What is First Water Road?
First Water Road is Forest Road 78, a 2.5-mile dirt road that leaves the Apache Trail just past the Lost Dutchman State Park entrance and climbs onto the bajada to the First Water Trailhead, the busiest door into the Superstition Wilderness. For a long time the pullouts along it were a known quantity: free, close to town, a Flatiron view out the windshield, and nobody checking. The owner’s “Camp 99” pin, about a mile in from the highway at about 2,050 feet, is one of those pullouts. We could not find the name anywhere official; it reads like a personal label.
The free camping is over. In January 2023 the Mesa Ranger District prohibited camping along the whole road, 300 feet either side, citing resource damage, abandoned property, trash and dumped wastewater, and in January 2026 it renewed the order for five more years, through January 11, 2031. The same order shuts camping at the Bulldog Canyon OHV staging areas and a horse-trailer lot at SR 88 milepost 203. The trailhead stays open as day use, with vault toilets and no water, and the wilderness beyond it is still open to backpackers.
This entry exists for people who remember the pullouts, or who found the pin, and are about to drive out with a tent. What you get at First Water is a free trailhead for the best loop hikes on the north side of the Superstitions and a legal backpacking entrance. What you do not get is a place to park and sleep, a fee station, water, or any ambiguity about the rule.
How to do First Water right
Do not camp on the road. Prohibited everywhere along FR 78 until 2031, pullouts and parking lots included, under Forest Order 03-12-03-26-00. The fine is up to $5,000 as a Class B misdemeanor. Call the Mesa Ranger District at (480) 610-3300 if you want to check whether the order has changed; the Leave No Trace failures that produced it are the reason it will not change soon.
Get there. Take US 60 east to Idaho Road in Apache Junction, north to SR 88 (the Apache Trail), and northeast about 5 miles, past the state park entrance, to the signed FR 78 turnoff on the right. Figure 55 minutes from Old Town. The dirt starts immediately: washboard, embedded rock and a few ledgy dips that the Forest Service says are not maintained for passenger cars. A careful SUV is fine when it is dry; a low sedan will be unhappy; after rain the dips hold water and the surface gets slick. Drive it in daylight the first time. The trailhead lot holds a few dozen cars and fills by eight on winter weekends, with overflow strung back down the road.
Sleep next door. Lost Dutchman State Park is literally the next driveway on SR 88, with about 135 sites, hookups on some, showers, and the same Flatiron view; book it weeks ahead from November to March. Farther up the Apache Trail, Tortilla Campground is a winter-only Forest Service option when it is open. For free camping, the nearest legal options are the Tonto dispersed areas farther up the Apache Trail or the BLM parcels north of Apache Junction, and both have their own problems with trash and shooters.
Hike. First Water is the start of the Dutchman’s Trail, Second Water, Black Mesa and the Garden Valley loop. The First Water Trailhead guide covers the routes. Backpacking into the wilderness is allowed; groups of 15 or fewer, no permit, no fires during restrictions.
Pick the season. October through April. The road corridor has no shade; summer hikes start at first light and end by nine, per the summer rules.
Water. None at the trailhead or on the road. Fill up in Apache Junction.
Dogs. Fine on leash at the trailhead and in the wilderness.
Skip it if you came to camp, not to hike. Book the state park, or drive the extra hour to the Rim where dispersed camping is still open. For the view the pullouts used to give you, the state park’s own trails have it from a paid site with a shower.
How a dirt road lost its campers
First Water is named for what it is: one of the few reliable springs on the northwest side of the Superstitions, where the mountain’s drainage reaches the bajada. People used it for a long time before anyone drove to it. Salado farmers built a pueblo in Garden Valley, a few miles up the trail from the spring, that a Phoenix newspaper in 1893 described as three stories high around a stone-paved courtyard; the Western Apache and Yavapai held the range afterward, and the springs along its base were their water too. When Jacob Waltz died in Phoenix in 1891 and the Lost Dutchman story began, the First Water drainage became one of the standard approaches for the prospectors who followed it in, and it has carried a steady trickle of them ever since.
The road came with the dam. Between 1903 and 1905 the federal government built the Mesa-Roosevelt road, soon known as the Apache Trail, along the foot of the range to haul freight to the Roosevelt Dam site, and ranch tracks branched off it to the springs and cattle camps on the mountain’s edge. First Water Road was one of those: a dirt spur to a spring and a cow camp, which is what the ranch buildings near the trailhead were. The Forest Service drew the Superstition Primitive Area in 1939 and Congress made it the Superstition Wilderness in 1964, which fixed the boundary at the end of the road and made the First Water Trailhead the wilderness’s busiest entrance. The pullouts along the last 2.5 miles, free and five minutes from the highway, became the Valley’s informal campground.
The state park arrived in stages. The Bureau of Land Management developed the flats below the Flatiron as a day-use area in 1972, with paved roads, ramadas and restrooms, and began talking with Arizona State Parks about a transfer the next year. A 1975 bill to buy the land at $2.50 an acre failed; after Congress amended the Recreation and Public Purposes Act to let states take federal recreation land at no cost, 292 acres were transferred on September 13, 1977 and Lost Dutchman State Park was born, with a lease in 1983 bringing it to 320 acres. It nearly closed in the 2010 state budget crisis, when it was one of 13 parks on the list; donations and a public outcry kept it open, and its campground has since become the obvious answer to the question First Water Road used to answer for free.
The closure was a long time coming. By the 2010s the Apache Junction side of the Superstitions was absorbing the camping pressure of a metro area of five million people, and the FR 78 pullouts showed it: fire rings every fifty feet, abandoned trailers, bagged trash left for someone else, and gray and black water dumped on the ground within sight of the spring the road is named for. In January 2023 the Mesa Ranger District issued the first prohibition on camping within 300 feet of the road, citing exactly those conditions. The order ran its course, the district judged the problem unsolved, and on January 12, 2026 Forest Order 03-12-03-26-00 renewed the ban through January 11, 2031, adding the Bulldog Canyon OHV staging areas and a horse-trailer lot at SR 88 milepost 203 for the same reasons. The trailhead, the trails and the wilderness stayed open; only the sleeping stopped.
What comes next depends on whether the corridor recovers. Five years is the Forest Service’s standard horizon for an order like this, and the pattern on other Tonto roads near the Valley, from the Bulldog Canyon staging areas to the Bartlett Lake and Salt River shorelines, has been renewal rather than reopening. The “Camp 99” pin, whatever it meant to whoever dropped it, marks a place that is now a view from the driver’s seat and nothing more.
Why it matters
First Water Road is a small case study in what happens when free public land sits an hour from five million people. The spring, the Salado pueblo, the prospectors’ trail, the dam road and the wilderness boundary all made it an entrance; the trash made it a closure. It is also a reminder that the Tonto manages by order, and that an order renewed twice is a policy. For a Scottsdale visitor the verdict is plain: hike from First Water, book Lost Dutchman to sleep, and do not test the sign.