Powers Garden Trail #96, AZ

The Powers Garden Trail follows an old road built by a pioneer family that farmed, ranched, and mined in Rattlesnake Canyon shortly after the turn of the century.


The Power family eked out a frontier-style livelihood in this remote land until 1918. Then, three members of the family were involved in a gunfight with law officers on a gold claim they were working 5 miles up Rattlesnake Canyon from Powers Garden. Although John Power was killed, his two sons, Tom and John, along with family friend Tom Sison, escaped into the mountains and became the object of one of the largest manhunts Arizona had seen to that date.

The cabin where it all happened is not along the Powers Garden Trail but on the West Divide Trail #289 about a half-mile south of where the Powers Garden Trail joins it. The original boundaries of the Galiuro Wilderness were drawn to exclude the road the Power family built to their ranch and mine. In 1984, when a new Wilderness bill was passed by Congress, those boundaries were redrawn so that the area the road passed through became part of the Wilderness. Today, Powers Garden Trail exerts a strong attraction on those interested in experiencing the remoteness and solitude of the deep wilderness. Except for a small house the family built at Powers Garden, a few grazing developments, and an occasional airplane flying overhead, there is little here to come between you and nature. After dropping down Powers Hill, Trail #96 stays within Rattlesnake Canyon for the rest of its length. Rattlesnake Creek itself is dry much of the year, but the vegetation along it is still typically riparian. You’ll find Arizona sycamores, cypress and walnut here, in addition to several desert-dwelling species of oak. Mountain lion and black bear are plentiful in this out of the way place too, as are other desert species including the raccoon-like coatimundi.

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