

As populations grew and scientific development continued, researchers turned to sodium nitrate not as a source of gunpowder but as a useful fertilizer.

By 1870, the Tarapacá region was producing 500,000 tons of saltpeter, the largest source of the substances in the world at the time, the BBC reported.

The Peruvian Nitrate Company founded La Palma in 1862, and nearby Santa Laura followed 10 years later. La Palma was later renamed Humberstone, after a British chemical engineer, James Humberstone, who moved to the area in the 1870s.

Many European investors set up operations in the Tarapacá region, trading a share of their profits to acquire the land.

One of the driest places on earth, some parts of the Atacama Desert receive only 0.2 inches of rainfall a year, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. While the average temperature is in the high 60s Fahrenheit, it can drop to close to freezing at night in the winter.

Humberstone is arranged in a 10-by-6-block grid. Many buildings were made of Douglas fir with zinc roofs. Verandas and covered walkways provided relief from the sun.

A general store and hotel were built at the center of Humberstone on the plaza. A tennis court, theater, swimming pool, chapel, hospital, and school all made up the complex.

Some of the materials for the buildings were shipped in, but workers also used remnants of the saltpeter process for "Pampa cement."

The workers came from Chile, Peru, and Bolivia. Barracks were constructed of dorm-like rooms for single workers. There were also small houses for families.

Managers lived in larger, nicer homes, while owners usually had homes in coastal cities instead of near the mines.

Workers were lured to Humberstone and other mining towns by companies promising to pay their travel costs. "But what they found was really harsh conditions, very rough work, very dangerous work, and very poor pay," Ángela Vergara, a professor of history at California State University, Los Angeles, told Business Insider.

Administrators would also physically punish the workers.

One reporter who visited in the 1880s described the work as incessant, comparing it to the dirty, dangerous work of coal mines. He called houses "squalid-looking," per the BBC.

Rather than being paid in money, workers were paid in tokens that were only accepted in the town's general store.

"That was to trap people," Vergara said. "They could not move because they were dependent on the token."

Saltpeter workers in Humberstone and other towns became an important part of the country's labor movement.

By the end of the 19th century, nitrate railways connected the region's mines to port cities so saltpeter could be shipped all over the world. At the same time, the miners were dependent on the railroads, too.

"All these nitrate camps and towns, they were located in very isolated parts of the Atacama," Vergara said. They had to bring in food and supplies to survive, she said.

Port cities shipped saltpeter to Europe and other parts of the world and imported goods, including textiles and coal.

Between 1880 and 1930, "Chile literally lived off one product: saltpetre," historian Julio Pinto told BBC News in 2015.

It brought in about half of the country's fiscal revenue, he said.

Chile went to war with Bolivia and Peru over nitrate taxes in 1879, eventually annexing nitrate-laden territories from both countries, including Tarapacá.

Bolivia was cut off from the coast, becoming the land-locked country it still is today.

Germany relied upon Chile's saltpeter for fertilizer until the British blockade during the war. Instead, German scientists found ways to synthesize nitrate from ammonia, bypassing the need for saltpeter.

The loss of the industry combined with the Great Depression had a severe effect on Chile's economy. While it had once produced 80% of the world's nitrate, by 1950 it was only responsible for 15%.

A private company bought the operations and then sold off pieces of them in 1961. Workers left to find other jobs, leaving ghost towns behind.

The saltpeter works became Historic Monuments in 1970, saving them from demolition. In the 1990s, former workers and their families formed the Saltpeter Museum Corporation and won the rights to the sites during a public auction in 2002.

The Saltpeter Museum Corporation and former residents gathered 20,000 signatures to have UNESCO recognize the historical significance of the sites.

The pampinos, the area's inhabitants, had a unique culture influenced by the mix of people from all over the world. The towns and the industry represented specialized knowledge that impacted the landscape and deeply affected the country's economy.

Together, the two towns showcase different aspects of the region's former saltpeter industry. Santa Laura's equipment and manufacturing structures are better preserved than Humberstone's, which still has many residential buildings and other remnants of social and cultural life.

Between the 1960s and early 2000s, there was little maintenance on the towns' buildings. Looters took reusable materials, and the elements damaged the fragile structures, which weren't built for long-term use.

Salty fog had corroded the metal, and wind and earthquakes were threatening the wooden and stucco structures.

The Ministry of Public Works, the Saltpeter Museum Corporation, and the National Council of Monuments started working on securing and conserving the sites in 2005. In 2019, UNESCO removed them from its List of World Heritage in Danger due to their efforts. Some buildings are still fragile, though.

Many buildings, including the school and general store, remain. Visitors can wander around Humberstone and Santa Laura, which are only about half a mile from each other.

Mannequins depict what it would have been like to live and work in the towns.

Sources for this story include "Amongst the Ruins: Why Civilizations Collapse and Communities Disappear," UNESCO World Heritage Convention, "Tangible and Intangible Heritage in the Age of Globalisation," Applied Geochemistry, Chemical and Engineering News, Astrobiology, The Hispanic American Historical Review, and BBC News.