“The West’s Most Western Town” has spent seventy years selling a horse it mostly doesn’t ride anymore. The stables that lined Scottsdale Road in the 1960s are subdivisions now, and the Arabians at WestWorld are shown, not rented. But a handful of working trail outfits survive at the edges of the city, and for somewhere between $70 and $220 they’ll put a first-timer on a horse and walk them into real Sonoran Desert. This is how to pick one.
What a desert trail ride is like
Set aside the movie. A guided ride is a walk, nose to tail, on a horse that has done this route a thousand times and would do it without you. Your job is to sit up, hold the reins loosely, lean back on the downhills and keep hold of your phone. The wrangler at the front talks about saguaros and Hohokam pottery and the coyote that just crossed the wash; the wrangler at the back fixes stirrups. An hour covers two or three miles. Nobody trots unless everyone agrees, and the ranches that advertise loping rides screen for experience first.
Minimum ages run 6 to 8 and weight limits 230 to 280 pounds depending on the ranch, both firm, because the horses are the ones who carry the consequences. Closed shoes and long pants are the dress code. Sunset and moonlight rides cost a little more and are worth it.
The ranches, one by one
MacDonald’s Ranch, 26540 N Scottsdale Rd, is the one inside the city and the one with the longest story. It began as a horse-and-cattle operation in the late 1950s on 36,000 acres of what is now North Scottsdale, opened to the public on Easter Sunday 1970 as Old MacDonald’s Farm with two-dollar rides, and took the current name in 1994. Today it’s one-hour guided rides through the state-trust desert behind the ranch, sunset rides, cowboy cookouts with a hayride, and the moonlight rides that are its signature: offered only in the few nights around each full moon, with an adult riding alongside any kid. Riders must be 6 and under about 230 pounds. Expect roughly $70 to $100 for the hour and more for the cookout packages; a deposit holds the slot. In October the front pasture becomes the pumpkin patch that half of north Scottsdale grew up visiting. Summer hours shrink to early mornings and evenings with Monday and Tuesday closures. We have a full page on the ranch.
The Stables at Fort McDowell Adventures, on the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation east of Fountain Hills, about thirty minutes from Old Town, is the ride with water in it. The standard outing is 90 minutes across the mesquite bosque and through the Verde River, which the horses wade belly-deep in the cool months. Riders 8 and up, weight limit about 280 pounds, roughly $95 for the ride as of this writing with discounts floating around. Hay-wagon rides and a “city slicker” cattle drive are the group options. It’s the most scenic ride on the list and the one we send visitors who’ve ridden before.
Cave Creek Outfitters, 31313 N 144th St, sits on the Scottsdale side of the Rio Verde road, in the open country between the Preserve and the Tonto National Forest that the Rio Verde Foothills guide describes. One-hour rides around $75, ninety minutes around $100, private rides from $125 with a two-rider minimum, ages 6 and up, 240-pound limit, no doubling up. Departures run 10, 2 and 4 from September to May and flip to 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. in summer. The same outfit rents UTVs for the desert tracks, and the fall and spring “cowboy games and lunch” packages are the group-day version. Reservations by phone only.
Arizona Horseback Adventures, 44029 N Spur Cross Rd in Cave Creek, was Spur Cross Stables until a 2019 change of hands and still sits on the site of an 1870s gold mine at the gate of the Spur Cross Ranch Conservation Area. Rides go into the conservation area and the Tonto foothills in groups of seven or fewer: an hour from about $69 at the early-bird times, two hours around $120, sunset rides $85 to $135. Ages 6 and up. It’s the wildest country on this list and forty-five minutes from Old Town, so make a day of it with lunch at the Buffalo Chip.
Ponderosa Stables, 10215 S Central Ave in Phoenix, forty minutes south, is the old standby at the Central Avenue gate of South Mountain Park. Rides run from an hour to a full day on the park’s trails, the ride-to-a-steakhouse dinner is a Phoenix institution, and it’s historically the least expensive hour in the Valley. Farther, cheaper, and more Phoenix than Scottsdale.
Riding your own horse in the Preserve
Every trail in the McDowell Sonoran Preserve is shared-use, and horses outrank everyone: bikes yield to hikers, hikers and bikes both yield to horses. Two trailheads were built with riders in mind. Brown’s Ranch has horse-trailer parking and a water trough beside the trailhead building, and the rolling crushed-granite loops through the saguaro forest are the best riding in the system. Pima-Dynamite has a separate equestrian lot with hitching rails and a trough and a hundred miles of singletrack north and east, which you will share with mountain bikers who mostly know the rules. Gates are sunrise to sunset.
For arena work and a place to unload, Stonegate Equestrian Park at 9555 N 120th St is the city’s public horse facility: two riding arenas, a round pen and a nature trail, free and first-come. It’s the last piece of city infrastructure that takes the slogan literally.
Season and heat rules
Every ranch on this list rides year-round, and every one changes the day in summer. From May through September there are no midday rides; the schedule collapses to a dawn departure and a dusk one, and a few outfits close a couple of days a week to rest the string. Book sunrise, drink water before you mount, and don’t argue with a wrangler who cancels at 108. October through April is the season, and the desert is at its best from a saddle in February when the rodeo and the Arabian show remind the city what it used to be.
What to wear
Long pants, closed shoes with a low heel (running shoes are fine, sandals are not), a brimmed hat with a chin cord or a ball cap, sunscreen, and a light layer for a sunset ride because the desert drops twenty degrees at dark. Leave the backpack; most ranches have you carry nothing but a phone and a water bottle. The Western heritage note covers the boots question, which is that you don’t need them.
Our pick
A first-timer or a family with a six-year-old: MacDonald’s, an hour, on a full-moon night. Someone who’s ridden and wants the photo: Fort McDowell and the river. Someone who wants to feel far from everything: Spur Cross, two hours, early. Everyone gets the same horse’s-eye view of the desert, which is slower and lower than the hiking one and, on the right morning, better.