What it is
Big Bronco is the Western furniture store on Cave Creek Road, a big barn-like building on the south side of the road a short way west of the center of town, with a gift store attached and a dirt lot it shares with Janey’s coffeehouse. It opened in 2000 and has sold the same thing since, under two sets of owners: furniture for a desert house in the Western and Southwest idiom. That means heavy ranch tables, benches and bedsteads built from reclaimed wood, leather chairs and sofas, and a cleaner contemporary-Southwest line for people who want the materials without the horseshoes, plus desert-inspired paintings, pottery, lighting and rugs. Pieces can be sized or upholstered to your room, and the store ships anywhere.
The gift store is the half most visitors actually buy from: Western kitchenware, bed and bath goods, and a children’s section of cowboy things that are better made than the Frontier Town souvenirs up the road. The owners, Julie and Jeff, make a point that most of the stock is made in the United States and much of it by Arizona makers.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Scottsdale has Western-interiors showrooms of its own, and our shopping note and the Buffalo Collection guide cover the high end. Big Bronco is the mid-priced, unpretentious version in a town that still lives the look rather than selling it, and it is where a lot of North Scottsdale and Carefree houses were furnished. For a visitor, it is a good stop on a Cave Creek day and the best gift store in town; on its own it is a furniture store forty minutes away, and we would not pretend otherwise.
The practical version
About forty minutes from Old Town with no traffic: Scottsdale Road north to Carefree Highway, west to Cave Creek Road, north into town; Big Bronco is on the south side at 6602 East Cave Creek Road. Open Tuesday through Saturday from ten to five and Sunday eleven to five, closed Monday. Browse the furniture, buy from the gift store, then cross the lot to Janey’s. If you are buying a piece, bring measurements and photographs of the room.
When to go
Weekday mornings in the cool season, when the store is quiet and the staff have time for a measurement conversation, and when the rest of Cave Creek is worth the drive. Weekends from November to March are the busy season, when the winter residents furnish and the Saturday Cave Creek crowd browses between saloons; it is fine, just slower. Summer is dead quiet and the store keeps its hours, which makes it a reasonable indoor errand on a hot afternoon.
What to look at
- The reclaimed-wood pieces. Dining tables, consoles and bed frames with the weight and grain that define the look; this is the store’s reputation.
- The custom program. Sizing a table to a breakfast nook or re-covering a chair in a leather you choose is the service the store is built on, and it is why the Valley’s second-home owners keep coming back.
- The contemporary-Southwest line. For people who like the materials and not the kitsch.
- The gift store. Kitchen and bar things, bed and bath, and the kids’ section; the souvenir half.
- The art and pottery. Desert paintings and ceramics by Arizona makers, priced below gallery rates.
With kids
The children’s section in the gift store is the lure, and a child can be trusted in it. The furniture floor is a furniture floor.
The neighborhood
Janey’s Coffee Co. shares the lot, with coffee by day and a musician on the patio most evenings, so one half of a party can shop while the other sits. East along Cave Creek Road are the Horny Toad, Harold’s, the Buffalo Chip and Frontier Town; our Cave Creek guide sets the day. New residents should read our moving to Scottsdale note before buying a dining table for a house they have not closed on.
The story
Big Bronco opened in 2000, at the moment the north Valley was building custom houses as fast as it could pour slabs and every one of them wanted a Western great room. Cave Creek was the natural address: a town that had incorporated in 1986 specifically to stay a horse-property town, where the look was not a style but the way people lived. The store’s early owner, Faith Weinberg, built it into what the local press called a nationally known Western and Southwest furniture store, with a furniture barn and a general store under one roof and a stock that ran from reclaimed-wood tables to handbags and kitchenware, much of it recycled or reclaimed material.
The Western-decor fashion cycle has turned at least twice since, from heavy lodge to clean desert-modern and partway back, and Big Bronco survived it by doing the unfashionable thing: sizing and upholstering pieces to order, delivering and shipping, and holding to a stock that is mostly American-made and often Arizona-made. The current owners, Julie and Jeff, marked the store’s twenty-third year in 2023 and have carried it past its twenty-fifth, with a mailing list for sales and a repeat clientele of Valley second-home owners who buy a piece a season.
The Scottsdale connection
Scottsdale’s own Western-furnishings trade has moved upmarket into the design showrooms of the Airpark and the galleries of Main Street; the mid-priced ranch-house version that filled McCormick Ranch and Troon houses in the 1990s is thinner on the ground. Big Bronco is where that trade went, and a good share of the pieces in North Scottsdale and Carefree second homes came down this road in the store’s truck.
Getting there
Scottsdale Road north to Carefree Highway, west to Cave Creek Road, then north; Big Bronco is on the south side at 6602 East Cave Creek Road, in the lot with Janey’s. About forty minutes from Old Town, twenty from the Pinnacle Peak and Troon resorts. Parking in the lot. Our getting-around note covers the rest.