What is Oak Flat Campground?
Climb the grade east out of Superior on US 60, through the tunnel and onto the mesa, and the desert turns into a parkland of Emory oaks and granite boulders at about 3,900 feet. That is Oak Flat. The campground is 16 sites with tables and fire grills among the trees, two vault toilets, no water, no power, no trash pickup and no fee. Eisenhower put the area off-limits to mining in 1955, the Forest Service ran it as a free campground for seventy years, and climbers made the boulders one of the best bouldering areas in Arizona. It is 90 minutes from Old Town, and any car can make it.
It is also Chi’chil Bildagoteel, a Western Apache sacred site where families have gathered acorns and held ceremonies, including girls’ Sunrise Dances, for as long as anyone can say, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016. Beneath it is one of the largest undeveloped copper deposits in North America, and in a 2014 defense bill Congress ordered the land traded to Resolution Copper, owned by Rio Tinto and BHP, for about 5,400 acres of the company’s private land elsewhere. The San Carlos Apache Tribe, Apache Stronghold and conservation groups fought the exchange in court for more than a decade; the Ninth Circuit ruled against them, the Supreme Court declined Apache Stronghold’s case in May 2025, and in March 2026 the Forest Service conveyed about 2,400 acres, Oak Flat included, to the company while further appeals were pending. The mine would be dug by block caving, which over roughly four decades is projected to collapse the surface here into a crater about two miles across and up to roughly 1,000 feet deep.
What you get, for now, is free shade camping, world-class boulders and a front-row view of a national argument. What you do not get is water, trash service, certainty about next season, or the right to treat the place as yours; the company says it will keep the campground open as long as it safely can, has hired 4 Winds Contracting, a Globe business owned by a San Carlos Apache member, to run it, and has promised a replacement campground when this one is lost.
How to camp Oak Flat right
Check before you drive. Closures for mine work, tribal ceremonies and events are posted at the entrance kiosk and on azoakflat.com, and the managers have the right to shut the gate. Groups of more than 50 need an event request through the website. There is no fee, no pass and no reservation; 14-day limit, trailers under 30 feet.
Get there. Loop 101 south to US 60 east and stay on it past Apache Junction, Gold Canyon, Boyce Thompson Arboretum and Superior, through the Queen Creek tunnel and up the grade. About 3 miles east of Superior, turn right (south) on Forest Road 469, Magma Mine Road, partly paved; the campground is on the left in about a mile. About 90 minutes from Old Town. The entrance kiosk has the current rules, the mine’s notices and a map.
Pick the season. September through May. At 3,900 feet, October and April are ideal, December and January nights freeze, and summer is hot by ten with the oaks as the only relief. The mesa is 10 to 20 degrees cooler than Scottsdale year-round.
Water and trash. Neither, ever. Bring all your water and take all your trash. Two vault toilets, both accessible.
Pick the site. The sites along the back edge of the loop are tucked into the boulders and shaded; the ones near the entrance are open, dusty and catch the highway noise. Fires only in the designated grills, and only when the kiosk says restrictions are off, which in a dry spring it will not.
Climb, hike, look. The bouldering is hundreds of problems on the granite within a quarter mile of the tents, with the main areas just east of the campground across the road; the Apache Leap cliffs above Superior and the Arizona Trail, which crosses US 60 nearby, are minutes away. Picketpost Mountain is the serious hike in the neighborhood.
Respect the gatherings. If an Apache ceremony is under way, give it room, do not photograph it, and move your camp if asked. You are on a sacred site that is now private land, and the people who hold it sacred did not consent to either fact.
Dogs. Fine on leash. The javelina and the odd bear come through the oaks at night; food in the vehicle.
Skip it if you want certainty or facilities. For Forest Service camping nearby with the rules you know, Jones Water and the Pinal Mountains are up the road toward Globe. Oak Flat is for people who want to see this place while it still looks like this.
The withdrawal, the loophole and the rider
Oak Flat sits on the shoulder of the copper country. Superior, four miles west, grew up around the Silver King and then the Magma mine, whose shafts run under the town and whose old road, Magma Mine Road, is the one you drive into the campground. The Western Apache knew the mesa first and still do: Chi’chil Bildagoteel, “the place where the acorns grow,” is where families came each fall for Emory oak acorns, where girls’ Sunrise Dances were held among the boulders, and where the Ga’an, the mountain spirits, are said to live. The Hohokam and Salado farmed Queen Creek below it long before the Apache; the Apache were the ones the Army fought to take it.
The federal government protected the mesa twice and then undid it. On September 27, 1955, President Eisenhower signed Public Land Order 1229, withdrawing 760 acres at Oak Flat from mining for their natural and cultural value, and the Forest Service ran the oaks as a free campground from then on. In 1971, under Nixon, Public Land Order 5132 amended the withdrawal so that Oak Flat could be disposed of under any public land law except the mining laws. The land still could not be claimed by a prospector. It could, however, be traded, and that distinction is the whole story. The copper under it was found in the mid-1990s by drilling beneath the old Magma workings, and the deposit turned out to be enormous: in 2008 Rio Tinto reported an inferred resource of 1.624 billion tonnes at 1.47 percent copper, more than 1,300 meters down, too deep for a pit and too big for ordinary underground mining. The only way to take it was block caving, which hollows the ore body from below and lets the surface fall in.
Resolution Copper’s plan became public in 2005, when Senator Jon Kyl introduced the first land exchange bill. For nine years the bills failed, through Ann Kirkpatrick’s in 2009 and Paul Gosar’s in 2013, because the trade of a withdrawn sacred site to a foreign-owned mining company could not pass on its own. In December 2014 Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake attached it to the fiscal 2015 National Defense Authorization Act, and it passed as Section 3003: roughly 2,400 acres including Oak Flat to the company, about 5,400 acres of the company’s private land, riparian and ranch parcels elsewhere in the state, to the public. The exchange would become final sixty days after the Forest Service published its final environmental review. In 2016 Oak Flat was listed on the National Register as a traditional cultural property, which changed nothing about the exchange and everything about how it would be argued.
The courts took the next decade. The San Carlos Apache Tribe, the group Apache Stronghold and conservation organizations sued; the Forest Service published its final review in January 2021 and the Biden administration withdrew it on March 2, 2021, nine days before the transfer would have become automatic, to consult further. A Ninth Circuit panel ruled 2 to 1 for the government in June 2022; the full court agreed to rehear it, and on March 1, 2024 ruled 6 to 5 that the transfer did not substantially burden the Apache’s religious exercise. The Supreme Court declined to hear Apache Stronghold’s appeal on May 27, 2025. The Forest Service republished its review and completed the exchange on March 16, 2026. The mine still needs further permits and has no production date; the review projected that the block cave would, over roughly four decades, subside the surface into a crater about two miles across and up to roughly 1,000 feet deep, with the campground near its center. Resolution has committed to keeping the campground open while it can, hired 4 Winds Contracting to run it, and promised a replacement when it goes. New suits were filed after the transfer. The oaks are still there.
Why it matters
Oak Flat is where the rules that govern every other campground on this site were tested and found to have a hole in them. A presidential withdrawal, a National Register listing and the Wilderness-era idea that some public land is simply off the table all turned out to be weaker than a rider on a defense bill, and the Apache’s claim that a place can be holy the way a building can be holy lost 6 to 5. Whatever you think of the mine, that is worth seeing, and the campground is the easiest place in Arizona to see it: free, shaded, an hour and a half from Old Town, with the boulders and the Sunrise Dance grounds and the kiosk explaining the crater. Go in October or April, bring your water, take your trash, be quiet, and understand that you are a guest twice over.