What it is
Saguaro Lake Ranch is a guest ranch on the Salt River directly below Stewart Mountain Dam, at the end of a dirt lane off Bush Highway about 45 minutes from Old Town. It was not built to be one. In 1928 the Salt River Project put up a construction camp here for the crews building the dam: bunkhouses, a mess hall, an ice house, a commissary. When the dam was finished in 1930 and Saguaro Lake filled behind it, the camp was sold, became a fishing resort with a little marina and a store, and in the late 1940s was bought by the Durand family, who turned it into a guest ranch and still own it. The mess hall is the lodge. The bunkhouses are the cabins, 20 of them, under cottonwoods between the river and the cliffs.
The ranch does the three things a guest ranch should. The stable rides the river bottom and the desert above it, for guests and for day riders, on trails where the Salt River wild horses graze. The river itself is at the door, cold and clear from the dam, and the ranch rents kayaks, paddleboards and tubes and shuttles you upstream. And in the cool season there are cowboy cookouts with live music under the trees, included with the room and open to the public by reservation.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Because Scottsdale sold its dude ranches to build resorts, and the ones that survive north of town are an hour away and a different thing. This is the closest real guest ranch to the city, with water, which none of the others have, and it is in the middle of the best half-day east of Scottsdale: Saguaro Lake and the Desert Belle five minutes up the road, Butcher Jones beach beyond, the wild horses below. Our Salt River note has the river; this is where you sleep on it.
The practical version
Loop 202 to Power Road, north onto Bush Highway, about 14 miles; the signed turnoff is on the left just before the lake. Book a cabin or just a ride. Cool season for the cookouts and the full board; summer for the river and the rates. The dam is a short walk up the lane and the horses are a short walk down.
When to go
Late September to early May is the ranch’s season, when lodging includes meals and the cookouts run; cabins book out on winter weekends. March and April are the best weeks of the year here: cottonwoods leafing, the river full, foals with the horse bands. Summer the ranch is quieter and cheaper, the stable rides at dawn only, and the river becomes the point, with the tubing crowd a few miles downstream and the stretch below the dam still cold and relatively calm. The monsoon turns the cliffs gold in the late afternoon and the river brown for a day after a storm.
What to do
- Ride at sunset. The river trail at dusk is the one ride in the Valley that reliably meets wild horses, from a height that keeps everyone comfortable. Our horseback riding note ranks it against the Scottsdale stables.
- Paddle the dam stretch. Kayak or paddleboard, shuttled upstream, floating back to the ranch; two hours of cold, clear water with the horses often standing in it.
- Walk to the dam. Up the lane before breakfast, when the outflow steams in the cold.
- The cookout. Grilled meat, beans, a band and the stars, in season; reserve even as a guest.
- The lake. Saguaro Lake Marina and the Desert Belle are five minutes up Bush Highway; our lake guide has them.
With kids
Strong. A horse, a river, a campfire, no television, and the Butcher Jones beach up the road. The stable has age and height rules for the trail rides; ask when booking. Our Western heritage note is the reading for the car.
The neighborhood
There is none, and that is the point: the Tonto National Forest on every side, cliffs behind and the Goldfield Mountains across the river. The nearest town is Mesa, 14 miles back down Bush Highway; the nearest bar is the marina restaurant.
The story
Stewart Mountain Dam was the last of the Salt River Project’s four dams on the river, begun in 1928 and finished in 1930, and like the others it was built by men who lived on site. The camp went in on the river bank below the dam site: a mess hall that doubled as ice house and commissary, bunkhouses, a bathhouse, laid out under the cottonwoods where the canyon opens. When the dam was done the Project had no use for a camp, and a couple from Kansas, Phil and Marie Lewis, bought it, secured a concession permit from the Forest Service and the Interior Department, and ran it as a fishing resort for the new lake: a marina, a general store, a gas station, a restaurant, cabins for rent.
In 1948 the Durand family bought it and turned the fishing camp into a guest ranch, adding horses and taking in the winter visitors who were then discovering Arizona’s dude ranches. The family has owned it since, through nearly eighty years in which almost every other guest ranch in the Valley sold to a developer, and it is now managed for them by a couple who run the stable and the river operation as well as the lodge. The buildings are still the camp’s; the mess hall is the dining room, and the place looks more like it did in 1950 than anything else within an hour of Scottsdale.
The Scottsdale connection
Scottsdale was a dude-ranch town once, and the ranches are mostly resorts now; the Hermosa Inn in Paradise Valley, built as Lon Megargee’s ranch and guest house, is the nearest survivor of the type on that side of town, and it is a hotel. Saguaro Lake Ranch is what the type looks like when it did not become a hotel: the same era, the same horses, the same cottonwoods, with a river instead of a golf course. The water that runs past the cabins is on its way to the Arizona Canal and the Scottsdale Waterfront.
Getting there
From Old Town, the Loop 101 south to the Loop 202 east, exit Power Road and turn north; Power Road becomes Bush Highway at the forest boundary and runs up the river about 14 miles. The ranch turnoff is signed on the left shortly before the Saguaro Lake turn; the last stretch is a graded dirt lane down to the river. From North Scottsdale, Shea Boulevard east to the Beeline, south to Bush Highway, then south; the ranch turnoff is on the right. Forty-five minutes either way with no traffic. The stable and the lodge keep separate phone lines; book rides with the stable.