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| 6L Ranch & Petroglyphs-Cave Creek, AZ | | -
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| | 6L Ranch & Petroglyphs-Cave Creek, AZ | | | |
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6L Ranch & Petroglyphs-Cave Creek, AZ
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| Hiking | 9.10 Miles |
710 AEG |
| | Hiking | 9.10 Miles | | | |
| 710 ft AEG | | 12 LBS Pack | | |
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| no partners | | As residents of Cave Creek we often like to just head north "up the creek" to see the sights. There are many side trails such as Trail 4, 1533, 252, 247 that exit the creek at different locations which will then take one to almost anywhere in the Tonto National Forest and also the Spur Cross and Black Mesa areas.. Eventually we would like to follow the creek all the way to Seven Springs but we aren't quite ready for that one yet. 
For this trek we decided to go as far as the old 6L Ranch north of the old Phoenix Mine. This defunct cattle ranch was created in the early 20th century by brothers John and William Lewis. The two migrated to the Superstitions in the mid 1880's from Missouri. They moved operations to Cave Creek in 1906 so hence the "6" for the year and "L" for Lewis as the eventual ranch name. That's the lore and I'm sticking to it! Both brothers have a lot of interesting local history, including mining, in this area...way too much to go into in this triplog.
I told long time friend, sometimes business associate, and HAZ member Alston Neal of our planned little trek and he said I would receive "bonus points" if I could locate and provide proof of finding a California fan palm in a secret location along the route that would seem totally out of place. Now I don't know what these bonus points were, but I wanted them badly. Long story short...I found the palm tree, photographed the palm tree, marked GPS location of the palm tree, but when I tried to obtain my "bonus points" he totally reneged.  His position was that the tree had grown taller since the last time he was there and therefore was "too easy to find". You be the judge on who's right! 
The aforementioned persona non grata  also insisted we check out a location a couple of miles south of the old corrals of the ranch which he coined "Petro Plaza". There we found a large number of rock art petroglyphs along with many bedrock and boulder carved grinding metates. At some point in time this was the Times Square of the local Cave Creek Hohokam people. There are the remains of a multi-room village on top of the mesa but we felt the scramble up the slope to view them was best left for another trip. |
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| "If you wait, all that happens is you get older" |
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