And Tempe residents— starting with the Hohokam people who originally settled the area and built its first canal network—have long found ways to bring water to the desert outside what is now Phoenix, Arizona.

The landlocked city now utilizes the Tempe Town Lake, a dammed section of the Salt River that forms a rectangle two miles long and between 220 and 240 meters wide. Even though motorboat access is restricted, one would assume that a lake for 175,000 residents, sitting just north of the 70,000 student-strong Arizona State University campus would see intense use and overcrowding. That’s not the case.

“If you go end to end, you have plenty of room, because the majority of people and all the sailboats use a one-mile stretch penned between two bridges,” says City of Tempe Boating Coordinator Okie O’Connor. Sailboats aren’t a problem at all during morning and evening hours, because there’s rarely any wind at those times. That’s a win-win for rowers, says O’Connor, who was instrumental in bringing the USRowing Annual Convention to Tempe in December 2009.

While the opposite, south shore borders the thriving campus, with a gauntlet of campus shops and restaurants in the downtown Mill Avenue District and perks such as live events at Sun Devil Stadium, Gammage auditorium or the Tempe Center for the Arts, the young student population has left the lake’s calm waters essentially untouched.

The largest rowing population remains the active masters category (followed by thriving junior programs), with a municipal boathouse (Tempe Town Lake Rowing) offering storage and classes for sculling and sweep at the marina, and a volunteer rowing club (Rio Salado Rowing Club) boathouse on the northwest end of the lake also offering storage plus a full schedule of classes and range of programs.

#7 Klamath Falls,
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