What is Pioneer Pass Campground?
Pioneer Pass is the saddle on the east shoulder of the Pinal Mountains where the old toll road from Globe to the mining camps on the south side crossed the range. At 6,000 feet it is already in ponderosa pine and oak, and the Forest Service has strung four camping areas along Forest Road 112 there: Granite with 6 tables, Toll Gate with 6, Wagon Wheel with 4 or 5 and Cattle Trap with 8. Each has a vault toilet and fire rings, which adds up to roughly two dozen sites, none of them numbered and none of them charged for.
It is a step down from the summit campgrounds in every sense: about 1,500 feet lower, a few degrees warmer, 5 miles closer to Globe on a better road, and more spread out. Where Pinal Campground is four tight sites under firs, Pioneer Pass is a mile of pullouts in the pines. The Bobtail Spring Trail leaves the pass for Pinal Peak and the East Mountain Trail runs the other way along the ridge, so you can hike to the summit from camp and skip the summit road entirely.
What you get is free pine camping two and a quarter hours from Scottsdale with a trailhead at the tent. What you do not get is water, trash service, a reservation or room for a trailer.
How to camp Pioneer Pass right
Pay nothing, arrive early. Free, first come, first served, 14 days maximum, no pass. Quiet hours and no generators from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. Holiday weekends fill; most others do not.
Get there. Loop 101 south to US 60 east and on to Globe, about an hour and forty minutes. In Globe, take Jess Hayes Road southeast past the ranger station to the junction of Icehouse Canyon Road (FR 112) and Six-shooter Canyon Road. Stay on FR 112 for 2 paved miles to the FR 55 fork, stay left, and follow FR 112 another 6 unpaved miles up to the pass. The campground is 9 miles from Globe and about two hours and fifteen minutes from Old Town. The dirt is graded and fine for a passenger car when dry; summer storms can leave it rutted.
Pick your area. Cattle Trap, the farthest along the road, has the most tables and is usually the last to fill. Wagon Wheel is the only one where a small trailer has a prayer of fitting; the Forest Service does not recommend trailers or RVs and limits trailers to under 16 feet. Everything else is tents and truck campers. The pass is a saddle, so wind funnels through it in spring; pick a site behind the granite outcrops at Granite if it is blowing. One accessible unit exists, on compacted dirt with a 5 to 10 percent slope.
Pick the season. Open year round. April through October is comfortable, and shoulder-season nights are kinder here than on top. Snow can close the road from December through March, fire restrictions often ban campfires in late spring, and monsoon afternoons bring lightning to the ridge from July on. High-summer afternoons are warmer here than at the summit campgrounds.
Water and trash. Neither. Fill jugs in Globe, 25 minutes back down the hill, which is also where the ice is; that short supply run makes this the easiest Pinal campground to run a long weekend from. Pack everything out, by Leave No Trace rules and because nobody else will.
The hikes. The Bobtail Spring Trail climbs from the pass toward Pinal Peak; the East Mountain Trail heads the other way along the ridge. Both are day-hike length and open to horses.
Dogs, horses and bears. Dogs on leash, horses welcome on the trails. Black bears live here; store food in the vehicle. The wildlife guide covers the rest.
Skip it if you want firs and the summit view: drive on to Upper Pinal or Pinal Campground. Sulphide del Rey is on the other road from the FR 55 fork, and the reservable Kellner Group Site is lower down FR 55 for groups of up to 25.
The toll road over the pine mountain
Every people who lived around these mountains named them for the trees. The Yavapai called the range Walkame, pine mountains; the Western Apache called it Dził Nnilchí’ Diyiléé, pine-burdened mountain; and the Spanish rendered the native name as Pinal, a stand of pines. Before any of them, Salado farmers lived in the basins around the range from about the 1100s, and occupied the pueblo at Besh-Ba-Gowah, on the edge of present-day Globe, from the 1200s until they left around the middle of the 1400s. Western Apache and Kwevkepaya Yavapai bands settled the country after them, and the Pinals were part of the Apache homeland that the Army spent the early 1870s fighting to take.
Mining followed the Army. Claims in the Pinals were active from 1875, and in 1876 a surveyor laid out Globe beside Pinal Creek as a supply point for the silver mines; the town’s own history credits the name to a globe-shaped silver nugget, which it calls folklore. Silver faded quickly and copper took over, but the early camps were scattered around the range, and the Pioneer Mining District on the south side needed a way across. In 1883 a toll road was built over the saddle that is now Pioneer Pass. The camping area called Toll Gate and the Toll Road Trail #200 keep its memory. The range’s real producer turned out to be the Gibson mine on the western side, which accounted for nearly all of its copper and silver output between 1906 and 1918. No mines are active in the Pinals now.
The forest came almost as soon as the mines peaked. On March 20, 1905, the government set aside the Pinal Mountains Forest Reserve, 45,760 acres, to protect the timber and the watershed above Globe; it became a national forest in 1907 and was folded into the Tonto on January 13, 1908. In the 1930s the Civilian Conservation Corps built the Icehouse picnic area and the erosion check dams along the road below the pass. The Forest Service does not publish a date for the Pioneer Pass camping areas themselves, and none turned up in research for this guide.
Fire is the recent chapter. In May 2017 a lightning start detected on May 8 became the Pinal Fire, and rather than fight it hard the Tonto managed it as a slow, low-intensity burn across some 6,600 acres, the kind of cleanup fire the forest’s planners had long wanted for the overgrown pine and mixed conifer. Health officials warned Globe and Miami residents about the smoke while it burned.
Why it matters
Pioneer Pass is a lesson in how Arizona’s sky islands were opened: an Apache homeland, a silver town, a toll road for the miners, a forest reserve to protect the timber and the water, a CCC crew building picnic tables in the Depression, and now a free campground that most of the Valley has never heard of. It is also proof that you do not need a reservation system to get pines in June, if you are willing to bring your own water. For a Scottsdale camper the verdict is easy: it is the cheapest cool night within two and a half hours, on a road a sedan can drive, with a trail to a 7,848-foot summit starting at your picnic table. Bring water from Globe, take Cattle Trap if it is open, and leave before the monsoon lightning arrives on the ridge.