What it is
Cave Creek Regional Park is the big county park on the west side of Cave Creek: 2,922 acres of upper Sonoran Desert in the hills between the Carefree Highway and the town, running from about 2,000 to 3,060 feet, where prospectors dug for gold in the 1870s and left shafts and tailings that the trails still pass. It became part of Maricopa County’s regional park system in 1963, which makes it one of the older pieces of the ring of county parks that circles the Valley, and it is the developed one in Cave Creek: a paved entrance road with a fee booth, a nature center with live desert reptiles, a campground with developed sites and hookups, ramadas, a horse staging area and a trail system shared by hikers, mountain bikers and riders.
The trail that matters is the Go John, a loop of about 5.8 miles around a mountain in the middle of the park, rated moderate, with a few real climbs on the north side and long open stretches on the south, and views that take in the Tonto National Forest, Black Mountain and the whole north Valley. Three hours at a walking pace. Shorter trails, the Overton loop and the Clay Mine Trail to an old mine among them, fill in the lower ground near the nature center.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
The McDowell Sonoran Preserve’s trailheads have everything this park has except three things: a nature center with animals in it, a campground, and distance from the city. Cave Creek Regional Park sits far enough north that the Valley’s glow is behind you and the Tonto’s dark is in front, which makes it the closest honest desert camping to Old Town and the best place to put a visiting family with a tent. Its sister park, McDowell Mountain Regional Park east of Fountain Hills, is the same idea on the other side of the McDowells; this one is quieter.
The practical version
Forty-five minutes from Old Town via the Carefree Highway and 32nd Street. Ten dollars a car, or the county annual pass. Restrooms, water and the nature center at the entrance; nothing on the trails. Open from six in winter and five in summer. Hike the Go John from November to April, camp from fall to spring, and go to Spur Cross across town instead if you want the creek.
When to go
November through April for the Go John loop, mornings, and weekdays if you want the trail to yourself; weekend mornings bring mountain bikers from all over the north Valley. Late February into March adds wildflowers on the lower slopes after a wet winter. Summer is a sunrise-only park under the summer rules; the gate opens at five, the nature center opens at seven, and the Go John is too long for a July morning unless you are off it by eight.
Camping runs from October to April in practice. Developed sites have hookups, restrooms and showers, and the weeknights are empty. November and March are the sweet spots, cool nights without the holiday crowds.
The trails
- Go John Trail, about 5.8 miles, moderate, the loop around the mountain. Counter-clockwise from the trailhead puts the climbs first and in shade. Allow three hours, carry water, expect bikes.
- Overton Trail, the shorter loop on the lower slopes, for an hour-and-a-half outing with the same views at the top of its climb.
- Clay Mine Trail, a short walk to an old mine adit, the one trail here with a story at the end of it; the nature center explains what was dug.
- The connectors near the campground, flat and fine for small children and strollers in the morning.
With kids, and the neighborhood
The nature center is the children’s part: live snakes, lizards and tortoises in terrariums, a desert exhibit, rangers who answer questions, and restrooms. Pair it with the Clay Mine Trail and the picnic ramadas and you have a morning. Older children can do the Go John; younger ones should not. The park is on the west side of town, so the saloon strip is a ten-minute drive east; our Cave Creek guide has the lunch options, and the north Scottsdale trailheads in our beyond-Gateway note are the comparison.
The story
Maricopa County began assembling its regional parks in the 1950s, when the land around Phoenix was cheap and the county’s planners could see what the city would do to it. The idea was a ring of large desert parks on the Valley’s rim, each big enough to hold a mountain, and it worked: Estrella, White Tank, Usery, McDowell Mountain, Lake Pleasant and this one, among others, now total more than a hundred thousand acres and are the reason the Valley’s edges still look like desert. Cave Creek Regional Park joined the system in 1963, on land the 1870s gold seekers had worked over and left, and it has grown into its present 2,922 acres with the campground, the nature center and the trail network added over the decades since.
The mining is still visible. The Cave Creek Mining District, organized in 1873, spread claims through these hills, and the Clay Mine Trail leads to one of the adits; the tailings on the slopes are the rest of the record. None of it made anyone rich, which is why the land was available to a county parks department ninety years later. The vehicle fee is ten dollars in 2026, with an increase scheduled for 2028, and the annual pass remains the sensible purchase for anyone who will visit two county parks in a year.
The Scottsdale connection
Scottsdale’s own preserve ends at the city line; the county’s parks pick up where it stops. McDowell Mountain Regional Park on the east side of the McDowells and Cave Creek Regional Park on the north side of the Valley are the two county parks Scottsdale hikers end up in when they have run out of Preserve trails, and the Brown’s Ranch trail system in the north Preserve is the nearest Scottsdale equivalent to the Go John: long, open, shared with bikes, with the saguaro forest and the long views. The difference is the campground and the nature center. Scottsdale has neither.
Getting there
Scottsdale Road or the Loop 101 north to the Carefree Highway, west about six miles, past Cave Creek Road, to 32nd Street, then north about two miles to the park entrance on Lava Lane; the fee booth is at the gate. From Cave Creek’s saloon strip it is a ten-minute drive west and south. Forty-five minutes from Old Town, twenty-five from the Pinnacle Peak resorts, and no transit of any kind.