What is Spur Cross Ranch Conservation Area?
In the late 1990s the Spur Cross Ranch, a stretch of upper Cave Creek just north of town, was slated to become a golf resort. The Town of Cave Creek taxed itself, the state and Maricopa County put in the rest, and in 2000 the 2,154 acres became the county’s first conservation area: a park with no campground, no nature center and no road through it, managed to stay the way it was. Cave Creek flows through it in the winter months, running clear over bedrock under cottonwoods and willows that turn gold in December; the saguaros on the benches above are enormous; and the hills are studded with Hohokam sites, a 1920s guest ranch and the remains of small gold mines.
The trails are short and good. The Spur Cross Trail is the spine, 5.2 miles with 485 feet of change, moderate and open to bikes and horses, running north along the creek past the old ranch toward the Tonto National Forest boundary. Off it, the hiker-only Metate (0.8 miles), Dragonfly (1.0 mile) and Towhee (0.2 miles) loops drop to the water, and Tortuga (1.2 miles) and Fairy Duster (0.6 miles) climb the benches. Elephant Mountain, the big dark hump to the west, has a 2.0-mile, 638-foot trail the county rates extremely difficult; it is loose, steep and closed to bikes, and the summit view of the Bradshaws and the whole New River country is the reward.
What you get is the best winter creek walk within an hour of Scottsdale and the quietest county park in the system, for $5 a head in an envelope. What you do not get is water, a restroom worth the name, a campground, a paved road to the lot or a creek in summer. For the perennial reach of the same creek, free, Jewel of the Creek is a mile back down the road.
How to hike Spur Cross right
Pay like this. $5 per person, not per car, exact cash in an envelope at the iron ranger by the entry station; there is no attendant most days and no card reader. Under 15 free, Cave Creek residents free with a resident card, Maricopa County annual pass accepted. No reservations for anything.
Get there. Take Scottsdale Road north all the way to Carefree Highway, go west two miles to Cave Creek Road, then north about 2.5 miles through the Town of Cave Creek to Spur Cross Road and turn right. The road is paved for about 3 miles and graded dirt for the last 1.5, rough in spots but fine for any car when dry; keep straight past the greenhouse, through the tall gateposts and past the corrals to the signed public lot on the right. Figure 50 minutes from Old Town. Hours are 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. May through October and 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. November through April.
Pick the season. Open all year, pleasant from November through April, and genuinely special from the first winter storm until the creek goes dry in spring, usually by April. Summer here is hot, dry and empty; if you come anyway, follow the summer sunrise rules and be off the trail by nine.
Water. None in the conservation area. Fill up in town and carry three liters for Elephant Mountain.
The dirt road and the washes. The last mile and a half crosses washes that run in storms. If it is raining in the Bradshaws, wait; the flash-flood rules apply to the road as much as the trail.
The creek loops. Park in the main lot, walk the Spur Cross Trail north past the old ranch site and the Tortuga junction, drop to the water on Metate, and come back through the cottonwoods on Dragonfly. That is the two-hour version of this park and the one to show a visitor.
Elephant Mountain. Go early, carry three liters, and expect a long exposed approach on the Spur Cross Trail before a loose, steep scramble to a false summit and then the real one. Hikers and horses only, no bikes, and the hardest rated trail in the county system for good reason.
Dogs and horses. Dogs on a six-foot leash with a current license; horses on the multi-use trails and Elephant Mountain, with Spur Cross Stables at the entrance for people who want to ride.
Skip it if the creek is dry and you want shade or facilities. Cave Creek Regional Park south of town has restrooms, a nature center and a campground; Seven Springs up Cave Creek Road has running water most of the year and real trees. Pair any of them with Sears-Kay Ruin, twenty minutes east, for a Hohokam hilltop to finish the day.
The golf course that Cave Creek taxed itself to stop
People have farmed and camped on this bend of Cave Creek for 1,500 years. The Hohokam lived here between roughly A.D. 500 and 1250, and the conservation area holds nearly 90 documented archaeological sites: field houses, agricultural terraces on the benches, roasting pits and boulders of petroglyphs along the creek. After them the Yavapai and Tonto Apache used the canyon on seasonal rounds and trade routes between the Verde and the Bradshaws, and it was still their country when soldiers from Fort McDowell settled the creek below in 1870. Gold followed in 1873, found by prospectors out of the Bradshaws, and over the next decades the Maricopa, Phoenix, Mashackety and Catherine mines were dug on what is now the park; the Phoenix Mine site is the parking lot and the stables you drive past at the entrance.
Cattle came with the miners and outlasted them. In 1928 the spread became the Spur Cross Guest Ranch, one of the first of the dude ranches that would make north Scottsdale and Cave Creek a winter resort; the ranch house and corrals on the lower property are from that era, and the name stuck to the land after the guests stopped coming. For most of the twentieth century it was simply a big private ranch at the end of a dirt road, open to anyone who walked in.
In 1996 that changed. The developer John Lang and the ranch’s owners announced a plan for about 664 homes, a golf course, a hotel, clubhouses and shops on the 2,154 acres, with the archaeological sites in the way. The Town of Cave Creek, incorporated only in 1986 and fiercely small-government, responded by annexing the ranch to bring it under its own zoning, and then did something no Arizona town of 4,000 people had done: it voted to buy a mountain. On September 9, 2000, Cave Creek voters approved a one-time property tax to raise the town’s $7.5 million share; the state and Maricopa County each put in roughly a third of the $21 million price. On January 9, 2001, Governor Jane Hull, County Supervisor Jan Brewer and Cave Creek Mayor Vincent Francia signed the documents, and Spur Cross Ranch became the county’s first conservation area, a legal category invented for it: a limited-use park, no campground, no nature center, no road through, run by Maricopa County Parks under rules meant to keep it as it was. The town paid off its tax on June 30, 2011, eight years early. The state later sold its share to the county, so the town and county own it today.
The park has grown a little since. A segment of the county’s Maricopa Trail runs through it; the Town bought the Phoenix Mine parcel for the entrance; and in late 2022 the Desert Foothills Land Trust bought 30.6 acres adjoining the area for $725,000, half each from the town and county, to be rezoned open space under a conservation easement. The creek is the thing that has not been secured. Cave Creek’s winter flow depends on the Bradshaw snowpack and on groundwater pumping in the growing town downstream, and the perennial reach has retreated to the Jewel of the Creek stretch below the park boundary.
Why it matters
Spur Cross is the Cave Creek version of the fight Scottsdale had over its own mountains at the same moment, and the smaller town won it faster. The year Scottsdale voters approved the first sales tax for the McDowell Sonoran Preserve, Cave Creek was watching a golf resort get drawn on its creek; five years later the creek belonged to the public, bought with a property tax a town of 4,000 imposed on itself. That is why the park has no campground, no road and a $5 honor box instead of a gate: it was purchased to be left alone. For a Scottsdale visitor the verdict is simple. Between the first winter rain and the end of March, this is the best short creek walk within an hour of Old Town, and the rest of the year it is a very good desert park that most people drive past on the way to Seven Springs.