What is Colcord Ridge Campground?
Colcord Ridge is the high, flat shoulder of the Mogollon Rim that Young Road crosses on its way south from SR 260 toward the village of Young. The campground sits at the top of it, at 7,600 feet, in a stand of ponderosa with enough white fir and Douglas fir mixed in to say you are near the top of the forest. It is primitive in the Forest Service sense: vault toilets, picnic tables, fire rings, no water, no trash cans, no fee, no host.
The Forest Service does not publish a number of sites. Older guides describe roughly a dozen informal spots off a dirt loop; some campers describe it as a dispersed area with no defined units. Both are probably right depending on the year. The important fact in 2026 is that the Forest Service lists it as closed for a large-scale clean-up and restoration project. The page is contradictory, with a “site open” banner above a closure note, and it has carried that note since at least March. Whatever the restoration is, it suggests the place had been used hard.
When it reopens, it will be the free, shaded, no-view alternative to the rim-edge sites along Forest Road 300: 10 to 15 degrees cooler than Payson, quiet on weekdays, and a mile and a half from the trout in Canyon Creek. What you get is big trees and silence for nothing. What you do not get is water, a view, a defined site or, this year, a guarantee that the gate is open.
How to camp Colcord Ridge right
Check the status first. Read the Forest Service page or call the Payson Ranger Station at (928) 474-7900 before you go. As of this writing it is closed for restoration, and the status line on that page is the thing to trust over any listing, this one included.
Pay nothing, claim early. Free, first come, first served, 14-day limit, quiet hours 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. Groups over 75 need a district permit. There is no host and no reservation system, so a Friday arrival in July means taking whatever is left.
Get there. Loop 101 north to SR 87, the Beeline, 75 miles to Payson. Turn east on SR 260 and drive about 33 miles, up the Rim and past Forest Lakes. Turn right (south) on Young Road, Forest Road 512, signed for SR 288 and Young. The pavement ends at the turn. After 3 miles of graded dirt the campground is at the junction with FR 33, which drops left toward Canyon Creek and the fish hatchery. Count on about 145 minutes from Old Town. The Google pin for this campground carries a Tucson street address; ignore it. The coordinates here are the Forest Service’s.
Respect the road. FR 512 is a maintained, graded dirt road, fine for a sedan when dry. In rain it gets slick, and south of the campground it is 23 more miles of dirt to Young; it is a road, not a shortcut. Trailers must be under 32 feet, and the junction site is flat.
Pick the season. Listed as year-round but snowbound in winter, and the Forest Service warns of temperatures in the teens. Realistically May through October, with frost in both shoulder months at this elevation; an October night drops well below freezing even when Payson is pleasant. July and August bring the monsoon, with afternoon lightning on the Rim most days; the monsoon field manual covers the rules.
Water and toilets. There is no potable water here or at Canyon Creek. Bring all of it. The vault toilets are serviced about once a week, so bring your own paper too.
Bears and dogs. This is bear country: food and dog food in a hard-sided vehicle, always. Dogs are welcome on leash.
Skip it if you want a view or a creek. For the Rim edge, go to Rim Campground or Mogollon Campground, both $18, or the free FR 300 dispersed sites. For the creek, go the extra 1.5 miles to Upper Canyon Creek. For something more remote, Valentine Ridge is farther down the Young Road.
A feud country ridge with a rancher’s name
The pine country along this stretch of the Rim was Western Apache ground long before it was anyone’s ranch. Tonto and Cibecue bands hunted it in summer, and the Fort Apache Indian Reservation still begins just to the east. On July 17, 1882, the Army caught a band of White Mountain Apache raiders at the Battle of Big Dry Wash, on the Rim to the northwest, the last major battle between soldiers and Apaches in Arizona. Within a few years the cattle outfits moved in behind the troops.
The Colcords were among them. William “Bill” Colcord, born in Louisiana in 1867, reached Flagstaff in 1885 with his younger brother Harvey and a herd of cattle; Bill worked for the Babbitt brothers while Harvey tended the family stock, and after about a year they moved to Walnut Creek, west of Pleasant Valley. That put them on the edge of the Pleasant Valley War, the Graham and Tewksbury feud that ran from 1882 to 1892 in the valley below this ridge, killed somewhere between 35 and 50 men, and drew in sheepmen, rustlers and the Hashknife outfit, whose brand the Holbrook posse still carries to Scottsdale each winter. The brothers knew both factions and survived it. Bill moved to Payson in 1894, ran a ranch in Round Valley, served three terms on the Gila County Board of Supervisors and died in Globe in 1961. Colcord Mountain, Colcord Road and the rest of the family’s names are scattered across the district; no source we found says which Colcord the ridge was named for, so we will not guess.
The Forest Service arrived with the Tonto Forest Reserve, created on October 3, 1905, and the Young Road became the long dirt link between Pleasant Valley and the Rim. The campground itself has no published construction date; it is the kind of unfeatured Forest Service camp that grew up at a road junction as the 260 corridor filled with summer cabins at Forest Lakes. A mile and a half down FR 33, the Forest Service’s Canyon Creek Hatchery, run by Arizona Game and Fish since 1969 and rebuilt in 1992, is why the creek below holds so many trout.
The most recent history is fire. In June 2002 the Chediski Fire, half of the Rodeo-Chediski complex that burned nearly 460,000 acres, ran up Canyon Creek south of Forest Lakes. Forest Lakes was evacuated, and crews pulled back to SR 260 and the Young Road itself to burn out against the flames. The ridge you camp on was part of the firebreak. The 2026 restoration closure is a smaller chapter of the same story: a heavily used free camp being cleaned up and, presumably, reshaped before it reopens.
Why it matters
Colcord Ridge is a quiet spot with a loud backstory, which is true of most of the Rim country. The road you drive in on was the route into the deadliest range feud in Arizona; the name on the sign belongs to a pair of cattlemen who lived through it; the trees around you survived a fire line drawn along that same road in 2002. It explains why the Tonto’s free camps look the way they do: no water, no fee, no defined sites, and periodic closures when use outruns maintenance. For a Scottsdale visitor the verdict is plain. When it is open, it is the easiest free pine camping off the 260, two and a half hours from Old Town; check the status, bring water, and go down the hill to Canyon Creek for the fishing.