What is the 104th Street Trailhead?
The 104th Street Trailhead is a small parking lot just north of Bell Road at 104th Street, in the McDowell Mountain Ranch area. It gives you a quiet way to walk into the busiest part of the McDowell Sonoran Preserve.
The city’s Spring 2026 South Area trail map calls it the 104th/Bell Trailhead. It marks the lot with a parking symbol at 1,690 feet, at the bottom of the inset map for the Gateway Trailhead. OpenStreetMap lists the same lot as the 104th Street Trailhead.
The 104th Street Trail runs north from the lot across flat bajada:
- 0.2 mile to the Levee Trail junction (marker LT1)
- 0.3 mile more to junction PC3, near the Bajada Nature Trail and the trails leaving Gateway
From PC3 the trail also continues east. The Levee Trail runs east, parallel to Bell Road, toward the Gateway Loop and the Paradise Trail.
The map shows no restrooms or water at this lot. The full facilities at Gateway are a short walk north. Do not confuse this lot with the Quartz Trailhead, which is also on 104th Street but about a mile south, at McDowell Mountain Ranch Road.
How to use it
Park here to get into Gateway. Gateway is the Preserve’s flagship trailhead, and on cool-season weekends its lot fills early. From 104th and Bell, it is roughly half a mile of easy walking on the 104th Street Trail to reach the Gateway trail network. That is an easy warm-up for the Gateway Loop or Saguaro Trail, and it saves you the wait for a space.
Know what’s here and what isn’t. The city map shows only parking. Use the restrooms and water at Gateway, and bring your own water anyway. This lot is not on the city’s list of trailhead addresses, which suggests it is meant for small numbers of local users. Park only in marked spaces and keep the neighborhood quiet early in the morning.
Easy loops with the Levee Trail. The 104th Street Trail, the Levee Trail and the Crossover Trail form short, nearly flat rectangles at the base of the mountains. They work well for an after-work walk, a slow dog walk in cool weather, or a first outing with kids. Junction codes such as LT1 and PC3 are posted on sign posts, so you can follow the city map closely.
Windgate Crossing is a different lot. The Gateway inset also shows Windgate Crossing overflow parking off Thompson Peak Parkway, west of here, with a trail that heads west toward WestWorld. The map asks drivers there to park in designated spots.
Heat. In summer, finish by mid-morning, and leave dogs at home whenever it will be over 90 degrees. See our summer sunrise hiking rules.
A local access point by design
The Preserve’s access plan always included more than one big entrance. The Access Areas Report, approved by the McDowell Sonoran Preserve Commission in March 1999 and amended in December 2010, placed the Preserve’s main gateway near Bell Road and Thompson Peak Parkway. Gateway was later built at that location. The same report described a hierarchy below it: major and minor community access areas, then numerous small local access points that let nearby neighborhoods reach the trails without driving to a large lot.
The 104th/Bell Trailhead fits that bottom level. It has a small lot, a trail sign and a nearly flat path that joins the Gateway network after about half a mile. It hasn’t won design awards or opened with a ribbon cutting, and we could not find a documented opening date. Its value is practical: people living in McDowell Mountain Ranch can walk or drive a few blocks and reach the same trails as the big trailhead. On the busiest mornings, it also takes some pressure off the Gateway lot.