What is Spur Cross Inn?
Spur Cross Inn is the smallest serious place to sleep in Cave Creek: four suites in a renovated 1950s ranch house on a private two-acre lot terraced into the north side of Saguaro Hill, just above downtown. For years it was the Spur Cross Bed & Breakfast, and it still has the feel of a hosted inn, not a hotel.
Cave Creek is its own town, not a Scottsdale neighborhood — forty minutes from Old Town, and the right place to stay if you came for the Western town itself.
The suites — Agave, Mesquite, Sagebrush and Saguaro — are each themed and decorated differently, with saltillo tile floors, wood ceilings, private baths and separate outside entrances so you can come and go without passing through the main house. Some have gas fireplaces, and several have jetted tubs. Each has a refrigerator, microwave and coffeemaker.
The real amenity is the hill. The patios step down the slope with what the inn calls 360-degree views of Elephant Butte, Skull Mesa, Continental Mountain and the Spur Cross country. There’s a stargazer’s patio with a telescope and a fire pit that burns on a bed of sand. Next door, the Caroline Bartol Preserve covers the top of Saguaro Hill with a public trail through hundreds of saguaros.
Who it’s for: couples, hikers and anyone who wants Cave Creek quiet and dark but still walkable to dinner. Who should look elsewhere: travelers who want a front desk, daily housekeeping, a pool or a dog-friendly room. With four suites and a host-run setup, it’s closer to staying with friends than checking into a hotel.
How to do Spur Cross Inn right
Choose the suite for the stay. The Saguaro Suite is the biggest, with a gas fireplace, a two-person jetted tub, a wet bar and a daybed; it’s the one people request. The others are smaller and cheaper, and all have their own entrances.
Mind the logistics. There’s no front desk. Check-in runs from 3 to 7 p.m., so plan your drive. The town doesn’t allow signs in residential zones, so look for the address numbers: the driveway is just over the first hill north of the Desert Foothills Library on School House Road. Housekeeping is available for a fee, and there’s a cleaning charge per stay.
Climb the hill at sunrise. The Bartol Preserve trail starts next door and climbs a short way to the top, with interpretive signs, a memorial garden and a view over downtown to Black Mountain. For a longer hike, Spur Cross Ranch Conservation Area and Cave Creek Regional Park are short drives away. The horseback-riding notes cover the stable on Spur Cross Road.
Walk down for dinner. The four-way stop at Cave Creek Road and School House Road is the center of town. From there you can walk to the cantinas, the saloon strip and the Buffalo Chip on a bull-riding night. Bring a light for the hill on the way back.
End on the patio. The stargazer’s patio is the reason to pick this place over a hotel. Cave Creek’s skies are much darker than Scottsdale’s; the stargazing guide explains what to look for.
Saguaro Hill and the people who kept it
Saguaro Hill rises right over downtown Cave Creek, and it is covered in exactly what its name says. It’s the kind of land that, in most of the Valley, ended up as a subdivision with a view. Here it didn’t, and the reasons say a lot about the town.
Cave Creek began as a mining and ranching camp in the 1870s and 1880s, drew health seekers in the early twentieth century, and by the middle of it had become a loose collection of ranches, cabins and saloons. The ranch house that became Spur Cross Inn dates, by the inn’s account, from the 1950s — the decade Carefree was being planned next door as a tidy resort town, while Cave Creek stayed dusty and unincorporated. When Phoenix and Scottsdale pushed north in the 1980s, residents voted to incorporate in 1986, mostly to control zoning and protect the big-lot, no-sidewalk character of the place. The rule that keeps the inn from putting up a sign is part of that same instinct.
Conservation followed. In 1997 the Desert Foothills Land Trust made its first purchase: 4.2 acres on top of Saguaro Hill, bought with a bequest from Caroline Bartol and named for her. In 2007 the Land Trust and the town added about two acres and extended the trail. The preserve now includes an interpretive saguaro trail, the Goldwater Memorial overlook and a memorial garden, and it’s open to the public from dawn to dusk. In the 2000s, the town and Maricopa County preserved Spur Cross Ranch to the north rather than let it be subdivided.
That’s the context for a four-suite inn on a hillside. Cave Creek never built a hotel strip, and its best lodging has always been small and personal: a converted ranch house, a host who knows the trails, a telescope on the patio. Spur Cross Inn is one of the few that still work the old way, on a hill the community chose to keep.