WWII Papago Park POW huts

 Restoration and preservation of those surviving WWII Camp Papago POW Huts is an ongoing project at the Arizona Heritage Center at Papago Park.

One of the wildest forgotten stories in Arizona history happened right beneath what is now Papago Park in Phoenix.
During World War II, Camp Papago held mostly German naval prisoners captured during the war. But in December 1944, 25 German POWs pulled off the largest Axis prison escape ever from a U.S. camp.
Using homemade tools, they secretly dug a 176-foot tunnel beneath the camp and escaped into the Arizona desert under the cover of darkness. Their plan was to follow rivers south toward Mexico… except they didn’t realize most Arizona riverbeds were completely dry.
Lost, exhausted, and running out of supplies, the escapees were eventually captured one by one or turned themselves in. What started as a daring wartime breakout became one of the strangest stories in Arizona history.
Today, thousands visit Papago Park without realizing a WWII POW camp once stood beneath the desert landscape.