Page Springs Fish Hatchery

Water for the Page Springs Fish Hatchery rises from several springs near the visitor parking lot and comes out at 68 degrees Fahrenheit in every season. The Arizona Game & Fish Department puts the flow at about 8.5 to 11 million gallons a day. The Cornville Historical Society, in a 2011 paper, gives 15 million. From the springs the water runs through concrete raceways set in rows under canopies. A self-guided tour path leads along them from the visitor center, and visitors look down into the rearing units at rainbow trout, brown trout, and occasionally Gila trout.

Raceways at 68 degrees

None of these fish hatched here. Trout eggs do best in water between 45 and 55 degrees, so Page Springs works as a grow-out station. Fingerlings arrive from other state hatcheries and are raised in the warm spring water until they are ready for stocking. The department calls it the largest state-run hatchery, producing about 750,000 fish a year, roughly 57 percent of the stocked trout in Arizona. About 26,000 rainbows go into Oak Creek itself each year, from March to November, according to a department fishing guide. The heaviest stockings fall between April and July.

The same guide says there is no access from the hatchery to Oak Creek for fishing. Anglers on Page Springs Road go in at the Page Springs bridge. A Cornville Historical Society brochure for the road names the hatchery as the place where visitors can reach the creek. The bridge was built in 1935-36, just before a major flood in February 1937. Marie Wroot, a granddaughter of James Page, remembered that flood: “Water lapped over the top and debris caught on the span, but luckily the bridge did not wash out.” She said her father and Joe Gifford roped logs to the side.

The department lists nine full-time employees. FOX 10 Phoenix reported in 2021 that eight of them lived at the hatchery and two more at Bubbling Ponds, on the same property. Matt Lyons, a wildlife specialist, drove about half a mile from his house, over the creek, to work. “All employees are required to live on station in case things go wrong at night or on a weekend,” Lyons said. “We need to be there because we have 300,000 fish on station at any given time.” During a copper treatment of the raceways that year, the crew got up at 10 a.m., 10 p.m., and 2 a.m. to test the water chemistry. Cindy Dunn, the department’s western regional coordinator, had then worked and lived at the hatchery for 26 years. “You work together, you live together and you do things together off time,” she said. Dunn also supervises volunteers who rake leaves, trim shrubs, sweep the walkways, and keep up the nature trail.

The fish have had their troubles. A study by agency authors records New Zealand mud snails found in October 2019 in two of the hatchery’s 36 raceways. In June 2022 the department suspended stocking from Page Springs after it found the bacterium Lactococcus garvieae at the facility. The Verde Independent reported on Aug. 11, 2022, that Page Springs and Bubbling Ponds would close Aug. 15 while the department fought the outbreak.

Herons, otters and the Page springsnail

A nature trail with signs on riparian habitat and wildlife winds through the grounds and along Oak Creek, under cottonwood and willow. Cattail and marsh plants fill the fallow ponds. From the parking lot, the Arizona Important Bird Areas Program directs birders to the trails and to an observation platform. The Audubon Society identified the hatchery habitat and the lower creek as an Important Bird Area. The Lower Oak Creek IBA, identified in 2004 and recognized in 2006, follows about 10 miles of creek from Red Rock State Park to just south of the hatchery. Northern Arizona Audubon Society and the department jointly manage the vegetated land at Page Springs, where plant restoration and nest boxes are ongoing. The hatchery is also a site on the Arizona Birding Trail.

The department lists black-crowned night-herons, great blue herons, belted kingfishers, and resident mallards as common birds, with numerous migrants along the trail. The hatchery ponds give migrating waterfowl seasonal habitat. Survey figures for the IBA count 50 breeding pairs of wood ducks and seven common black-hawks in 2003. Raccoons and river otters find their way into the enclosures after the trout, and skunks clean up spilt feed. In the uplands around the property, mule and whitetail deer, javelina, bobcat, mountain lion, fox, coyote, and black bear are occasionally seen.

The smallest resident lives in the spring runs. The Page springsnail is found only at the Page Springs spring complex. It clings to rocks, vegetation, floating algal mats, and sunken wood where the head springs, seeps, and side runs flow slowly.

Cabbages to roses, fish to Herefords

Between 1874 and 1876, according to the Cornville Historical Society, several wagon trains reached the Verde Valley from Missouri. Some of the families settled on Oak Creek near the springs. Abraham James farmed the ranch where the trout-rearing ponds now stand. Edward Mulholland moved about half a mile below the springs in 1877 and wrote: “I was the first man to take out a ditch from Page Spring.”

Benjamin Franklin Copple was the first to homestead land that is now part of the hatchery. He sold it to John T. Cone and Reuben B. Houghton, who raised corn and beans and rented some of it to “Arkansas people” before selling to James Page. The Society’s accounts of Page’s arrival differ. Its 2011 paper says Page was born in Canada, came to the Verde Valley at 24, and bought his first 160 acres on January 26, 1884, adding 102.7 acres in 1894. Its 2022 driving tour says he came to Cornville in 1885. By 1901, that tour says, he and his wife Julia owned 280 adjacent acres, including Copple’s 1885 homestead. At one time Page ran 1,000 head of cattle.

In 1933 Page wrote: “Right down on Oak Creek I had found all that good water and land that would raise anything from cabbages to roses, from fish to Herefords. And I have done it!” Sharlot Hall called him “the grand old man of Oak Creek.” She wrote that roundup crews camped at the ranch and “swam in sparkling ponds, washed their clothes … and cooking pots.” She also wrote that the Verde Valley Pioneers Association held its spring meetings at the picnic ground, with Page as president.

The sources give the trout different beginnings. The 2022 tour says Page started a trout farm in 1928. The 2011 paper says the Arizona Trout Company, owned by Page and partner or partners, put in cement ponds and a large picnic ground north of them, where “people came from all over for roasting ears.” The department dates the hatchery’s operation to 1932 under the Arizona Trout Company. FOX 10 reported that the company bought a 50-year lease from the Page family that year. In May 1937 Agnes Morgan Allen described the largest spring in the basin as flowing 1,280 miner inches the year round. She wrote that it fed a commercial hatchery, where fish could be bought for restocking or for eating. “The demand for trout exceeds the supply at the present time,” she wrote. “Restaurants, guest ranches and hotels keep standing orders for trout.”

Page lived on the ranch for 66 years. He died there on February 23, 1941, in his 90th year.

The state takes the ponds

The department secured the lease in 1938 and bought the property in 1949 for about $50,000. FOX 10 put the purchase at 116 acres with the water right. The agency-authored snail study dates the acquisition to 1934. The Society tells of a woman who came after the state took over, still expecting to buy a trout for a picnic. She understood the men were serious only when they refused her $25 check.

In the early state years the fish lived in earthen ponds, with spring water carried by open ditches and buried pipes. A hydraulic ram built in 1945 by a man named Stanley was sold to the hatchery for $300 and worked there for many years before an electric replacement. In the late 1950s trout were raised in ponds 12 to 14 feet deep. The department dates its renovation to 1990-91, when it added the raceways, canopies, visitor center, and tour path. FOX 10 gives 1991. The Sedona Red Rock News dates the new raceways and covered canopies to 1993 and reports that before the covering, predatory birds took 30 percent of the fish.

In 2014 the Cornville Historical Society placed an interpretive marker at the hatchery to mark the original Page homestead. In 2015 it installed a historic timeline in the visitor center. The marker stands near the rock building by the entrance, the one structure left from the ranch, which the Pages are said to have used as a summer kitchen.