What is Timber Camp Recreation Area?
Between Globe and the Salt River Canyon, US 60 climbs onto a juniper plateau and then, for a few miles, into real ponderosa pine on the flanks of the Timber Camp Mountains. The Forest Service put its largest campground on this stretch there, at about 5,500 feet. Timber Camp is three areas side by side: Brundrett 1, a loop of 13 individual sites (12 single, 1 double) with a big shade pavilion and two accessible vault toilets; Brundrett 2, a reservable group area with a pavilion, tables, grills, fire rings and a gravel lot, for up to 150 people; and an equestrian group camp of the same size with steel corrals, hitching rails and manure bins.
It is the only place in this corner of the Tonto where a scout troop or a riding club can book a real camp, and the only campground on the Globe-to-Show Low road with pines overhead. Hiking and riding trails leave the camp into the hills, the Salt River Canyon is about 5 miles east, and in spring the rafting put-ins on the Upper Salt are twenty minutes away, which is when the individual loop fills with boaters.
What you get is shade, space and the best-equipped camp on this stretch of the forest. What you do not get is water, power or trash service, and the highway is close enough to hear.
How to camp Timber Camp right
Individuals pay at the machine; groups book ahead. Brundrett 1 is first come, first served, with a fee paid at a card-only machine; the Forest Service lists $16 for a single site, but its page is not explicit about which loop that applies to, so confirm at the machine. The group areas are $75 a night for up to 50 people and $150 for 51 to 150, reservable on recreation.gov from 3 days to 12 months ahead. Book the equestrian camp months out for an October weekend. Events over 75 people or anything charging money need a permit from the Globe Ranger District.
Get there. Loop 101 south to US 60 east. Stay on US 60 through Superior and Globe, where it turns north, and continue roughly 20 to 24 miles (the Forest Service gives both figures) past Globe. The campground is on the highway, just south of Seneca Lake. About two hours and fifteen minutes from Old Town, all paved; the internal roads are gravel and can be soft after rain. Globe has the last gas, water and groceries.
Bring the water. There is none anywhere on the site, no hookups and no trash service. Fill in Globe and pack out everything.
Fit the rig. Trailers under 45 feet in the group areas, with room for about 15 RVs at Brundrett 2 and parking for about 25 horse trailers at the equestrian camp. Brundrett 1 sites are smaller.
Pick the season. Year round. April through May and September through November are best. Summer highs are 85 to 100, warm rather than Rim-country cool, with July and August monsoon storms and flash-flood risk; winter storms can leave a foot of snow in January. Quiet hours and no generators 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., 14-day limit.
Stay off the reservation. Seneca Lake, just up the highway, is San Carlos Apache land and needs a tribal permit for anything but driving through. Do not wander over for a swim.
Dogs. On leash. Bears and elk use the area.
Skip it if you want free and small: Jones Water, 10 miles back toward Globe, is the alternative. For cooler pines with a lake, keep driving to Fool Hollow at Show Low; on the Globe side, Pioneer Pass and Kellner Canyon in the Pinal Mountains are closer to town.
A campground on the road to the canyon
The pine ridges north of Globe are Western Apache country, and the campground sits at the edge of what is still Apache land: the San Carlos Apache Reservation begins a few miles to the north, and across the Salt River Canyon the Fort Apache reservation begins. Executive orders set aside the San Carlos reservation in the early 1870s, and in 1876 Globe was founded on a silver strike that turned into one of the territory’s great copper districts.
The forest came next. In 1905 the federal government created the Tonto National Forest to protect the watershed above Roosevelt Dam, then about to be built, and the Timber Camp Mountains are inside it today. The name presumably remembers timber cutting in the nearest pines to Globe, but no published history we found explains it, or who the Brundrett of the campground loops was.
The highway made the place. In 1930 state surveyors went looking for an all-weather route to northeastern Arizona and found a bridge site 43 miles north of Globe at the Salt River Canyon; the steel deck arch was finished in June 1934, the first of its type the Arizona Highway Department built. In May 1937 US 60 opened from Globe to Show Low, and the Timber Camp pines were suddenly on a through highway. A roadside stop at Seneca, a few miles north, served tourists and asbestos miners by 1950 and went by the name Apache Rest in that decade.
What happened at Seneca is the cautionary tale next door. The San Carlos Apache Tribe removed the old buildings and dammed Seneca Lake by 1963, hoping anglers and campers would support a resort. A recreation area opened in 1971, closed within a few years for lack of power lines, and reopened in 1979 with 144 campsites, a store, a restaurant and a gas station run by tribal members. By 1986 it had closed again; the tribe had invested more than $500,000 and lost the improvements on a defaulted loan. The lake is still stocked, but the buildings are ruins.
The Forest Service took a simpler path at Timber Camp: tables, vault toilets, pavilions and, eventually, group areas big enough for 150 people and an equestrian camp with steel corrals. The agency has not published when the campground was built or when the group areas were added, and we could not date either.
Why it matters
Timber Camp sits on the hinge between the copper desert around Globe and the high country of the Apache reservations, on a highway that only became a through road in 1937. It shows how much of Arizona’s camping is a by-product of road-building: the pines were here all along, but the campground exists because US 60 put them within two hours of the Valley. Seneca, a few miles up the road, shows how hard it is to make recreation pay without power, water or crowds. For a Scottsdale group, a scout troop or a riding club, it is the obvious booking on the way to the White Mountains; for a couple in a van, it is a decent first-come stop with shade, as long as you bring water from Globe.