Sycamore Canyon – Parsons Trail

Skyliners Mark Purcell, Daisy Williams, Ruth Frazier and the author hiked Parsons Trail in Sycamore Canyon on 7 September 2013. Leaving from the Safeway parking lot in Cottonwood, we drove through Old Town Cottonwood on Main Street heading toward Clarkdale. Before reaching Clarkdale, we turned right on Tuzigoot Road, crossed the Verde River and then turned left on N Sycamore Canyon Road (Forest Road 131). This road is paved at first but soon becomes a dirt road and proceeds for about 10.3 miles to end at the Parsons Trailhead on the rim of Sycamore Canyon. The driving time was about 40 minutes.

I photographed my fellow hikers standing on the rim.

Left to right: Mark Purcell, Daisy Williams and Ruth Frazier

– Sycamore Canyon in the background

We all carefully reviewed the informational sign posted at the trailhead before starting the steep 180-foot descent to Sycamore Creek.

Forest Service sign posted at the Parsons Trailhead

Another very informative sign posted nearby provided some additional useful information (photograph at right). I was particularly pleased to know how many times we would be crossing the stream. This would be my fourth hike on Parsons Trail and I had always lost count of the number of crossings by the end of the hike. The distance figure, 3.7 miles, was also welcome, because GPS coverage in the canyon is very erratic and this would provide something to compare my reading with.

At the bottom of the steep descent from the canyon rim, Parsons Trail leads north along Sycamore Creek. Packard Trail (left) starts here, crosses the creek, climbs steeply up the rim on the other side to Packard Mesa and continues on to join Sycamore Basin Trail at Sycamore Tank about five miles away.

Not far up the trail we found a field of gorgeous yellow wildflowers that we couldn't identify.

Unidentified yellow flowers

From a distance, I thought we were looking at a field of sunflowers. However, on closer examination of one of the flowers, it was clear that they were something else.

Unidentified flower

A little further along we found a sacred dature plant with a single flower being examined carefully by a lone bee. Nearby, a plant, growing close to the creek bank, its roots practically implanted in the water, sported fiery red flowers.

Sacred datura

Skyrocket (Scarlet gilia)

We also found many asters and one trailing 4 o'clock along the way.

Asters 

Trailing 4 o'clock

Somewhere along the way we came upon a single, lonely spiderwort (see right) growing all by itself alongside the trail.

About 1.3 miles up the trail we came to Summers Spring. I had not noticed this spring on previous hikes but we were all looking for it this time and found it easily. The map on the Forest Service sign at the trailhead places the spring on the east side of the trail. However, the trail has been rerouted to avoid a large tree that fell at the spring some years ago and it is now on the west side of the trail.

One of the most interesting feature of Sycamore Canyon is the large number of caves and mining tunnels in the cliff walls. It is often hard to differentiate between the two, but generally some of those on the east wall near the base of the cliff appeared to be mine/prospecting operations while everything we saw along the west wall, all higher up appeared to be natural caves. Having heard a lot of stories about mines tunnels, ranging from wild stories of secret government facilities to lost gold mines, I searched around a bit and came up with a 1966 Geological Survey Bulletin published by the Interior Department¹. It provided the following information:

The only known mining claims in the Sycamore Canyon Primitive Area are held by Mr. O. G. ("Jerry") Graves and associates. These claims covering Geronimo's mine or prospect are at the south edge of the primitive area, about 1.4 miles north of Mr. Graves' cabin at Packard Ranch.

The legend of Geronimo's mine is related in the "Mining Journal" of April 15th, 1946. In brief, the legend tells how a gold deposit was found and worked by Spanish explorers and later worked by Geronimo and other Apache Indians. According to the legend, much of the gold bullion recovered from the mine was buried in a secret place within the mine. Using several lines of evidence, Mr. Graves and a former partner (now deceased) located a cave in Sycamore Canyon, which they concluded was Geronimo's mine, and they staked claims that covered it. The prospect was examined on October 26, 1965, by the writers, accompanied by Mr. Graves and Robert Raabe (U.S. Bur. Mines). The mine is a cave in the Martin Limestone about 20 feet above Sycamore Creek. The cave is partly filled with clay and sand. During the 20 years that Mr. Graves and his partner worked at the mine, they excavated a T-shaped adit, aggregating about 200 feet in length, by removing fill from the cave. In this adit the cavern walls above the clay and sand fill are coated with a black powdery material which Mr. Graves interprets to be soot left from fires used by early miners for breaking the rock. Samples of this material were identified as black manganese oxide rather than soot. The undisturbed condition of the cave fill suggests that the cave is natural and has never been excavated before. No evidence of gold was found during the examination of the cave.

The tale of the gold deposit that was supposedly “found and worked by Spanish explorers” is elaborated on in an article I found online².

All in all, it appears that tales of gold in Sycamore Canyon were just that, tales. As for the secret government facilities, the same source of that tale also confidently informed me that the big dome installed at the local cement plant to reduce air pollution was part of a another secret government operation. Needless to say, neither of these tales merit any serious consideration.

We did find what certainly appeared to be the opening of a man-made tunnel (see left). It had been walled up at one time to prevent entry, something often required by regulatory authorities, but vandals have since removed most of the rock wall. Although this cave appears to be man-made and does run back into the cliff for a considerable, although undetermined by us, distance, I didn't think it was the site referred to in the 1966 Geological Survey Bulletin quoted above. For one thing, there was no black coating visible.

On our way up the canyon I lost the trail and led the party awry. The trail actually veered sharply to the east and slightly uphill at that point and recent rains had pretty much washed out any visible sign of it. Meanwhile, we had been heading generally toward the creek before the sharp turn and it looked eminently crossable at that point. After some deliberation, we crossed over and shortly found ourselves at a dead end. This photograph (above right) shows two of my fellow hikers gleefully pointing out the correct trail for me.

On up the trail, just a short distance past our wrong turn, we came to a second cave (see left) that I thought more likely to be the one mentioned in the Geological Survey Bulletin. This one does, at least, show what could be the black manganese oxide coating identified by the surveyors.

There were other caves near the trail on the east side of the canyon, but they were not significantly different from those already shown.

Meanwhile, across the creek in the west canyon wall we could see other caves. The below photograph displays two of these, one partially hidden by trees on the left and one on the right. The left most cave may have a man-made rock wall behind the trees; we really couldn't tell for sure. Note also the large rectangular rock perched atop the small peak at the upper right. This rock also appears in the next photograph.

Two caves visible in the west wall of Sycamore Canyon

Not far north of the two caves shown in the above photograph, we saw another one (see right) that definitely showed evidence of human habitation, specifically a man-made rock wall near its entrance. The cave appears at the bottom center of the photograph. We decided this cave had most certainly been used by Indians. Also see the large rectangular rock sitting atop the peak directly above the cave. This is the same rock shown in the bottom photograph on the previous page.

An enlarged view of the cave is shown here (see left) to better display the man-made wall.

We counted the creek crossings on the way up and found that there were indeed six. Of course we actually crossed eight times because I lost the trail.

We knew we had reached the end of the trail when we found ourselves in a dry streambed. The spring is actually located at the bottom of a steep cliff wall on the west side of the canyon and is surrounded by a thick growth of vegetation. The sixth creek crossing is just below the spring and one must continue about another tenth of a mile beyond that to reach the dry streambed.

When I downloaded the track from my GPS and cleaned it up by removing all the extraneous signals that had bounced off the canyon walls, I found that it showed a one-way distance of 3.8 miles. Considering that we actually hiked a short distance beyond the spring (see map below), that accords well with the mileage posted at the trailhead.

Map showing Parsons Spring and where we stopped for lunch

Our total round-trip hike distance was 7.6 miles as shown by the red GPS track on the included map (below). According to my track, the total ascent was 357 feet and the highest elevation was 3,810 feet.

1 http://pubs.usgs.gov/bul/1230f/report.pdf

2 http://www.thegeozone.com/treasure/arizona/tales/az009a.jsp