What it is
Spur Cross Ranch Conservation Area is 2,154 acres of upper Sonoran Desert at the north edge of Cave Creek, where the pavement runs out and the Tonto National Forest begins. Its spine is the creek the town is named for: Cave Creek comes down out of the forest here and, in the winter months, actually runs, under cottonwoods and sycamores and across the trails on log bridges and rock-hops. Around it are saguaro-covered hills, Elephant Mountain rising to 3,926 feet on the west, the ruins of 1880s mines with names like the Phoenix and the Mashackety, close to ninety recorded archaeological sites including Hohokam petroglyph panels, and the empty site of the Spur Cross Guest Ranch, which ran from 1928 to 1953 and gave the place its name.
Eight trails cross it. The Spur Cross Trail, 5.3 miles, runs the length of the area west to east. The two-mile Dragonfly and the 0.8-mile Metate follow the creek. The 1.2-mile Tortuga, the Fairy Duster and Towhee loops fill in the flats near the entrance. The 2.1-mile Elephant Mountain Trail is primitive and climbs to a saddle. And a segment of the 315-mile Maricopa Trail passes through on its way into the forest. The whole thing is owned jointly by the Town of Cave Creek, Maricopa County and the State of Arizona, run by the county, and open from six to eight in winter.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Because the McDowell Sonoran Preserve is bigger, closer and magnificent, and it is dry. Every trail in Scottsdale is a desert trail. Spur Cross in January is a desert trail with a creek in it, cottonwoods going yellow over the water, and the sound of running water in a place that has none of it the rest of the year. It is also quieter than anything on our best hikes list, the archaeology is denser, and the mountain at the back is covered in more saguaros than any slope in the McDowells.
The practical version
Forty-five minutes from Old Town, the last four miles on Spur Cross Road, with a short unpaved stretch at the end that any car handles. A few dollars a person in cash at the entry station, or the county annual pass. A small lot, portable toilets, an information booth, no water. Go between November and April, in the morning, and do the Dragonfly loop.
When to go
December through March is the season, when the creek runs and the temperature is right for a four-mile walk at nine in the morning. The weeks after a wet storm are the best of all, with the crossings knee-deep and the cottonwoods dripping. March adds wildflowers on the flats and, after a wet winter, carpets of poppies on the south-facing slopes; it is also the month the lot fills by nine on a Saturday, so come on a weekday.
April and early May are still good early, with the creek receding to pools. Summer is a sunrise-only proposition under the summer sunrise rules, the gate opening at five, and the creek is dry unless a monsoon storm has just come through, in which case it can be dangerous; stay out of the wash when the sky to the north is dark.
The trails, in order of worth
- The Dragonfly loop, about four miles: Spur Cross Trail to the creek, cross, Dragonfly north under the cottonwoods past the sign for the neighboring Jewel of the Creek Preserve, Metate back along the water. Three hundred feet of climbing. The best short hike within an hour of Scottsdale.
- Elephant Mountain, the big loop, nine miles and 1,900 feet via the Spur Cross Trail, a stretch of the Maricopa Trail with several creek crossings, the rough Limestone Trail to a spring and the primitive Elephant Mountain Trail over a saddle through a forest of saguaros. Five to seven hours. The summit itself is closed.
- Fairy Duster and Towhee, short flat loops near the fee station for small children and the first hour of a visit.
- Tortuga, 1.2 miles, a connector that makes a figure-eight with the Spur Cross Trail for a middle-length morning.
With kids, and the neighborhood
The creek is the children’s attraction: tadpoles in the pools in spring, rocks to hop, a footbridge or two. Keep the loop to Dragonfly and Metate and allow twice the time. There is no water, shade only under the trees by the creek, and the fee station takes exact cash. Afterwards, Big Earl’s in town opens at seven on weekends for breakfast and does burgers after, and the rest of the strip is in our Cave Creek guide. Cave Creek Regional Park, the county park on the west side of town, is the bigger, drier, more developed alternative with a nature center and a campground.
The story
People have lived on this creek for a very long time. The Hohokam farmed its banks between roughly A.D. 500 and 1250 and left nearly ninety documented sites in what is now the conservation area: petroglyph panels on the boulders, metates ground into bedrock, the footprints of structures, and the agave fields that our Hohokam agave note describes in the McDowells and that show up here too. After them the Apache and Yavapai moved through seasonally. The Anglo chapter opened in the 1870s with the Cave Creek Mining District, and the Maricopa, Phoenix, Mashackety and Catherine mines worked these hills for gold with small results and lasting scars.
The ranch came in 1928. The Spur Cross Guest Ranch, on the west bank of the creek just north of today’s Spur Cross Trail, was a working cattle operation that took in paying guests who wanted a Western stay, part of the same dude-ranch wave that built Rancho Mañana in town and the guest ranches of Scottsdale. It passed through several owners and closed in 1953 after Warren Beaubien, who owned it then, died; investors bought the land and demolished the buildings to lower their taxes. For the next half-century the land sat, and by the 1990s it was zoned and planned for houses.
What happened next is the reason Cave Creek is still Cave Creek. The town, which had incorporated in 1986 specifically to control its own growth, decided to buy the ranch rather than watch it become a subdivision, and found partners. On January 9, 2001, Governor Jane Hull, Maricopa County Supervisor Jan Brewer and Cave Creek Mayor Vincent Francia signed the documents that made the 2,154 acres a limited-use public conservation area, owned jointly by the town, the state and the county and run by the county parks department as the newest addition to its regional park system. The conservation area marked twenty-five years in 2026. Residents of the town pay a dollar a year for a pass, which tells you who they think it belongs to.
The Scottsdale connection
Scottsdale did the same thing at larger scale and later. The McDowell Sonoran Preserve was assembled by city sales taxes approved in 1995 and 2004, and now protects more than thirty thousand acres; Cave Creek’s 2001 purchase was the small town’s version of the same instinct, made in the same years, against the same pressure coming north from Phoenix. The two preserves are twelve miles apart and the Maricopa Trail that passes through Spur Cross is part of the loop that eventually links them around the whole county.
Getting there
Scottsdale Road north to the Carefree Highway, west two miles to Cave Creek Road, north through town past Harold’s, then right on Spur Cross Road; it jogs right at Grapevine Road and continues about four miles to the lot at its end, with the last stretch unpaved but graded for ordinary cars. Forty-five minutes from Old Town in practice, twenty-five from the Pinnacle Peak resorts. The lot is small; by nine on a cool-season weekend you may wait for a space.