What is Mingus Mountain Campground?
Mingus Mountain is the long, dark wall west of Cottonwood that Jerome clings to the side of. Its summit is a broad, nearly flat tableland at about 7,600 feet under the 7,810-foot high point, covered in ponderosa pine and Gambel oak, and Mingus Mountain Campground sits on it: 27 sites, 19 standard sites in Loop A, 6 tent-only sites in Loop B and 2 more on the spur road, plus a group site, with four vault toilets, potable water at hydrants (not for filling RV tanks) and a Forest Service host. Summer afternoons run in the 70s when Scottsdale is at 110. Nights in June drop into the 40s.
For years its draw was electric hookups, rare on a national forest. Lightning took the system out in February 2024, the Forest Service has posted no repair date, and recreation.gov now lists every site as non-electric. What is left is a good, plain mountain campground with one feature nothing else near Scottsdale has: a quarter mile east of the loops, the summit ends in a cliff, and on the lip is the hang-gliding and paragliding launch, one of the best-known free-flight sites in the state. The overlook beside it takes in the whole Verde Valley, Sedona’s red rocks, and on a clear day the San Francisco Peaks. Mingus Lake, a small stocked pond across SR 89A near Potato Patch, is a mile away.
What you get is cool pines, a view and Jerome’s bars 20 minutes downhill, closer than the Rim. What you do not get is power, a shower, a winter season or a quiet summit on a stormy July afternoon.
How to camp Mingus Mountain right
Reserve, and confirm the price. Most sites and the group site are on recreation.gov, a few first come. The posted rate is about $18 a night, $5 per extra vehicle; the Forest Service page also shows an older $10 tent / $14 electric schedule, so confirm at booking. Senior and Access passes are half price. Check-in after 2 p.m., check-out by noon. Stay limit 14 days in 30 on the whole forest.
Get there the easy way with a trailer. Two routes, about 2 hours 20 minutes either way. The gentler one: Loop 101 north to I-17, north to exit 278 (SR 169) at Cordes Junction, west on 169 to SR 69, briefly north to SR 89A, then east up the Prescott Valley side of Mingus about 12 miles to the summit. The scenic one: I-17 to Camp Verde, SR 260 west to Cottonwood, then 89A up through Jerome on 15 miles of switchbacks with no shoulder, which is lovely in a car and miserable with a trailer.
Turn at the summit. Across from the Summit Picnic Area and Potato Patch, turn onto FR 104. It is paved for about 2 miles, then gravel for half a mile to a four-way stop; turn right into the campground. Any car can do it from May through October. Snow closes it the rest of the year.
Pick the season. May 1 to October 31. Early June and late September are the sweet spots, with aspen and oak color in late September and October. Thunderstorms arrive most afternoons from mid-June to mid-September with the monsoon, and this summit takes lightning directly: have the tent up by 1 p.m. and be off the rim and under a roof when clouds build.
Water and supplies. No electricity. Water at hydrants in the E-loop and the Vista overlook, none in the tent loop, none for RV tanks; fill jugs before you set up. No ice or firewood sold here; the nearest stores are Jerome (11 miles) and Cottonwood or Prescott Valley (about 20). Cell service is better than most forest campgrounds because the summit has towers; Verizon tends to be strongest.
Pick the loop. Loop A’s outer sites back onto the forest; Loop B is the small tent loop and the quietest. Walk out to the launch in the evening: the whole Verde Valley is below you, and on a weekend afternoon the pilots are the show. The launch is for experienced pilots only, managed with the Arizona Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association.
Dogs. Six-foot leash or cage, never left alone. No OHVs in the campground, no fireworks on the forest.
Skip it if you need power. Potato Patch, directly across 89A, has 12 electric sites and the same pines. For hookups, showers and a lower elevation, Dead Horse Ranch is 20 miles down the hill, and Lynx Lake on the Prescott side has a lake to go with its pines.
The mountain that fed a copper town
The mountain was Yavapai country long before it had an English name; the Yavapai call it Hwa:lkyañaña. Below its eastern face, Sinagua farmers built the hilltop pueblo now preserved at Tuzigoot and lived there from roughly 1000 to 1400, working the floodplain of the Verde.
The metal brought everyone else. In 1876 Al Sieber, General Crook’s former chief of scouts, filed the first mining claim on the slope where Jerome would grow. The name on the summit came from neighbors: in October 1880 the Weekly Arizona Miner reported that “the Mingus Brothers have a large potato crop on top of the Black Hills this year” and four men working on a wagon road. Whether the mountain honors Joseph and Jacob Mingus, who later ran a sawmill here, or a prospector named William Mingus who lived on it for years, is still argued in the Verde Valley papers. Either way, a farm on the summit and a road up to it are the first records of anyone using the flat top where the campground now sits.
Jerome made the mountain matter. The United Verde Copper Company was organized in 1883, and over the next half century the town climbed the mountain’s flank until it held an estimated 15,000 people when copper output peaked in 1929. Once mining began, the Mingus brothers set up a sawmill on the mountain. The Depression ended the boom; Phelps Dodge bought the United Verde in 1935, the same year a 60-foot steel fire tower went up on the summit, most likely built by the Civilian Conservation Corps under Forest Service supervision. It joined the National Register of Historic Places in 1988 with dozens of other Southwestern lookouts. The mines closed for good in 1953, and Jerome shrank to fewer than 100 people before artists and tourists revived it; it became a National Historic Landmark in 1967.
As mining left, recreation took the summit. The Forest Service has not published when it built the campground, the picnic area or Potato Patch across the highway, and the dates are not in the sources we could find. In the mid-1970s two Phoenix pilots began launching hang gliders off the east rim, making Mingus one of the oldest recognized free-flight sites in the country, and a concrete launch ramp was poured in 1995. Electric hookups made the campground a rare forest site for RVs until lightning burned out the system in February 2024, and the Forest Service has not said whether it will be rebuilt.
Why it matters
Mingus Mountain is the high end of the Verde Valley’s story. The copper under its flank built Jerome, a sawmill on its top worked alongside the mines, and the CCC tower on its summit watched the forest the miners left. Now the mountain earns its keep as a cool escape: the same flat summit where the Mingus brothers grew potatoes is where Valley families pitch tents in June. For a Scottsdale camper it is the closest real pine-forest campground with a view, and a good pairing with an evening in Jerome or a morning at Tuzigoot. Book a Loop B site for quiet, bring water jugs, and watch the sky after lunch.