What it means
The Preserve, with a capital P and no further explanation, is the McDowell Sonoran Preserve: more than 30,500 acres of mountain, wash and saguaro forest along Scottsdale’s northern and eastern edges, owned by the city and protected as desert for good. It covers roughly a third of Scottsdale, carries more than 230 miles of trail, and was bought with sales taxes the voters imposed on themselves.
The word does two jobs. On a Saturday morning it is a destination: “we’re doing the Preserve” means a trailhead, a water bottle and a parking lot that is already full. At City Hall it is a warning. Any proposal that touches Preserve land, a building, a road, a parking expansion, arrives already in trouble, because the voters who paid for it have spent thirty years making clear that it is theirs.
The trails, trailheads and seasons are in the Preserve park guide. How the votes and the charter work is in the Preserve and the voters guide. This page is about the word.
Where you’ll meet it
At the Gateway, Tom’s Thumb and Brown’s Ranch trailheads; on ballots, as the Preserve tax and Prop 420; in every north Scottsdale listing that promises “Preserve views”; and in the best hikes guide.
Where the word came from
The name is older than the Preserve. On November 17, 1990, twelve residents met at Mustang Library to stop the McDowell Mountains from becoming subdivisions. Jane Rau, who said watching saguaros bulldozed nearly made her cry, and Karen Bertiger signed the incorporation papers on January 21, 1991, and the group called itself the McDowell Sonoran Land Trust. Both halves were borrowed. “McDowell” came from the mountains, which took it from Fort McDowell, the 1865 Army post on the Verde named for General Irvin McDowell. “Sonoran” was the desert they were trying to save.
The city adopted the name when the council formally established the McDowell Sonoran Preserve on October 3, 1994, starting with three parcels it already owned, 2,860 acres in all. The money came next. On May 23, 1995, voters approved a 30-year, 0.2 percent sales tax for land, by 64 percent; on May 18, 2004 they added another 0.15 percent. The land trust, its job shifting from lobbying to looking after trails, renamed itself the McDowell Sonoran Conservancy in 2005.
Somewhere in those years the full name wore down to “the Preserve.” Nobody claims the shortening; it is simply what happens when a place becomes part of daily life. The capital letter stayed.
What it is not
It is not McDowell Mountain Regional Park, the Maricopa County park on the Fountain Hills side of the range, which charges admission and allows camping. It is not Pinnacle Peak Park, a separate city park. And it is not any of the gated communities with “Preserve” in their names, which borrow the word for its view.
The fine print
“Preserve” is a legal word here, not a marketing one. Land in the Preserve is held as permanent natural open space, and since November 6, 2018 the city charter has backed that up: Prop 420, a citizen initiative passed with about 71 percent, bars altering Preserve land from its natural state, or spending Preserve tax money on anything but land and trails, without a public vote. It grew out of the fight over the Desert Discovery Center, a proposed desert education building, and it worked.
The numbers move as the city closes purchases, so treat them as floors. The city says more than 30,500 acres and more than 230 miles of trail; the Conservancy says one third of the city and calls it the largest urban preserve in the world, a claim that depends on how you define urban. The city lists ten trailhead access points, from Brown’s Ranch in the north to Lost Dog Wash in the south.
One distinction locals keep: the Preserve is not a park, and it is not run like one. There are no lawns, no ballfields and no lights on the trails. The volunteer stewards who patrol it will tell you so, politely, the first time you call it a park.