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| Hiking | 7.70 Miles |
387 AEG |
| | Hiking | 7.70 Miles | 3 Hrs 21 Mns | | 2.32 mph |
| 387 ft AEG | 2 Mns Break | | | |
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| partners | | The 100 Classic Hikes in AZ book has a hike by the San Pedro River in it. It’s odd because there’s not really a trail here, and the hike is only about 2.5 miles RT as described. Additionally, there are trails right next to that area. This one was close by after hiking Cochise Stronghold on Saturday, so it seemed like a good fit. It’s only 12 miles outside of Tombstone on Charleston Road, so the drive to it was very short after leaving the hotel at 5:30am.
I made a route of the San Pedro Trail that parallels the river in this area and made one of the hike description from the book (no official HAZ description for this hike, which makes sense). The plan was to hike the river section, then eventually head up out of the river bank over to the San Pedro Trail at a point where it gets very close, which is pretty much what we did.
Started just before 6am at the Battle of the Bulls monument along Charleston Road where it crosses the river. The early morning start made for quite a lot of shade under the huge trees along the river. The water in the river is very cloudy and silty, which isn’t very aesthetic. Most of the hike there was pretty easy. There is a kind of a horse trail to follow for the most part. The areas alternate between very wide and very narrow. Some mild bushwhacking in spots, but nothing too bad until just over a mile or so. At that point it looked very narrow and choked, and there was an open spot to climb the band up to the abandoned railroad tracks that is now just some sort of road.
Up on the abandoned tracks we hiked another 2 miles or so until the San Pedro Trail got right next to it. Saw a curled up rattler sitting in the middle of the road in shade taking a nap. At the turn off point the barbed wire fence opened and there was a clearing where we would see the trail. We got on that and headed back towards the car.
Not too far along the trail, we saw a sign that announced petroglyphs right there. We got a couple pics and kept on. The trail turned into a road, then went into a wash for almost a mile until it left and ascended the east side of a big hill just north of Charleston Road. As you ascend and hike around the hill, Sierra Vista is visible in the distance. A surveillance balloon was up in the air for Border Control that was pretty prominent.
Once on the other side of the hill, there are interpretive plaques for the former settlements of Charleston and Millville. This was an area that processed the ore from the mines in Tombstone, and by the pictures looked there was quite a settlement here at one time. Some walls and foundations were still left that looked like they were for the ore processing. Most the residential structures were gone, however. We didn’t spend a lot of time looking around to find traces of them, but it would appear that there must be quite a lot around since there are signs posted everywhere not to dig for or take any artifacts. The one plaque stated that there is no marked trail to the actual Charleston site and visiting it is not encouraged. It was pretty fascinating to just kind of stumble upon the site of this forgotten site that just disappeared. There were also a lot more petroglyphs in this area. I was interested in checking this out more, but we had long drive back to Phoenix and I some chores to do when I got home. Finished up by 9:30am. I didn’t expect much from this hike, but it turned out to be more interesting than I thought. |
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