Pinal City Hike

I know, I haven't blogged about a hike in awhile. But, Tuesday, we went on an interesting enough hike that I thought I'd share.

We went to an abandoned mining town called Pinal City or, back in the day, Picket Post, for the mountain jutting up out of the desert floor about 1/2 mile away. It's just .7 miles west of the mining town Superior. It seems Picket Post was established to mine silver and the vein ran out just a few years after the towns establishment. The whole place up and moved east to Superior when the silver ran out and copper was found in Superior. All that's left now are the ruts in what must be incredibly soft rock, about 2-3 inches deep. The mules pulled the mine carts across the desert floor from the mines to the smelters and dug the ruts in just a handful of years time.

We hiked then to the abandoned smelter site, just iron pegs sticking up out of the bedrock, yes, the same soft stone the ruts were dug in, that held the smelters in place. There must have been some sort of building there as we found the remains of the foundation.

After that, we hiked along a road passable by a high clearance vehicle across the Queen Creek, running with water this time of year, to what seems to be an Apache hunting camp, up in the cliff walls. There are only two remaining "rooms" but there were what seemed to be post holes, perhaps for a built lean-to against the cliff face. There were matates in the northern room outer wall. The whole thing seemed too small, what with only two rooms to be a permanent habitation despite the really lovely Queen Creek and it's cottonwood shade and flowing water.

After the ruins, we hiked to a location where we could dig Apache Tears (a form of obsidian) from a low, chalk-like cliff wall. Most of us could just sit in the scree field and moving the remains from side to side, find an nice number of the stones without any digging at all. When we got tired of that or found enough of the stones to suit us, we stopped and gazing at the opposing scenic cliffs, had a very nice picnic lunch.

It being after noon, we got everyone together and hiked back to the cars. Overall, we all felt that the 4 hour round trip drive was worth the trip.