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One of the Phoenix area's most unique attractions has claimed the top spot in a national competition to find the best park or open space in America.

McCormick-Stillman Railroad Park, in Scottsdale, edged out Amerson River Park in Georgia for the title in the competition created by ELGL. The winner was decided by tallying public votes and Instagram posts about each park. A total of 32 parks participated in the competition.

ELGL, which stands for Engaging Local Government Leaders, aims to "engage the brightest minds in local government" through a variety of initatives. In previous years, ELGL held competitions to find the country's best city hall and best library.

McCormick-Stillman opened in 1975 and has evolved into one of Scottsdale's most popular attractions, with a variety of railroad cars, model trains and other attractions at the site. About 1 million people visit it annually, and there is no admission fee.

The name of the park comes from the McCormick family, who donated the land for the park in the 1960s, and Guy Stillman, who chartered the Scottsdale Railroad and Mechanical Society to create the park's attractions.

For more information, visit the park's website.

All photos courtesy of McCormick-Stillman Railroad Park.

A national news outlet that covers Native American issues is moving from Washington, D.C., to the Arizona State University campus in Phoenix, the school announced this month.

Indian Country Today, a nonprofit and digitally focused news site, will move the majority of its staff to ASU's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication this summer, ASU said in a news release.

Christopher Callahan, dean of the Cronkite School, called Indian Country Today "the leading voice for Native American communities across the Americas," adding that the partnership with ASU will "provide our students with more opportunities to cover these critically important stories" and attract more Native American students to careers in journalism.

According to ASU, Native Americans make up nearly 2 percent of the U.S. population and 6 percent of Arizona's population, but only 0.37 percent of journalists in the U.S. are Native American.

The move is part of a larger initiative by the Cronkite School: Cronkite News, its student news service, has made Native American coverage a priority, and the school is currently searching for the nation's first named professorship focused on the intersection of Native Americans and the news media.

Mark Trahant, editor of Indian Country Today, said the "game-changing" move to the Cronkite School "builds on so much of the work that ASU is already doing" with Native American and border coverage.

Researchers from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the Desert Research Institute are teaming up to study evaporation at Lake Powell and Lake Mead.

What they find will help them better understand how much water is lost to evaporation at the country's two largest reservoirs, which could create new water management strategies. 

Floating platforms with remote sensors have been deployed on the lakes at the Arizona-Utah border to measure water temperature, weather conditions and other variables. Data will be collected over the next couple of years in hopes of producing a more accurate evaporation estimate. 

The current system for estimating water loss is "not considered very representative" of the actual amounts, according to a hydrologic engineer with the Bureau of Reclamation. Under the present system, it is estimated that Lake Powell lost about 386,000 acre-feet of water last year. But researchers believe that estimate could be off by about 20 to 30 percent. 

According to KTAR, the U.S. Geological Survey did a similar study with Lake Mead in 2010 and found the first year's evaporation rate was 4.5 percent higher than the estimate, while the following year, it was 5.3 percent lower. Researchers anticipate similar findings from Lake Powell.

One of Arizona's most beloved independent bookstores celebrated 45 years in business in Tempe last month.

Changing Hands, now located at the intersection of Guadlalupe Road and McClintock Drive, welcomed a large crowd of new and returning customers to mark its 45th anniversary, The Arizona Republic reported.

The bookstore opened April 1, 1974, in a 500-square-foot location on Fifth Street in downtown Tempe. A few years later, it moved to a larger location nearby, on Mill Avenue. The current location opened in the late 1990s.

Changing Hands opened a second location, at Third Avenue and Camelback Road in Phoenix, in 2014. Both locations sell new and used books. To learn more, visit the Changing Hands website.