The Apache Trail

The Apache Trail: Superstition Country

18 stops· 37 min· 13.4 mi

One of the great scenic drives of the American Southwest — the paved heart of Arizona's historic Apache Trail, climbing out of the desert east of Phoenix into the wild, cliff-walled Superstition Mountains, the range that has swallowed more lost-gold seekers than any other in America. Ranger Quinn takes you up State Route 88 from the old gold-boom town of Goldfield, past Lost Dutchman State Park under the towering Superstition wall, along the blue water of Canyon Lake, to the tiny frontier outpost of Tortilla Flat — a town of six people that is the last stagecoach stop on the trail. Along the way you'll learn the volcanic story written in these cliffs, the saguaro-and-flash-flood truths of the Sonoran Desert, and the astonishing history of the road itself — a freight road hand-built through solid rock in 1905 to raise the first great dam of the American West. Ranger Boone Merrick rides along with the legends this mountain is soaked in: Jacob Waltz, the Dutchman, and the golden mine no one has ever found; the treasure hunters who walked into these canyons and never walked out; the massacre that may never have happened; and the guardian the Apache say the outside world invented. A paved out-and-back to Tortilla Flat — best from November through April, when the desert is cool. The trail beyond Tortilla Flat is closed and unpaved, so we turn around there — check az511 before you go, and bring water. Then head for the hills.