Rock Springs Café: The Historic Arizona Pie Stop in Black Canyon City

If you've ever driven Interstate 17 north from Phoenix toward Prescott, Sedona or Flagstaff, there's a good chance you've seen the signs.

PIE.

And if you've lived in Arizona long enough, you probably don't even need the rest of the sign to know exactly what we're talking about.

Rock Springs Café.

Located just north of Black Canyon City, about 45 minutes north of Phoenix, Rock Springs is one of those increasingly rare Arizona places that has managed to survive while almost everything around it has changed.

Today, people know it for its famous pies. But the story of Rock Springs stretches back more than a century—and includes miners, ranchers, stagecoaches, early motorists, the Warner family, a legendary pie baker named Penny, and an Arizona character named Jack “Fat Jack” Exum.

For this edition of The Lockbox, we're heading north on I-17 to discover one of Arizona's true diamonds in the rough.

Black Canyon City: Where the Valley Starts Feeling Like Old Arizona

Drive north from Phoenix and you can almost watch metropolitan Arizona disappear in your rearview mirror.

Phoenix gives way to North Phoenix. North Phoenix becomes Anthem and New River. Then the subdivisions begin thinning out, the mountains get closer and the Sonoran Desert starts feeling considerably more rugged.

Welcome to the Black Canyon.

Black Canyon City, Arizona, sits along the Agua Fria River near the foothills of the Bradshaw Mountains. It's close enough to metropolitan Phoenix to remain accessible, yet rural enough to offer a completely different lifestyle.

That's exactly why some people love it.

This is an Arizona of acreage, horses, desert trails, mountain views, dark skies and properties with room to breathe. It's decidedly more rural than the communities farther south—and for people who don't want master-planned suburbia, that's part of the attraction.

But Black Canyon City's story began long before I-17.

The Black Canyon corridor was an important route through Central Arizona for Native Americans and later miners, cattle drivers, sheepherders, soldiers and stagecoaches. Eventually automobiles replaced the stagecoaches, but traveling between Phoenix and Prescott remained an adventure.

There were dirt roads, flat tires, overheated radiators, flooded washes and few places to stop.

That's where the story of Rock Springs begins.

The Beginning of Rock Springs

The official history of Rock Springs Café traces the business to young entrepreneur Ben Warner.

Warner established a canvas-covered store along the Black Canyon route to provide supplies to travelers, miners and local ranchers. As traffic increased, the operation expanded into a general store and hotel.

This wasn't a roadside attraction back then.

It was a necessity.

Travelers could fill canvas water bags from Warner's hand-dug well. Gasoline had to be transported and sold in five-gallon cans. Miners traveled down from nearby gold camps to purchase supplies.

Rock Springs even had one of the only telephones for miles—Yavapai County telephone No. 93—and Warner served as the area's postmaster for decades.

The stop became so important that the surrounding area itself eventually became known on maps as Rock Springs.

The original buildings still stand today, creating a direct connection between modern Arizona and the days when traveling north from Phoenix meant following the old Black Canyon route.

Backlink: Rock Springs Café's official history
https://rockspringscafe.com/about-us/

And Then Came the Pie

Today it's almost impossible to separate Rock Springs from pie.

The café's official history traces its pie-making tradition back to 1927, when Mary Warner began baking pies at Rock Springs.

But like most century-old businesses, Rock Springs has had different chapters, different owners and different personalities who helped create the place generations of Arizonans remember.

One of the most colorful chapters began in 1986.

That's when Jack Exum purchased Rock Springs Café.

And if you knew him, apparently you probably didn't call him Bompa Jack.

You called him Fat Jack.

The Fat Jack Exum Years

This part of the Rock Springs story comes directly from the Exum family.

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Nancy, Jack Exum's daughter, about her family's years at Rock Springs.

Her dad was known as “Fat Jack,” and in 1986, Fat Jack became the owner and operator of Rock Springs Café.

The Exum family's connection to Rock Springs is independently documented today through Bompa Jack's BBQ Sauce, but there's more to that name than most people know.

During Jack's Rock Springs years, he developed a barbecue sauce with help from the Exum and Donnell families from Jackson, Tennessee.

At Rock Springs, it was simply Fat Jack's sauce.

In fact, the current Rock Springs Café menu still offers Fat Jack Sauce, a little culinary connection to the Exum era that remains all these years later.

But eventually the sauce would take on a new name.

How Fat Jack Became Bompa Jack

Years later, Jack's son Eric Exum decided to bottle and market his father's barbecue sauce.

There was a problem.

The Fat Jack name wasn't available.

So Eric needed something different—something that still represented his dad and the family behind the recipe.

He chose Bompa Jack.

And that is how Fat Jack's sauce from the kitchen at Rock Springs eventually became Bompa Jack's BBQ Sauce.

Today Eric Exum continues the family business, producing Bompa Jack's locally in Arizona and carrying forward a recipe with roots inside the Rock Springs kitchen.

 The story of Bompa Jack's BBQ Sauce
https://www.bompajacks.com/our-story

That's the kind of Arizona story I love.

A sauce created inside a little restaurant north of Phoenix in the 1980s is still being produced by the founder's son four decades later.

But barbecue wasn't the only thing people remember about the Exum years.

There was Penny.

Penny and the Famous “Penny Pies”

When Fat Jack Exum purchased Rock Springs in 1986, a woman named Penny was making the pies.

And according to Nancy, everybody knew them as:

Penny Pies.

Penny apparently had a personality every bit as memorable as her baking.

Nancy describes her affectionately as a pretty grumpy lady who wasn't always the easiest person to work with.

But Penny liked Nancy.

There may have been a good reason for that.

On weekends, Nancy would get into the kitchen and help Penny bake the pies.

Think about that for a moment.

Today, thousands upon thousands of pies leave Rock Springs during the holiday season. There's an entire bakery operation devoted to them.

Back then, it was Penny in the kitchen, with the owner's daughter helping her bake on weekends.

Those are the stories you don't find printed on the menu.

They're passed down by the families who were actually there.

And for people who remember Rock Springs during the Exum years, they weren't simply Rock Springs pies.

They were Penny Pies.

Rock Springs Changes Hands

The Exum family's ownership of Rock Springs lasted nearly two decades.

In 2005, Jack Exum sold Rock Springs to the Rawhide group, ending the Exum family's ownership of the historic property.

The transition also brought Penny's long tenure at Rock Springs to an end.

According to Nancy, the new ownership and Penny didn't exactly see eye-to-eye, and her time baking those famous Penny Pies came to a close.

Rock Springs would change hands again before beginning its next major chapter.

In 2008, longtime Arizona hospitality executive Augie Perry acquired Rock Springs Café.

And under Perry's ownership, the pie business would eventually grow to a scale that Ben Warner—or Penny—probably couldn't have imagined.

From Penny Pies to the Pie Box

Today Rock Springs is often referred to as the Pie Capital of Arizona, and there's a reason.

The little café bakery eventually couldn't keep up with demand.

Beginning in 2019, Rock Springs developed a dedicated bakery in a nearby building that incorporated a small house once used by the Warner family.

In 2021, The Pie Box opened.

For the first time, visitors could actually watch Rock Springs bakers producing the pies that had made this tiny Arizona stop famous.

And we're not talking about a couple of apple pies cooling on a windowsill.

Rock Springs now offers more than 20 pie flavors at times, including classics and specialty varieties.

Apple.

Cherry.

Blackberry.

Banana cream.

Tennessee lemon.

Pecan.

And one of its modern signatures, the Jack Daniel's Pecan Pie.

Rock Springs began shipping pies nationwide in 2009, transforming an Arizona road-trip tradition into something people around the country could have delivered to their homes.

Backlink: Rock Springs Café pies and bakery
https://rockspringscafe.com/

Why Rock Springs Is More Than a Restaurant

Rock Springs isn't famous because someone sat in a corporate conference room and created a nostalgic Arizona-themed restaurant.

It's the real thing.

It existed before Interstate 17.

It existed before Anthem.

It existed before Phoenix became one of America's largest metropolitan areas.

The Goldwater family stopped here while traveling between Phoenix and Prescott. The historic hotel reportedly welcomed early Hollywood personalities including Western movie star Tom Mix and actress Jean Harlow.

Generations of Arizona families have pulled off the highway here.

Some remember the Warner years.

Some remember Fat Jack.

Some remember Penny Pies.

Others remember stopping with their grandparents on the way to Prescott or Flagstaff.

And now they're bringing their own children and grandchildren.

That's what turns a restaurant into an Arizona institution.

Black Canyon City and the Appeal of Rural Arizona

Rock Springs also represents something larger happening around Black Canyon City and the communities north of Phoenix.

Arizona keeps growing.

Phoenix keeps expanding north.

And genuinely rural communities within reasonable driving distance of the Valley are becoming harder to find.

Black Canyon City still feels different.

You'll find properties with acreage, horse setups and open desert. You'll see mountains instead of endless rooftops. And while you're not terribly far from North Phoenix, the lifestyle can feel a world away.

It isn't the right lifestyle for everybody.

But for people who want space, privacy and a little more of old Arizona, that's exactly the point.

The Gateway Between Two Arizonas

Maybe that's why Rock Springs has survived for more than a century.

It sits between two Arizonas.

Head south and you're traveling toward one of America's largest metropolitan areas.

Head north and the elevation starts climbing.

Prescott.

Sedona.

Flagstaff.

Mountains.

Pines.

Snow.

Small towns.

For more than 100 years, travelers have stopped at Rock Springs somewhere between those two worlds.

The stagecoaches disappeared.

The dirt highway disappeared.

Interstate 17 arrived.

Phoenix exploded in population.

But Rock Springs remained.

One of Arizona's True Diamonds in the Rough

There are plenty of polished destinations in Arizona.

Luxury resorts.

Celebrity restaurants.

Championship golf courses.

Multimillion-dollar developments.

I love those places too.

But The Lockbox is also about finding the places that tell the real story of Arizona.

And sometimes those stories are sitting in an old building beside the highway.

Rock Springs has been serving travelers for more than a century.

Ben Warner built the stop.

Mary Warner helped begin its pie tradition.

Penny became part of its pie legend.

Fat Jack Exum owned it for nearly two decades and created a barbecue sauce in its kitchen that his son Eric would eventually carry forward as Bompa Jack's.

And another generation continues the Rock Springs tradition today.

So the next time you're heading north on I-17, don't just fly past the Rock Springs exit.

Pull off.

Walk around.

Look at the old buildings.

Imagine what this place looked like when Phoenix was a fraction of its current size and the trip to Prescott meant hours bouncing along a dusty road.

And then do what generations of Arizonans have done before you.

Order a piece of pie.

Because Rock Springs isn't just a restaurant.

It's a little piece of Arizona history—and one of the state's true diamonds in the rough.

What is Rock Springs Café famous for?
Rock Springs Café near Black Canyon City is famous for its homemade pies and more than 100 years of Arizona history.

Where is Rock Springs Café?
Rock Springs Café is located off Interstate 17 near Black Canyon City, approximately 45 minutes north of Phoenix.

Who was Fat Jack Exum?
Jack “Fat Jack” Exum purchased Rock Springs Café in 1986 and operated the historic Arizona restaurant until selling it in 2005. His barbecue sauce later became Bompa Jack's BBQ Sauce.

What were Penny Pies?
During the Exum family's ownership of Rock Springs Café, longtime baker Penny made the restaurant's pies, which became locally known as “Penny Pies.”

Who makes Bompa Jack's BBQ Sauce?
Eric Exum carries on the sauce created by his father, Jack “Fat Jack” Exum, during Jack's years operating Rock Springs Café.

About The Lockbox

The Lockbox explores Arizona real estate, communities, history, businesses and the places that make living in Arizona unlike anywhere else.

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